Marrying Don Quijote

Today, I spent the day at the Dwight Englewood School in Englewood, New Jersey. I had two activities there. The first was a leaders meeting for Teens Talk About Racism next week and the second, was a visit from the pages of fiction by none other than Don Quijote de la Mancha.

Now, I know that Don Quijote is an idealist and some people say that he chases windmills a little too much. They recommend that he pull his head out of the books to face "the real world." They even try to tell Don Quijote that the lovely maiden he is defending is less than maidenly. He won't hear of any such slander for she is, "Dulcinea," his sweet one.

Don Quijote was Cervantes'invention more than four hundred years ago, but the character has taken over.

My husband, Spanish and Ethics teacher, Joe Murphy, brought the real Don Quijote back through the dimensions to visit the fifth grade class of Janet Glass or "La Reina Blanca." Well, Joe Murphy is just the medium because the man I saw in that classroom today was not the man that I have been married to for 31 years. Joe Murphy has magic powers that can pull Don Quijote right off the page to bring him into the hearts and minds of children.


With my own eyes, I saw Don Quijote fighting the monstrous items found in the classroom with a sword. Some may have called those items speakers, statues and light fixtures, but Don Quijote assured the class that he was fighting the terrible dangers of the world - the "cruel monsters," as he put it. He even dubbed a couple of young men as knights, while he was visiting, and he inspired a love of adventure that the students will not forget.

At one key moment, a student asked Don Quijote what music he liked. Don Quijote simply began to sing a romance while he clapped. "I like my music, mi musica, I like it, the romance," he sang in Spanish, while dancing a little jig shuffle. Immediately, all of the children began to sing and clap the spontaneous song with him, swaying in place.

Together, with Don Quijote, we all traveled to a land where justice prevails, where dignity and inner beauty win acclaim and devotion and where fidelity to one's deepest values is more prized than gold.

When Don Quijote and I walked back to my husband, Joe Murphy's office, I asked him if he knew that one day, many years later, there would be a man who would bring him back to life.

Don Quijote looked me square in the eye and sent greetings from the past to this Joe Murphy.

How lucky am I to have married such an emissary. It's as close as any modern woman has ever come to marrying Don Quijote, himself.

Honored Alumnae at Convocation

Honored Alumnae at Convocation

Anti-ed rhetoric ...don't go there!

My new Teacher of the Year friends, from every state in our nation, have begun to share our thoughts on what makes an "effective" teacher. The big news is that evaluation methods vary widely in our country - some involving the use of portfolio, self assessment, administrator "walk through" and significant, regular input and conversation.

Clearly, all of the awarded teachers are interested in being part of the conversation about what we think is "great" about teachers who are lifted up as teachers of the year and other such awards, especially during the current anti-teacher public environment.

Just when I needed it most, I read an article in "Education Week" (www.edweek.org)in which Dianne Ravitch and Mike Rose share significant thoughts about what is happening. Both agree on the following, as stated by Mike Rose:

"You and I are both concerned about the predominance of school-bashing rhetoric in the national discussion of public schools." It seems, says Mike Rose, to "provide the ideological foundation to dismiss public education, to seek free-market solutions or structural or technological miracle cures."

That's what I've been hearing "out there" as well. I hear from folks that good teachers like me shouldn't be "defending the education of yesterday."

Diane Ravitch admits that there have always been critics and reformers of public education, but there was one important difference, "the critics wanted to make public schools better. Now, many critics think that the answer to public education is to get rid of it, to replace it with something that is wholly different and not subject to any democratic participation or control."

Wow, there's the rub. We "improve" public education by eliminating it. Ha!

Now, let's think about the current conversation about "teacher quality."

The be all and end all of a good teacher, according to the policy folks, is how kids perform on tests. I mean, as a "good teacher" we all have to be about student progress. All good teachers I know would agree, but the essential difference is how to judge student progress.

Most teachers don't trust the tests as the sole way of judging student progress. We don't trust the tests as the sole way of judging teachers either.

