What are you hiding?

 What are you hiding?

 

Why don’t schools allow parents to visit in their children’s classrooms whenever they want to?   So just what are they hiding?

I mean when a loved one of mine has surgery, I can be in the operating room to watch and to make sure the surgeon is doing what she is supposed to be doing?  Isn’t that true?  Oh, it isn’t?

Well if my pharmacist is counting meds from the big bottle to the little bottle and typing the label, I can be there to make sure the count is correct and that he is accessing the correct big bottle.  Isn’t that true?  Oh, it isn’t?

Parents say they just want to see what their children are learning in school.  And that during all that virtual learning during the pandemic they got to see just what their kids were learning and who the good teachers were and who the bad teachers were.  Interestingly, no one suggested that untrained people had neither the skill set nor the background to be able to evaluate a professionally trained teacher.

And yes, it is true that parents are very invested in their child's education.  But it is very easily argued that parents are no less invested in any medical procedures for their children.  Yet there are no expectations that parents should invade these spaces nor evaluate medical professionals.

It has been suggested by advocates that the biggest barrier to having parents visit classrooms is that their child might be embarrassed.

In a few years, starting public school teachers in Maryland will be earning $60,000 right out of college.  The idea is that this kind of salary will attract the best and brightest people to be teachers.

Until teachers are given the level of respect of other professionals, we are not going to attract the best and brightest regardless of what they are paid because the best people don’t have to put up with these indignities.

The classroom is the teacher’s operating room.  The teacher may invite people in as needed and at her discretion.  Parents need to respect teachers AND their professional skill sets the way they do other professionals.  

If parents want to know what a child is learning in school, look at the homework or the classwork that is coming home.  OR even go online and check out the various curriculum guides that are posted.  

When lay people get to observe, evaluate and critique other professions, that would be a good time for lay people to start doing the same for teachers.

Until then, as an educator who is highly trained in my profession, you should know that I am not hiding anything, I just don’t need amateur invasion.

 

Mask requirement for students violates religious rights

 Mask requirement for students violates religious rights

 

 The State Secretary of Health in Pennsylvania ordered that all students needed to wear masks in school in an effort to limit the spread of COVID-19.   A group of parents felt that there should have been an option for a religious exemption.  The State disagreed.   This is America so the parents made a federal case out of it - literally, and took their views to U.S District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania.

The parents asked for a preliminary injunction which would only be granted if the judge determined that the parents would prevail in a full case hearing.

The parents made several points in arguing for the religious exemption.  One parent said she believed that wearing a mask was immoral because it caused bodily harm in the form of mask acne.   She stated that the body is a temple and should not be harmed.  Although she acknowledged that communicable diseases are harmful and, in her view, God would want us to protect ourselves from communicable disease.

Another parent stated that one of the Epistles of Paul to Corinthians instructed that the covering on ones face was a dishonor to God.  She could not, at the time of the hearing, specify the specific biblical book or verse.

Another parent said he felt that masks made a mockery of the gift of life because they cover what makes us human and, therefore, show a lack of gratitude to the creator.  He did acknowledge that he approved of his son wearing protective head coverings for sports.

Parents also wanted to present testimony from a physiologist to show that the concentration of carbon dioxide under a mask exceeds levels normally accepted for indoor air quality.  The District has a pending motion to exclude this testimony.  Until that motion is heard the testimony was not allowed.

The school district representative testified that there are medical exemptions allowed for the mask wearing requirement but that none of the plaintiffs has requested a medical exemption.   There are no religious exemptions allowed under the Secretary’s order.

The judge ruled that it is not sufficient for Plaintiffs to hold a “sincere opposition” to mask-wearing but need to show that it is a religious belief.  The judge ruled that although each of the four Plaintiffs has a passionate objection to wearing a mask, none of them has a belief that warrants First Amendment protection.  Therefore, he denied the request for an injunction because he said Plaintiffs failed to meet the standard that they would prevail at court.   Requiring a mask for health protections does not, in this case, violate First Amendment religious protections.

 

Whom do we serve

 Whom do we serve?

 

We were told that August was the great resignation month as people were leaving jobs they just discovered they didn’t like.  Then came September and the resignations continued.  October was the month of strikes.  Workers realized that they had more control than they thought and that, even though union membership had declined, there was some muscle left.

Those muscles were flexed in early August and September by school bus drivers who – must be the pandemic- all got sick at the same time.   In some counties, the drivers called it a strike, in others a “sick-out”.  Really matters not, kids still couldn’t get to school.  Parents schedules were upended.  People scrambled for child care and/or didn’t go to work themselves.  Oh, and by the way, children suffered a further disruption of their education.  It also didn’t matter that the failure to provide transportation to school for children with disabilities is a violation of federal and state law.  The school districts are required to provide these students with a free and appropriate public education (FAPE).  The Supreme Court has ruled that unless transportation to that education is provided the provision of FAPE is mute. No one seemed to notice amid the cries for drivers to get back to work.  Parents were not offered reimbursement unless they asked and did the leg work.

School teachers have also left their jobs in droves and they, too, are flexing muscles.  It seems that large numbers of teachers have already realized that they will be sick on the day before Thanksgiving and so will not be able to come to work.  How presient is that?!   And since there aren’t enough substitute teachers, major districts in Maryland have announced calendar changes that include closing on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.  Parents are annoyed to say the least because once again there is not child care and besides teachers have enough time off.  And yet again, no one seemed to notice that kids would be missing another day of school after 18 months of pure disruption.

