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Schools, Bureaucracy, and Politics: Parent Power and Teacher Professionalism
Summary: Restiveness by parents in Los Angeles and teachers in Seattle reflects the tendency of educational bureaucracies to ignore voices from the grass roots level. Crenshaw High School in Los Angeles is poster child to the desperate academic struggle in … Continue reading
Posted in School Bureaucracy, School Reform, Schools and Politics
Tagged administrative style, at risk students, communication in schools, Crenshaw High School, empowering teachers, Garfield High School teacher boycott, low-income students, MAP testing, parent power, school reform, teacher morale, teacher professionalism
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School Reform: “Finnish Lessons”
Summary: Some characteristics of Finnish school reform give perspective to similar American efforts to change, particularly in the autonomy granted to teachers, the trust of whom is grounded in rigorous preparation and a successful lure of top students into the … Continue reading
Schools: A Changed Perspective
Summary: On the cusp of the end of a career in schools and the onset of a blog infested retirement, some meditations on the changed perspective the shift in life imposes. And a plea for stories, please. This summer I … Continue reading
Schools and Politics: Charters Schools and Teachers’ Unions
Summary: Last week, as part of a discussion of charter schools, I cited the Harlem’s Children Zone as an umbrella project that has changed the “context” of associated schools, and thereby the expectations of students and the realities from which … Continue reading
Schools and Culture: The Wearing Down of Teacher, Part B
Summary: Last post I reacted to news that 46% of teachers leave the profession in their first five years, and suggested some of the reason has to do with ills in the culture, ills that create students too little connected … Continue reading
Schools and Culture: The Wearing Down of Teacher
Summary: 46% of American teachers quit the profession within their first five years; what role does contemporary culture and the characteristics of the kids it turns out play in this appalling statistic? Recently I read with astonishment a reference in … Continue reading
Schools and Bureaucracy: Reflections on Survival and Other Personal Idiosyncrasies: Part C
Summary: Being the last installment of a series of reflections on long term survival in the belly of the educational beast.….. Despite the relentless bureaucratic monolith, pockets of encouragement and support for individual vision occur, which have helped my longevity. … Continue reading
Schools and Bureaucracy: Reflections on Survival and Other Personal Indiosyncrasies — Part B
Summary: Continuing reflections on survival during a career in schools. Another benefit of working in schools snuck up on me, and was particularly accentuated by a growing love of mountaineering and the birth of my children. School vacations are rather … Continue reading
Schools and Bureaucracy: Reflections on Survival and Other Personal Idiosyncrasies (Part A)
To summarize, the topic of the moment, derived from my just previous post, is a reflection on my survival over years of career in high school without escape, first as an English teacher, then as a counselor. How have I … Continue reading
Schools and Bureaucracy: Notes on Staying “Alive”
A younger colleague, in the midst of a discussion about some relatively minor indignity we counselors have suffered or observed, turned to me recently and asked as though to a veteran of many wars, “how do you do it?” She … Continue reading
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