Diane talks about how we can judge effective teachers, anyway. It seems that we are moving in a direction of “deselect(ing) teachers every year whose students did not get gains. If we fire 5-10% of teachers every year, over time the nation will have an excellent corps of teachers."

Oh my! Credentials don't seem to matter, according to reformers, nor do degrees. So, Diane asks, why not have talented high school students do this test prep we are looking for? It may not be as much of a reductio ad absurdum as it at first seems. I mean...

Do you agree with the following?

Good education = Good test prep and results

Bad education = Bad test prep and results

Now, close your eyes and remember that special teacher. Come on, there must be one out there. Everyone talks about this person in every educational speech.

Your favorite teacher - the one who changed your life = your test results that year of school.

I'd bet money that this is not true, that you remember this person because of the way they motivated you to believe in yourself to become a learner.

Being a learner is forever.

Mike Rose says that real, honest-to-goodness professional development is crucial for teachers. Not the one-size-fits-all, half-day blitz we are familiar with, but the sustained, deep, collaboration with experts that really affect teachers and influence learners.

Oh, but I forgot - a teacher doesn't have to be an intellectual leader or social contributor, we just have to turn around test results.

We are "a knowledge-delivery mechanism preparing students for high-stakes tests."

Sounds like a wonderful career. I'll have to use that when I speak to the dewy eyed teachers to be in an upcoming speech.

Are you kidding?

Educational policy is being created and used to hurt the essence of the best of instruction as we know it. There is good and bad in yesterday. I am a huge supporter of technology, but I see it as a tool to create an infinite number of seats at the table. I cannot sit by silently while my profession is reduced to a Chaplanesque view of teacher as factory foreman pumping kids into a place on the assembly line. We know that this sort of one-size-fits-all approach is doomed.

What makes an effective teacher does need to be measured in important ways, but these ways need to include self reflection, personal growth, collaboration and peer involvement, connection with content-area experts, connection to the students'and strategies to help teachers find "tools" to help students overcome significant life obstacles like poverty, an intellectually unenriched home, disease, learning disabilities.

Personally, I'd prefer to eliminate poverty and social inequity, but that's another story.

Diane Ravitch spoke of our president and his wonderful ability as an orator. She'd like to see the tone shift from our guy up top. "instead of speaking about punishing, firing, failing, and closing, speak instead about improving, supporting, developing, encouraging, and inspiring."

That would be music to my ears.

Think hard about what we want. Do we want public schools that work? Or do we want to demolish our public schools and the teachers who would work in them? Do we want whole-minded professionals to take on teaching jobs or narrowly focused technocrats who are good at getting kids those discrete skills to get the numbers to get them the merit pay to get the acclaim.

In such a reality, Mr. Holland never gets his Opus and Mr. Chips, a life-long teacher who got an important movie goodbye from his school, will never appear on the screens of future movie goers. In the current scenario, The elegantly aging Mr. Chips would have been fired by the time he was 40 and Mr. Holland, that music teacher who actually loves music, will be told to focus more on the "real world."

Not on my watch!

Many teams on the same league - the NJ League

NJEA President, Barbara Keshishian & me at my "Women of Distinction" award



Everywhere I go, I see teachers, administrators, school boards and students with the same worried faces. We are all worried about the future of education in New Jersey. For many years, our state has been able to boast about our excellent progress and success in public education.

But right now, I feel like we are living in a great big disconnect.

On the one hand, we have big dreams for success, for all students, coming to us from Arne Duncan and his team in Washington. There are many parts of ESEA that I do not agree with (merit pay & the turnaround plans' effectiveness, for example), but I see that it sincerely comes from a desire to graduate all students from high school with a full array of skills necessary to build this country.

I mean, we simply cannot have undeserved youth in the USA, whose voices are not heard by the status quo. Everything that happens everywhere in the USA affects the nature of our lives here.

We cannot have bad schools "across the river" and bridges that are not part of us. We cannot have disenfranchised youth who do not belong to us. We cannot allow schools that do not provide up-to-the-minute tools, much less basic literacy, to continue to flounder, anywhere in our nation. We cannot have our last ditch "alternative education" be a massive system of incarceration that confines our failures so that we don't have to see them any more. Our educational system needs to include all children to help them become the intellectual leaders and social contributors they are capable of being.

