{"id":2972,"date":"2012-02-20T14:24:14","date_gmt":"2012-02-20T19:24:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beginnersheart\/?p=2972"},"modified":"2012-02-20T14:24:14","modified_gmt":"2012-02-20T19:24:14","slug":"teachers-memory-and-public-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2012\/02\/teachers-memory-and-public-education.html","title":{"rendered":"teachers, memory, and public education ~"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I love this cartoon — I’m sorry I have no better attribution, as it has <\/em>to have been done by someone intimately acquainted w\/ teaching and\/or teachers. Because this is the secret about teaching: you can’t prepare for most of it. You can have content knowledge out the wazoo — biology, let’s say — and be left feeling stupid when you need a background in counseling to deal w\/ a student’s life derailing.<\/p>\n

Or we envy a computer tech when new national standards mandate we use technology in\u00a0 American history class. And don’t get teachers started on how much they’re supposed to know about writing, even if their areas are as different as math, music and material design.<\/p>\n

I spent Friday with 130+ great teachers. It was, supposedly, a 4-day weekend. Except for teachers, who spent the day listening to discussions of new state (and federal) standards. And there was, I confess, FAR too much ‘listening’ and not nearly enough ‘doing.’<\/p>\n

Digression: why is that EVERYTHING we know about learning flies out the window when we deal w\/ adult learners? Just curious… Anyone understand this?\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Here’s the deal: despite an early morning, despite technology glitches that rendered much of the morning presentation unheard, despite a crowded cafeteria where the conversation of 130+ adults sounded like a stadium crowd, these 130 teachers were polite, witty, committed and professional. NOTHING like the current political arena paints them…<\/p>\n

Another seeming digression (trust me ~ it all comes together): years ago, my younger son complained I had abused him (really). I had, he noted seriously, spanked him four times. And he could remember every one ~<\/p>\n

\u201cOnce I was going into the street; once I was playing w\/ fire; once I told a lie, once I\u2026\u201d he counted on his fingers. I interrupted.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo: these were major infractions, correct?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u201cYes, but you\u2019re not<\/em> supposed to hit children, Mom. That\u2019s what you say.\u201d What a smug child we\u2019ve raised, I thought.<\/p>\n

\u201cNoah, do you remember every time I\u2019ve hugged you?\u201d<\/p>\n

He rolled his eyes. \u201cNo, Mom.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you remember every time I told you I love you?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, Mom,\u201d he said w\/ increased exasperation. \u201cYou\u2019re always<\/em> telling me\u2026\u201d His blue eyes widened, understanding beginning to dawn.<\/p>\n

So what does this have to do w\/ bad teachers? The current belief in ‘bad teachers are everywhere, and at the root of all educational evil<\/em>‘ actually is a collision of math & memory. How many really bad teachers did you have? Not ones you heard about, or ones someone else told you about. A teacher you yourself had \u2014 a teacher who kept you from learning, or who ruined your year, the class, the subject. And here\u2019s the truth: I can\u2019t remember one. A couple who were less than warm; one who thumped kids on the head when they didn’t pay attention; another who insisted I pronounce Vi\u1ec7t Nam\u00a0 <\/em>to rhyme w\/ we et jam<\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n

When I asked my husband, he can\u2019t remember one. Nor can my sisters. Nor can most of my friends. I must have\u00a0 had teachers I didn\u2019t like (although to be honest? I don\u2019t even remember them now\u2026:)). But I don\u2019t remember one who would have caused me to score badly on tests forever, or who was incompetent, or didn\u2019t TRY. Even when I was silently ADD in the back of the class (bored and writing a poem, or a story, or just doodling), or vocally disrupting class to ask Mrs. Miller yet again<\/em> just WHY you had to \u2018divide and multiply\u2019 w\/ fractions..?\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The human mind looks, like the Large Hadron Collider<\/a>, for aberrations. What is continuous is the norm \u2014 we feel we know it, and so move forward. So that if I tell my son I love him daily \u2014 even multiple times a day \u2014 that\u2019s normal. He takes it for granted.<\/p>\n

