Short Notes: What Fathers Watch

by Jose Vilson on June 16, 2013

little_einsteins

A few notes:

Quotables:

re: Little Einsteins and parentless cartoons …

Jose, who wishes all the fathers out there a great day ….

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Having A Voice Isn’t Free, Either (Inspiring Teacher Voice)

by Jose Vilson on June 13, 2013

lionroarbw

Today, it was brought to my attention just how costly teacher voice can be.

The top-down management style of most schools lends itself to an undemocratic collective of adults and children in the building, all exacerbated by internal and external factors like poverty, personalities, and Charlotte Danielson. Autonomy is in the eye of the beholder, and the beholder is often fresh out of college and / or hasn’t been in the classroom longer than I have.

That’s why teacher voice is a reform in and of itself. The idea that teachers and students have a say as to the direction of the school runs contrary to what policy tells us over and again, no matter if you’re in a rural town with one elementary, middle, and high school or if you’re an urban teacher trying to dodge the bullets of an ed-deform mayor.

The status quo tells us that teachers should only speak when spoken to, help reform only when it’s close to the finish line, and smile only when it’s an appreciation day or on their own time. By the time teachers are given (!) the chance to speak up, it already went through a bunch of heads who want to educate without educating, or make a difference without much understanding or interactions with real people.

Teacher voice should look less like the anonymous focus groups and telephone surveys assessing customer satisfaction and more like boards of directors and action committees. When we assume on-the-ground educators shouldn’t have an equal stake in what happens in the classroom, we beg for two things to happen. Either a) teachers leave or b) teachers rebel.

I’m hoping for the latter.

Freedom isn’t free. Having a voice isn’t free, either. This is no coincidence. The ability to break free from the yeses – where “yes” is really a masked “OK, let’s just get on with it” – comes at a cost. Checklists, bulletin board inspections, browbeating, hurt feelings, and incidental layoffs soon follow. Our collective voice has to come from understanding the risks involved, unpopular as our opinions may be.

A teacher voice demands an eye on progress, a heart for students, and a voice for waking lions.

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A Memo on Teacher Voice

by Jose Vilson on June 10, 2013

tightrope walking

Why do people always feel the need to limit the potential of teacher voice?

Last year, I expounded on redefining teacher voice, and what that means for true education reform:

Teacher voice is the collective and individual expression of meaningful, professional opinion based on classroom experience and expertise.

What developed shortly thereafter were a plethora of discussions of what that looks like, and how we employ that in different settings. I came to realize a few things:

  1. People aren’t always ready to change the paradigm to make decisions more democratically.
  2. Teachers don’t always have the time or energy besides doing the best job possible in the classroom.
  3. The education debate as a whole hasn’t evolved from just picking one side and one group of people to side with.

These points make for a lack of teachers activating their voices. For those of us who do this selflessly (sans incentives, rewards, titles, and permission), it often feels like punching a wall with your bare knuckles, or breaking down a cement building with an ice pick. On one end, you have a well-versed, well-funded machine that has a set of coherent talking points on one end, and a passionate and divergent cluster of people on the other end.

These ends aren’t equal by any measure, in wealth, in numbers, or in self-actualization.

Here’s a few things we can do to build up our voices individually and collectively:

  1. Educators can change the narrative by pushing for our stories to come to the fore with the right research and best practices to back them up.
  2. Educators can support each other (within reason) as often as possible, linking articles, blogs, and tweets of people they like and …
  3. Educators can highlight the things education deformers a lot less.

Coming up with solutions ourselves, finding the right people willing to push those ideas, and building alliances takes a lot of hard work, but, as we deconstruct others’ arguments, we can build together. How do we get all those people to our table?

Jose, who thanks Sabrina Stevens for helping me hash out these thoughts …

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Short Notes: A Cautionary Tale for Edubloggers

by Jose Vilson on June 9, 2013

Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy

A few notes:

Quotable:

“To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simply what is complicated and never complicated what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget.”

- Arundhati Roy

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Learning To Fly (Reminding Ourselves That Students Are People)

June 6, 2013 Mr. Vilson

Confession: I had the best time yesterday hanging with my students at Six Flags Great Adventure for their senior trip. From discovering that Adventure Time is my new favorite show (and I ain’t even know it) to testing out my intestinal fortitude (just fine for now, thank you very much), I got to see a [...]

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Don’t Ask Me If You’re Going To Summer School

June 4, 2013 Mr. Vilson

My new post at The Collaborateurs explains a situation that happens too frequently to us during this time of year: Their absences weren’t insignificant, the lack of work is made more obvious by everyone else’s full portfolios, the same trends happen across their subjects, and just getting them into class almost doesn’t feel worth it. [...]

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A Note On Teacher Evaluations [A Memo For Sanity]

June 3, 2013 Jose

Remember a few years ago when I told you that trying to create equations for the intangibles is calamitous for any profession, especially education? If think tanks prognosticate that the 21st century needs ideals like collaboration and transparency, then we’re doing a poor job of exemplifying that in schools. On Saturday, for example, Commissioner John [...]

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Emphasize The TEACHER In Teacher Leadership

May 30, 2013 Mr. Vilson

I wrote a little something here as a thought on teacher leadership. Check it at the Collaborateurs: That’s why I ought to start capitalizing the word “teacher” in the phrase “teacher leader.” The term “teacher leader” is so ubiquitous, you can’t help but wonder if people even know what it actually means, or at least [...]

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Moments Like This [Soul Of A Man]

May 27, 2013 Jose

A blackened tooth from a decade-old basketball injury. An average of four hours of sleep a night. A tumultuous set of faculty meetings, in meetings, out meetings, and every other type of meeting in between. An early bus I missed, followed by a late train that took 15 minutes off my preparation time. A snide [...]

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Honesty In The Time Of Professionalism

May 20, 2013 Jose

In this economy, everyone’s scared to lose their jobs. Leaders often say they want feedback and honesty, but only if it fits their beliefs about the reality they’ve interpreted. For instance, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan recently tweeted this: 59 years since Brown v. Board of Ed- We still have so far to go to [...]

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