New Jersey is proud of its education today, but we and the nation have far to go. We cannot take one baby step backwards because each loss in our forward movement represents an untold number of lost youth, lost hope, lost dreams.

As New Jersey residents, we need to look at our public schools and celebrate what works and then we need to fix what doesn't in an atmosphere of absolute transparency and respect, give and take and energy.

We know some things that matter to provide the best experience for our children:

1. Class size
2. Teacher quality
3. Involved parents
4. Supportive communities
5. Positive social & emotional climate
6. 21st Century tools, language, culture, diversity
7. Responsive programs

In the middle of all of these pressing needs to reinvent ourselves, continually, we have the worst budget crisis we can remember. That's the other part of the disconnect. We have mandates for improvement, but the lowest funding ever to make this happen.

We need to pull together and recognize that though we may be on many teams, we are all in the same league - the New Jersey League!

Right now, Governor Christie is saying that he believes in education, yet I am hurt by the hostile comments and measures he is endorsing. The incredible cuts to education have increased class size, cut programs and laid off teachers.

What's more, the negative tone and comments directed at teachers are horrifying to us and disheartening. We're baffled.

My fellow educators say: "When did we become the enemy?" "How did this happen?"

Young teachers in education programs wonder aloud to me if they have made the right choice to study to be teachers.

Veteran teachers, who have spent a lifetime working for the young, for the future, wonder if they should retire right now.

Programs have been cut mercilessly, jobs slashed, classrooms stuffed to the brim.

In a time of economic crisis, we need to support education more than ever. What we do now, will affect the future.

Did you know that jails are built based on the reported third grade reading scores?

We know too much about how much educational failure costs to allow it to happen. The current cuts to education will threaten to put us on a downward spiral. We will lose programs that matter, teachers who care. The price we will pay is literally in human lives.

I'm happy that my New Jersey Education Association has represented teachers all across the state in a tireless and informed way, protecting the rights of teachers and the appropriate flow of funding to our classrooms.

You've seen the talk about "the bosses in Trenton," haven't you?

These so called "bosses" are teacher leaders, all of them. The NJEA folks are educators who have the ability to do advocacy and they have stepped up to the plate to do it. They believe in the children, their colleagues and our shared future. You can take my word for it because I have met them and I can read hearts.

The NJEA leaders are also fighters who will not stop when the going gets rough. They represent us. They are us. We are the NJEA.

We are teachers who want to work with all stakeholders to create a more perfect future for the children of our great state. We are learners who are excited and energized by the new tools and resources we want to learn about and share. We love our job because we get to see the magic of learning happen in our student's faces.

We are a strong, dedicated team.

The people in the Department of Education are also a strong and devoted group.

Our School Boards are composed of tireless volunteers donating hours of professional time to help run schools.

Our school's administrative teams have stepped up to organize and lead efforts to keep our schools great and the best administrators share power well with teachers, parents and students.

Our students - the point of our efforts - are on the front lines, making new knowledge, teaching us, growing into vibrant and important leaders in their own right. Their real world is now - in the classroom - today!

Government officials are the servants of the will of the people. They are in power because this power is bestowed upon them by the voice of the people.

The government is not any individual or group - it is all of us and we have an infinite right and obligation to voice our concerns, expand its possibilities and participate in this great and hard won democracy.

I'll close my entry to you by remembering "The Wizard of Oz."

You'll remember that Dorothy and her friends were going along the yellow brick road to get to the Emerald City.

Oz was a great place, but the best thing about Oz was the Wizard. Great and powerful, was he, and possessed of the unbelievable skill that would help Dorothy go home to Kansas.

Well, we all know how this story ends. Dorothy gets to Oz and pulls aside the curtain and finds a small, elderly man managing the magnificent light show that she sees. It's all a charade and Dorothy finds out that she has had the power, with a click of her red slippers, to go home to Kansas on her own.

Lately, I've been rethinking Oz.

