The Adventure of the Never Returning Substitute

Substitute teachers are always a interesting litmus test of a school climate. Subs that want to work regularly try to foster relationships with teachers by following plans and giving detailed accounts of the day's events period by period. These notes are usually followed by a request to be requested again in the future. However, the day can go the other way, as it did last week for a teacher whose sub couldn't control her class. When the teacher returned, it was to a note describing an awful day, of deliberate student misbehavior, insults, and profanity. Plus, it seems that after calling the office for assistance, the sub asked to speak briefly with the principal. The principal told the sub that she was unavailable at the moment, but would get back to her before the end of the day. Naturally, this never occurred and the teacher was left with a bitter note proclaiming that this was the worst school the sub had ever worked in and she would never return. Indeed, she would tell everyone about how awful a school this was. Whatever your take on this, the sub couldn't handle the students, the students were misbehaving, there was little assistance, whatever, the one point that sticks out is that a great degree of damage control could have implemented by the principal hearing out the substitute. The principal might have learned something and the sub could have vented a little. In the restaurant world, a happy patron will tell approximately five people about the experience, whereas the unhappy patron will tell ten. What will this sub say... and to how many?

The Adventure of the Fee Wavier Bullies

Only recently was our attention drawn to a teacher who was called onto the carpet for mentioning the subject of "free and reduced meals" and "fee waivers" in class. She had done so as a result of viewing bullying by fee wavier students of students who actually paid for their own lunches and field trips. The fee wavier students called the paying students "stupid" and "dumb" for paying when they did not have to. Ultimately, after explaining the irony of such teasing and bullying to her students, the teacher was reprimanded by administrators for telling students, "they were poor," a term she did not use. When the teacher tried to explain the context, she was rebuffed, as well as reminded that her students economic status was not of her concern. So now she says, when kids ask her why they have to pay for things that 80% of the kids don't have to pay for, she just tells them to remember they're lucky, no matter what anyone else says. "There's no stigma attached to fee waivers at all. It's like you're ignorant for not taking advantage of it."

Welcome to Fighting The Good Fight: Education in Louisville

Welcome. Whether you're a teacher, administrator, office worker, teaching assistant, custodian, or any of the myriad of employed positions in our school system, you know something that the public doesn't; what's happening in our public schools today. Parents who can afford for their children to opt of the system already have and continue to do so. Many of the remaining parents can hardly afford to "buy-in" into schools that are frequently tens of miles from their own neighborhoods. The media isn't interested in or doesn't want to publicize the day to day operations of our schools, but would rather celebrate some isolated aspect of a school's success, even in our failing schools. Moreover, there seems to be an overwhelming wave of resentment by many in the media towards teachers as if the failing school systems nationwide were simply a result of "bad teacher syndrome."

What is far less known by the public is what the day to day operation of a public school looks like. School today is far different from the educational system of yesteryear. Today's schools are a patchwork of educational and social services, where not only is an education expected, but also a network of entitlements that includes foremost, economic assistance, free and reduced breakfasts and lunches, exemption from fees, etc. As part of the ever changing challenges, teachers today are trained to recognize suicide symptoms in students, as well as other forms of physical and mental abuse, and are required by law to report any suspicion of abuse authorities or face legal penalties. On the behavioral front, student misbehavior has become the number one detriment to student achievement. Behavior that would never have been accepted in the past frequently is seen as cultural expression or excused as the result of an impoverished background. Parents, once allies to the schools, administrators, and faculties, are frequently indifferent at best and hostile at worst towards the very people they leave their children with everyday.

It's difficult to predict in the long run, but until student behavior improves, teachers will be forced to focus on classroom management rather than instructional time. Until parents become vested in their children's educations, fostering the expectation in their children that education really does matter and that they expect their children to be better educated than they themselves were, mediocrity will march on and on. Until teachers and administrators both find common ground that focuses on better instruction by way of better student behavior and until we stop allowing the most disruptive students to repeatedly interrupt instructional time, thereby robbing other students of their educations, nothing will change.

Here, we'll start; one blog post at a time to unveil what's behind the curtain. Take a look and see what you think.