But a spanking? One of only four he received? Those are discontinuities <\/a>\u2013 the pattern has been disrupted. So they bear analysis.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m afraid that\u2019s what\u2019s happened in education. I work with teachers \u2014 and I know hundreds. Literally. Although given to \u2018poetic license\u2019 (my vanity plate reads \u2018POETIC\u2019), I really do know hundreds of teachers. And they work harder than any single profession with which I\u2019m familiar.\u00a0 But it\u2019s so much easier to point to teachers as the cause of education\u2019s failures \u2014 despite the fact that no one I know can remember many bad ones (confirming the Noah hypothesis, that only the aberration is remarked), than to tackle the other, much more complicated vectors that influence educational outcomes \"\"<\/a>for children.<\/p>\n

\u2018Vec<\/a>tor<\/a>.\u2019 Such a perfect word to describe the complexities of educational influences:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. A course or direction. So many things can blow educational achievement off course \u2014 a bad testing day, for instance. What if John is coming down w\/ a virus that doesn\u2019t manifest until tomorrow? What if Jennifer was awake all night last night because her new baby brother had colic and screamed for hours? Not to mention things like hunger, abuse, situational homelessness<\/a>.<\/li>\n
  2. There\u2019s also the idea of \u2018vector\u2019 as a pathogen carrier. This one seems particularly apt. There are reform forces dead set against public education <\/a>as it is today \u2014 not the parts that don\u2019t work as well as we\u2019d like (and certainly there are plenty of those \":)\" ), but the whole \u2018public\u2019 (and free) identity of contemporary education. And that, to me, is an attitude that poisons the entire body of education.<\/li>\n
  3. Finally, there\u2019s the idea that a vector carries \u2018modified genetic material.\u2019 I think this may be my favourite, because new ideas in education \u2014 creative, research-based, genuinely learning-centred ideas \u2014 are like new DNA in the body education. I love that idea! Unfortunately, today\u2019s version is more the kind of DNA that would change public education to private, fee-driven charter schools. And if you can\u2019t afford them? Well\u2026. Who knows? No real plan for that, is there?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    The teachers with whom I worked Friday are far more the ‘norm’ than not. They tried new classroom strategies, listened to the research, and were as polite as could be.\u00a0 Heck, they sent us home w\/ flowers! But this doesn’t make news, teachers sitting in an echo chamber of a cafeteria trying hard to improve how they teach. It isn’t ‘sexy,’ as the news media says. Nor is it controversial. But it is very common.<\/p>\n

    So here\u2019s my point: bad teachers are real, as were Noah\u2019s spankings. But they are not responsible, personally and collectively, for derailing public education. Only we can do that, if we succumb to faulty memory, bad physics and mythology. And if we do, our children will be the ones who suffer\u2026<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I love this cartoon — I’m sorry I have no better attribution, as it has to have been done by someone intimately acquainted w\/ teaching and\/or teachers. Because this is the secret about teaching: you can’t prepare for most of it. You can have content knowledge out the wazoo — biology, let’s say — and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":398,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,17,216,43],"tags":[292,11,1181,1187,262,291,1197],"class_list":["post-2972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britton-gildersleeve","category-buddhism","category-education","category-teaching","tag-bad-teachers","tag-beginners-heart","tag-britton-gildersleeve","tag-buddhism","tag-buddhist-blogs","tag-professional-development","tag-teaching"],"yoast_head":"\nteachers, memory, and public education ~ - Beginner's Heart<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I love this cartoon -- I'm sorry I have no better attribution, as it has to have been done by someone intimately acquainted w\/ teaching and\/or teachers.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2012\/02\/teachers-memory-and-public-education.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"teachers, memory, and public education ~ - 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