Now, I think that we go along our yellow brick road and we get to Oz, but when we pull aside the curtain, there is a gigantic mirror and we see ourselves. The Wizard is us and has been all along.

During this time of crisis, our individual voices have never been more important. Do not ever believe that teachers are the enemy or that the designated voice of the teachers are bad guys.

Stand up and be counted. Create the future of education, voice by voice. Do not be intimidated by the forces which seek to mute you. Call your representatives. Add your voice. Be the one to make things happen.

You are Oz.

World Language Supervisor's Round Table

Today I gave a presentation on "Technology as 21st Century Culture" to the recipients of model program status for World Language and Bilingual/ESL in the State of New Jersey.

Folks are well trained in tech at this level so I took a more personal approach. I took us on the journey of technology, what it was like for my parents, for me in my life, for our students today. We are all hearing about 21st Century learning and so many buzz words, but frequently have little time to explore.

I also wanted to focus hard on the notion of student engagement and also on our own engagement. There is so much talk about "digital natives" - our students, that we don't think about our own learning curve as teaching learners. I think it's so important to get in touch with that. My presentations are always stories - I don't know another way to be - so there was time for people to connect to our experience of moving into a flat world and their own relationship to technology.

We shared stories about futuristic childhood dreams such as those we imagined from watching the Jetsen's, 2001 a Space Odyssey and we tried to put our heads together to imagine what the new adventure was that we are in right now. Then, we explored some great web 2.0 tools individually on our lap tops.

We reached out by Skype to my resident tech expert, Tom Welch, who pulled over on his way to a friend's party in Michigan. Tom chatted with us about interconnected learning and how it differentiates like an Aspen Grove- each part somehow sensing the needs of the other. Later, I Skyped my husband's class at Dwight Englewood school so that Joe could explain how he Skyped with his classes and how he recovered from surgery at home, while keeping his classes on track, virtually!

I closed by including the words of Dan Brown, a popular internet spokesperson for the digital generation. Dan sends us out a provocative message which I believe we must heed. I wonder what you think?

NJTOY on the radio! - May 4, 2010

Here I am at the console - first time ever!



I go to Philadelphia today to do a Spanish language "Pride in Public Education" public service announcement for the NJEA. I arrive at WDAS-FM in Bala Cynwyd, PA, where I meet George Liles, an Account Executive for Clear Channel, Radio. George brings me to a studio where I meet Doug. Doug is working on sound for a radio program, doing several things at once - or at least, it seems like that to me! Here - once again - I have stepped into yet another world, so familiar to the people who work in it, but new to me.

Doug hard at work in the studio



George Liles



We do two takes, both fine, but the second a bit better. Doug says to watch the explosivity of the letter "p" which is like a little burst of air into the mike. I step back a bit and press my lips together every time a "p" comes out. In Spanish, the letter "p" is supposed to be like that anyway so it is a good awareness check.


I finish up the piece, share some stories about an attendance project that George is working on with area schools and a musical life-learning program that Doug has created. Good people doing good things for the world.

I leave Clear Channel and realize that I am hungry. I never notice this before I have another big thing to do.

There is a Starbucks around the corner. I know that besides coffee, they have great little cheese and fruit plates.

On the way over, I had listened to a radio program that encouraged people to eat about ten fruits and vegetable servings a day to live longer. Plants, the program said, stay in one place so they need to develop defenses against bad things. When we eat the plants, we eat the defense. I think of this as I eat my quarter apple, five grapes, a triangle of Brie.

Alex Tittle receives "Teaching it Forward Scholarship!"

I'm thrilled to report that Alex Tittle, my nominee for the Teaching it Forward Scholarship is approved to receive it!!! Here's the letter I received from the University of Phoenix!

Maryann,

Thank you again for your dedication to teaching and finding the perfect "Teaching It Forward" recipient.

We are pleased to award Alexander Deane Tittle a full-tuition University of Phoenix scholarship. Thank you for nominating Alexander. We look forward to assisting him as he achieves his goals. We would love to know if Alexander will be awarded during an award event at his school. Also, we would enjoy having copies of any photos of the award ceremony.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Sincerely,


Tammie Yong, Director of Scholarships