I recently read a pair of articles in the NY Times: Lesson Plan in Boston Schools:Don’t Go it Alone and Inexperienced Companies Chase U.S. School Funds and I’m thinking a lot about a conversation I had last week with my former student/friend Alison and her partner Sarah as I continue to dig into the latest wave in educational reform. After reading Diane Ravitch’s blistering attack in her latest book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, against the federal approach to educational reform, the reality seems to support her work and my greatest fears.
Both young women, passionate and committed to teaching, began their careers in at charter school led by a former teacher, who created a small community of young teachers who felt welcomed and supported. As Alison, the theater/art teacher, prepared her students for a performance, her principal came to her with open arms offering her anything she needed. As her former director, I could relate to that need for administrative support and it was wonderful when a principal worked with you.
Both Sarah and Alison worked hard in their first years without a union behind them, but they were a part of a great community of teachers but when her first principal teacher left the school, he was replaced by a school manager, who rapidly destroyed the sense of community and demanded total control and obedience and the teacher and parent moral was destroyed with one fell blow and soon Alison was looking for a new job. She found one in a public school in a tough section of Boston and without administrative and faculty support she was lost in an elective theater classroom. So it isn’t just Charter vs Public School in this educational war, but there’s a wind blowing through that’s creating serious insecurity in the teaching profession.
The Times articles support the need for educated administration and the need for teacher respect and support. Teachers in the Boston public school system now can be moved from school to school each year at the whim of the system. So yes, there’s still some job security but under the pressure of federal educational reform, the state’s Democratic Governor and legislature, to win Race to the Top funds sold our their teachers and their unions.
Now Alison will be teaching part-time in a small Catholic School in the fall and even though she has to suppliment her income with non-teaching part time jobs to she is looking forward to teaching art and directing theater because the school leadership and staff are welcoming her. Sarah, a math teacher, has also left the charter school where they first met, for a brand new charter. She will be making good money and so far the staff is just being hired so the jury is out as to how positive the experience will be.
In my 30 years,I spnet half my teaching career in a school with good to fair administrators and union leaders who didn’t care very much about education. They were working for teacher benefits. But the second half of my career was spent at Pearl River where serious teachers led the union and worked cooperatively with some great, some good and few fair administrators. Our staff was a good one. Some great teachers, lots of good teachers, some fair and a few lazy ones. The adminstrators were all former teachers and not managers. Many left a strong bond with the community and for the most part supported, the staff.
It was good to have a supportive administrator, colleagues on your wave length, and union leaders behind you. As I think back to my teaching life, the world of my classroom was supported by the school community just outside the door.
Sadly, I worry that many dedicated teachers will be beaten down and forced to leave the profession or have to accept the will of the unedcated to keep their jobs. I’m worried.
