David A. Hancock
Chester
Teachers Can’t Educate Kids Who Refuse to Learn
To the editor:
Let me save the central office administration some time dreaming up a teacher evaluation form that links teacher instruction to student performance/achievement.
As a public school teacher for the past thirty years, I can say without a doubt that teaching is a hard job (and rewarding) when students make an effort to learn. When they make no effort, it is an impossible one. Despite our hard work, we are confronted daily with increasing numbers of students who are difficult to manage, and even with our best intentions, we are able to do little more than serve as custodians.
However, there is still employment in the United States for the 60 percent who do not learn in school. In fact, low-paying service jobs are proliferating at a much higher rate than high-paying jobs that require an education. Therefore, we are not “a nation at risk” as predicted in 1984.
Let us do the same for doctors that the central office administration of the Cleveland Public Schools wants to do with the teachers and link doctors’ pay (evaluation) with the health of the patient (even though the patient has or continues to practice unhealthy behaviors).
Past Superintendent James Penning of the Cleveland Public Schools was right when he said that teachers should not be penalized for factors they cannot control, such as student attendance. What about student motivation and attitudes?
Oh well, I hope that all my students have high intrinsic motivation and good attitudes. If they don’t, I can have a sanguine feeling that I am not to blame.
David A. Hancock
Hancock is a nature studies / science teacher at Heights High School.
Improving Instruction Isn’t Enough
In the Plain Dealer editorial, “The Quest for the Test” (in reference to Ohio’s high school proficiency tests), the following statement was made: “But the testing, and the public humiliation and attention it brings, should be powerful incentives for improving instruction.”
It has been my experience during the past twenty-four years that improving instruction does not improve academic achievement just like improving medical school instruction does not improve a person’s own health.
Educational reform in terms of outcome-based education works. Many educators have been teaching problem-solving, critical thinking, and cooperative learning for years. We are getting away from memorization (the lowest level of learning) and stressing comprehension, application, analysis, and evaluation.
Learning boils down to what William Glasser, MD, author of The Quality School, once said, “We learn 10% of what we read [for the first time], 50% of what we both see and hear, 70% of what is discussed with others, 80% of what we experience personally, and 95% of what we teach to someone else.”*
David A. Hancock
Chesterland
Students Need More Than Miracles
Superintendent Richard Boyd, with a halo of “ivory tower” philosophy, challenged 115 new teachers to educate students without always having the supplies, equipment, and technology. Boyd is sounding like a great majority of superintendents who have not taught living students in a classroom for decades or maybe have never been classroom teachers.
I would love to hear a corporate CEO, hospital administrator, etc., say to his or her staff, “Just do your work, provide quality service and care, etc., without adequate supplies.”
Here we go again. When all is said and done, more is said than done, adding excess carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. (Global warming!)
Patricia Smith (the Dick Feagler of the Boston Globe) said, “It really does not matter who the superintendent is—it could be Barney the Dinosaur.”
What does matter are the attitudes of the human beings inside the school building, support services, and the physical environment.
Boyd also said that kids will give you what you expect. “If you expect little, they are going to give you a little; if you expect a lot, they will give you a lot.”
This is somewhat true for the majority. However, in my twenty-seven years of public classroom teaching experience, it has been my observation that there is no teacher, no matter how skilled, who can teach a student who is apathetic, shows indifference, or simply refuses to learn. And we are getting more and more of these students in public school. Then society blames the system for not producing intellectual scholars. We need to remember that we are not dealing with assembly-line, factory-model products. We are dealing with living human beings (even though it may seem like the living dead for some) to develop their minds for the benefit of society. It has been said that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.
All humans need to remember the famous ten two-letter words: “If it is to be, it is up to me.”
David A. Hancock
Chesterland
Opposite of Progress
Let’s keep it laconic! Or should we say pithy? In reference to our immigration imbroglio, debacle, or quagmire that seems to be insidious, harrowing, and discombobulating with prevaricating and obfuscating canards, the statement below simply reflects the following:
“What is the opposite of progress? Congress! Welcome to the United States of Mexico.” And—“mission accomplished!” As Gary Larson, artist of The Far Side cartoon, said, “Adios Amebas.” (Amigos) handwritten note
David A. Hancock
Chester
Conflicting Priorities
As is true throughout much of the United States, military recruiters lie to and mislead high school students.
They show up uninvited. They call students at home. They ask personal questions about students’ future plans and then assure them that the best way these can be realized is by first joining the military. Want to go to college? Join the military. Want to be whatever? Join the military.
Not surprisingly, recruiters frequent schools serving working-class and low-income communities, usually not wealthy districts.
Anne C. Lewis, national education policy writer, wrote in Phi Delta Kappan (March 2006), “The Orwellian Pentagon has a database that contains the names and personal details of 30 million young people—ages 16–23. Parents can write the Pentagon to request that their children’s name be removed, but if they do so, the information is moved to a ‘suppression’ file in the Pentagon’s Joint Advertising Market Research and Studies
