Teachers Protest Passing Of Education Reform Bills - Local News Story - KIFI Idaho Falls

Teachers Protest Passing Of Education Reform Bills - Local News Story - KIFI Idaho Falls

Schools are not factories, teachers are not machines, and children are not products.

When non-experts (general public serving on decision-making school boards) (government lobbyists, committees, legislators) (media misrepresentations) exert more influence on the content, structure, and direction of social science systems, the system will become more and more incapacitated...this is what has happened since Reagan's interference in 1983 through his committee of non-experts assembled to "study" America's schools. Competition with other nation's performance (a direct legacy of the Sputnik Era) fueled Reagan's assembly which included only one professional classroom teacher. Inflammatory name of their final report? A Nation At Risk...

Like the "Reformation" and the "Inquisition" defamation and bullying and punishment are the tactics used by big guys coming down hard and fast on the "little guys." The little guys in this case by the way are mostly little women...80% of secondary teachers are female; 90% of elementary teachers are women. Women have generally not been looking out for their backs; instead they have been dedicating before time, during time, and after school time to our kids.

After forty-five years of serving teachers and kids and parents and administrators (Preschool through Graduate School) in my various roles, I know without a shadow of doubt that the very great majority of classroom teachers are good professionals with good intentions doing extraordinary work with the greatest range of children worldwide. In no other nation do we find EVERY child arriving at the school door from the truly widest range of backgrounds: severely under prepared to anxiously over-prepared homes.

Let educators once again use the science they spend four to six years studying at the onset of their career choice. That is before recent efforts to fill overly difficult classrooms with teachers who will work under grueling conditions because no one wants to fund these properly! That is before city, state and federal government began recruiting non-educators with ANY undergraduate degree and placing these unfortunate recruits day one in the most challenging classrooms -under supported, under "enculturated," under prepared, under financed, and finally undereducated.

We now have problems in education because as a nation we do not value the development of children, nor do we value the majority of those who daily engage and advocate for children (mothers, teachers, social workers, day care providers, preschool teachers and service providers...the list can go on). This practice is testimony to systematic under-valuing and demeaning of the true experts by those who regulate "the big bucks."

When will America graduate from the industrial era of thinking...and put it's logic, appreciation, authentic support, and money where our future's resources truly are? Children, Families, Schools are our future...handle them with CARE and INSIGHT.

A Teacher's Value=A Mother's Value

Those who "demean" the nature of, intensity of, and dedication required throughout each day, every day by Classroom Teachers are using their childhood-perspective brain.  Take your adult self to school now and shadow one regular teacher for one full day...your brain will update!

Children have no idea what goes into good and dedicated parenting until they grow up and have reason to "review" revisit and revise the nature and calling of Parenthood (...usually when they have a child of their own, or become a teacher, social worker, family counselor).

The same "oversight" occurs with the general public with regard to Classroom Teaching...and those who engage this calling.   We tritely call these altruistic and conscientious adults "teachers." We easily demean their dedication to learning and young human beings by using a little "t" "teachers."

And we infantilize them by talking down to them and about them because the great majority of them are women who are expert in adapting to children's needs... in multiple ways (vocabulary and tone and pitch).  As informed and naturally-adaptive parents use their child-tuned voice to speak with and encourage learning at home, teachers do the same in the classroom.  And as we stereotype seniors by talking down to them...or very loudly because we think they are as a class hard of hearing, we do the same to teachers ... we demean the nature of their work (without even knowing the nature of their work-not from an adult perspective that is, or an informed perspective to be sure!)

Yes, teachers are bewildered right now in Wisconsin and Indiana...as we should all be all over the planet...because the amount of scorn leveled at "teachers" comes from a few not very honorable sources:

1. unupdated childhood (an adolescent) perspectives on the actual nature of teachers' work 
2. personal projections from other "workers" who mechanically go each day to do a "job" in which they are not personally and professionally engaged
3. unfulfilled wannabees who detect a mismatch between the person they are becoming and the value of the career they've invested in already in so many ways (not to mention the house and the car payment and all the gadgets and loans and credit card debt ...just going through what seems to be the motions in order to get paid and then pay out of all the stuff they've acquired).

As professionals (Masters are earned in five years of entry), Classroom Teachers have a NAME/LABEL problem we need to address:
... brains are funny things. Brains categorize and then the human behavioral system is tempted to think of all entries in the category as if they are all alike.  Hmmmmm.  "teacher":  my mommy, my daddy, granny, swimming instructor, piano tutor, day care assistant, lady at the gym nursery where daddy drops me off while he works out?

Each of these role exemplars are readily thought of as "teachers" regardless of dramatic and organic differences among them in the nature of their work and relationship with a learner, not to mention that professional classroom teachers engage a large group of very individual learners who are learning to learn.

As professionals, Classroom Teachers have a Public Acknowledgement problem we need to address:
... As we stereotype seniors by discounting the background, inculturation, training, and experience that got them where they are now (and all the mastery and wisdom acquired along the way which we could now benefit from if we purposefully pursued inquiry/learning outside the formal workplace to systematically learn from the experts who have earned their retirement from 'on demand performance")  we do the same to teachers.  Our hierarchical government, and the underinformed media, and the general public demean the nature of Classroom Teachers' work from insufficient inquiry, minimal interviewing, non-existent dialogue and shadowing.

Classroom Teachers have relied on professional unions to do the speaking, representing, bargaining, and marketing about the nature of our work...perhaps we each need to speak up for ourselves and the nature of our preparation, commitment, and career paths more purposefully, publicly, intentionally, systematically and collaboratively.