We have already learned we can no longer count on the U. S. Postal Service.  Bus drivers are not paid enough for the jobs they do.  Many are considered part-time even though it would be almost impossible to find work in the middle of a day.  Teachers, on the other hand, are paid a comparable full-time salary with good benefits and work about 4.5 weeks less than in a year than the rest of us.  Schools are closed for all major holidays, sometimes multiple days.  They close for snow and it seems heavy rain.  It appears now that they also close for the convenience of the teachers preparing a big dinner.

Whom do we serve? Well I think that is clear, we serve ourselves and the students get the left-overs and that isn’t turkey.

The HITS Theory of History

 The HITS Theory of history

 

Throughout recorded history the HITS theory of teaching history to children has predominated.  This theory teaches we did no wrong regardless of what that wrong might be.  It also teaches that if by some chance we did do some wrong- well it was the other guy’s fault and well deserved.  And besides that, we were only protecting ourselves from some self-described catastrophe.

Prior to the Civil War (so named by the victors, who do not just get the spoils of victory but also get to name the conflict), those of us who had to rationalize the immoral practice of one human being owning another named slavery the white man’s burden protecting black folk from a life of poverty and ignorance.  Too bad we didn’t give those black people a shot at proving them wrong and freeing them from the life of poverty and ignorance as an enslaved people.

We brought many Chinese to our shores to build railroads.  Once we didn’t need their skills anymore we stopped allowing Chinese to come to our country.

During WWII we placed Japanese-American citizens in concentration camps to protect ourselves from the perfidy we knew they were plotting.  We didn’t do that to Germans who we were also fighting.  Could the fact that the Germans looked more like us be a reason they were allowed to roam free. 

We allowed millions of Jews to be baked in Nazi ovens because they didn’t worship like most of us so we couldn’t allow them to emigrate to America and save their lives.  And besides, we all knew how Jews really were and maybe Hitler wasn’t all that wrong by the way he characterized them.

Women by means of law and tradition are still treated as the personal possession of the males in their lives.  Even in the U.S. there are laws that place women in a secondary condition as opposed to males.  And tradition is a whole other story.

Teaching children about these wrongs is considered wrong because we all know the United States is the land of the free and home of the brave and is a county whose history is peppered with good deeds and exceptionalism.  This scenario is also totally true.  The United States is home to more immigrants than any other country on earth.  The proud lady in the New York harbor has much of which to be proud.

Knowing all sides of our history is important.  As a single human being, my hope for being a better person lies in my knowing what I have done wrong and how I can be better tomorrow.  So, it is true of our nation.  When we limit what people can achieve because they worship a different god or the same god in a different way or worship no god at all is just stupid.  Limiting people because their skin tone is different or their faces skew differently is also very stupid.  When we limit the talents people bring to our country because of these differences, it is not only immoral, it is stupid.  Why deprive our attempts to problem solve by not utilizing every single talent we have?  Because we embrace stupidity by these behaviors. Oh, the HITS theory of history?   Head in the Sand- we do it all the time and no one complains

 

 

How Dumb is this?

 How Dumb is this?

Corey is a student in Baltimore City schools.  (true story).   He is 19 and has been out of school with virtual learning (now there’s an oxymoron for you) for eighteen months.  Now he is back in the building.  The school he goes to is for kids that are at risk.  Class sizes are a bit smaller; teachers chose to teach these students and the principal is equally dedicated.

Like all City public school students, kids use public transportation to get to school.  Kids with special needs do receive school transportation.  Corey takes two busses to get to school.  It is a pain.  Based on his earned credit count, Corey is in the 9^th grade.  He is being raised by his grandmother, along with his brother and cousin.  Corey’s father is incarcerated for dealing drugs.   His mother is in parts unknown and she is a known addict.

Corey may stay in school until he is 21.  He does want his high school diploma.  He also would like to get a CDL license and drive an interstate truck.  Corey says this will enable him to see the world outside of Baltimore.  Corey understands that his chances of doing that will improve dramatically if he has a high school diploma.

Maryland is committed to College and Career Readiness for its high school students.  The new Blueprint for the Future is pouring a ton of money into education.  But the curriculum is not changing.

The point of view for College and Career Readiness is readiness for careers that require college.  There is nothing in the curriculum that prepares a kid for a non-college career.  Our naive belief is that if we upfront recognize that college is not for everyone, it is being undemocratic and denying open opportunity.  Funny how it is easy for us to say only a few kids are good enough in athletics to be varsity or get a college athletic scholarship but we can't admit that some kids just don't want to go to college or lack the ability to do so.

Let’s go back to Corey.  He wants to be a long-distance trucker.  We NEED long-distance truckers as the recent supply chain woes obviously show.  In English class, Corey is reading The Crucible, a play by Arthur Miller on the Salem witch trials.  He can be forgiven if he doesn’t care about the topic.  In math he is learning about evaluating expressions and creating equations.  The curriculum makes no connection whatever to how this work could or would link to what he wants to do with his life.  Exactly what is the point of this curriculum? Oh right, the point is to show that we believe all kids can achieve college preparatory work whether it is relevant or not to the child's life.   Curriculum is supposed to meet the needs of a community.  Corey’s community does not have needs that these skills will meet.  There are people who will tell you that my opinion creates too low a bar for kids like Corey.  I disagree.  Socio-economic events have created a world for Corey that does not include college aspiration.  He does HAVE aspirations and he needs a school program that validates those goals and helps him to reach those goal rather than to respond to the attractions of the street.  How hard is this to figure out?  How dumb is this to keep doing what we are doing?