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A Crazy Idea for Middle Schools
Class Struggle - by Jay Mathews
washingtonpost.com
October 2, 2009
When education pundits like me talk about the American Indian Public Charter School in Oakland, Calif., the conversation is always about the middle school's leader, Ben Chavis. He is very different from us data-sifting eggheads. It is not an exaggeration to call him a wild man. He delights in upbraiding lazy students, outraging inattentive teachers and making wrong-headed visitors to the school wish they had stayed home.
He has the independent spirit of someone who had a successful career in construction, teaching and business before the then-woebegone AIPCS board asked him to rescue the school. He didn’t need the job. He did it mostly as a favor to fellow Native Americans--he was born into a Lumbee Indian family of sharecroppers in North Carolina--and as a challenge. He has many of the habits of some of the best educators I know--a wicked sense of humor, a weakness for shocking the conventionally wise and a deep love of children, particularly those who have had difficult lives.
Read more HERE.
5 comments:
Was the comment regarding unprofessional conduct of principals in Charles County intended to be posted here?
With regard to this “crazy idea” Mr. Chavis has – it seems to me its success or failure depends entirely upon the teacher. I know of “core subject” teachers in middle schools that should not have been teaching the content for which they were responsible; students assigned those teachers for middle school math/science/language subjects throughout all three years of middle school would have been…an inexcusable nightmare.
Charles County has an inexcusable amount of math and science teachers that are brain dead when it comes to having a clue to the content of which they are assigned to teach (notice I didn't say "teaching").
We have fools at North Point teaching honors Geometry from packets without using a textbook.
We have idiots that are spewing garbage to students like "Oh, hell, no complex numbers are used in 'real life'."
And this is what the taxpayer money is buying? Fools that must have received their degree from dumbsville U. Where are the content supervisors? Why in the heck are they allowing this to go on in the classroom? It's no wonder the SAT scores are despicably low.
Where do they hire these wackos, anyway? And who exactly is the moron that picks these people up, wastes our money hiring/background, etc., then allows them to be dumb in the classroom? Why can't we hold these people accountable?
Who in the hell is allowing these people to teach an honors class using packets?
This is an inexcusable nightmare. Didn't Richmond say that North Point was the technologically whippersnapper of Chucky County?
What a joke!
I wonder if you could clarify, Anonymous @ 1:08...
I infer that your comments are about teachers who are qualified (as determined by NCLB) in the subject area they are assigned to teach, but that you believe are doing an inadequate job in the classroom. Is that correct?
I don't know anything about the "packets" issue to which you have referred, but I do know that when CCPS made an algebra textbook change several years ago, some teachers balked at using it. All their lesson plans were developed with the old textbook, and their reluctance to change 1) was a poor example for the students and 2) made for instructional confusion while the teachers tried to bounce back and forth between the two texts.
My understanding is that there is a Curriculum Plan/Guide for subjects taught in the schools, and I thought that textbooks were agreed upon at the county level, not at individual schools. At least that is what the former Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction told parents -- Responding to complaints regarding a lack of consistency, he wanted everyone on the same page in the same week regardless of the school. Does anyone know whether that is still the guidance?
"I infer that your comments are about teachers who are qualified (as determined by NCLB) in the subject area they are assigned to teach, but that you believe are doing an inadequate job in the classroom. Is that correct?"
No. First things first. These teachers are not "highly qualified." If they were, they'd grow a set of big ones and refuse to teach honors classes from a lousy set of packets. They have the books, but apparently have no idea how to use them. The administration is scared ____less to allow professionals from the respective fields of science to come in and observe the teachers to see how well they actually know the material. As Charlie Parker put it "If you haven't lived it, it won't come out of your horn."
"I don't know anything about the "packets" issue to which you have referred, but I do know that when CCPS made an algebra textbook change several years ago, some teachers balked at using it."
Please investigate the use of packets when teaching science and math. It's a joke. Honors classes should be formal, requiring the use of a good textbook and a teacher with a wide vast of knowledge with regard to the subject at hand and the applications of that subject.
Many of the concepts covered in Pre-Calculus are covered in a decent Algebra II course in a private school.
"I thought that textbooks were agreed upon at the county level, not at individual schools. At least that is what the former Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction told parents -- Responding to complaints regarding a lack of consistency, he wanted everyone on the same page in the same week regardless of the school. Does anyone know whether that is still the guidance?"
It shows that whoever picks out the books (at least for honors classes) has no clue, little background, and frankly is not bright enough to wander out into the field to confer with people IN THOSE BUSINESSES to ask, "Are we preparing our students for high tech educations?"
No. The answer is emphatically no. Get rid of some of this rotten, old wood that are teaching the higher level classes. We need fresh blood that will turn students on to these subjects. We also need teachers that will reject the same-old-crap from the BOE administration and insist that they have it all wrong (past history shows they sure as hell do, just look at the lame test scores, number of students taking remedial classes).
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