Permit me to praise some teachers who deserve it
I just want to say one thing.
Michigan teachers do not play.
What I mean by that is, listen, we’re hearing horror stories about education in our state. The legislature in Lansing is slashing funding mid-year, and the only question is how bloody the hurt to inflict. The millage in Washtenaw County went down in resounding fashion. All kinds of innovative programs are trembling, waiting with their necks beneath the blade, expecting to be cut any second. Teachers all over the state fear for their jobs, and for the jobs of their colleagues.
Yeah, so…
Michigan teachers are battlers. Michigan teachers will not cave in to despair. They will do the best with what they have and they won’t stop there.
They will try to make that best better.
I say this because I just spent three days at the National Council of Teachers of English annual convention in Philadelphia, and I attended about 15 presentations. Most of these were mediocre - teachers rehashing ideas that have already been around for a quarter century, or presenting newish ones in a manner so flat you could balance the 12 cups of coffee on them that you need to drink just to stay awake while you’re listening.
Not so with Michigan teachers.
Every thing I saw a Michigan teacher do, every word I heard a Michigan teacher say, made me proud to teach in this state. It’s no secret Michigan’s struggling right now. The industries that built us are wrestling with how to survive, how to reinvent themselves so they can remain sustainable and relevant. But one thing you can say about Michigan - a thing you always can have said about Michigan - is people here know how to work. An honest day’s labor is our cultural heritage. We wake up and we pull our shifts and we don’t shirk our responsibilities because we understand if we do, our colleagues will suffer. Our communities will suffer.
Michigan teachers are no different. We live by that same code. We come to work to be good at what we do, to be damn good at what we do, regardless whether our working environment feels happy or hopeful. We put our collective shoulder to the wheel and we make that mother roll.
Here are some highlights of what I saw:
Sarah Andrew-Vaughan’s hands. Sarah is a teacher at Huron High School and whether she’s breaking down step-by-step her spectacular unfamiliar genre project, an endeavor which asks students to spelunk through alien literary neighborhoods in order to broaden their understanding of how to read and write; or whether she’s arguing we should have after-school workshops where math teachers demonstrate to their colleagues the best ways to understand calculus - problem-solving across the curriculum is just as important as writing across the curriculum - her dreams are so vital she can barely contain them. They shake her shoulders and elbows and her hands flit like birds, flying into and through the hearts and brains of one imagined future student to another as she envisions her next great idea, her next new way to make her classroom magic.
Cathy Fleischer’s huge wide-open eyes. Cathy’s a professor at Eastern Michigan and a mentor to countless area teachers. When you propose an idea to her, she listens with her whole face, especially those eyes that seem to see and know everything with the kind of expertise one would attribute to a field general surveying a vast plain and conceiving the shape of battles ahead. Whether she’s teaming with Sarah to present the book they co-wrote, or introducing a panel of teachers she demands everybody pay rapt attention to, or standing in the dead middle of the convention center waiting to meet with yet another teacher she’ll offer advice to, her switch is flipped on. She is alert. She’s focused. She’s not about to waste anybody’s time. Not for a minute.
Chuck Hatt’s smile. Chuck’s the coordinator of Social Studies and Literacy Instruction for Ann Arbor Public Schools, and you’ve never seen a face more lit with passion than when he mentions some author or book you’ve never heard of and he tells you, you absolutely need to read this!
The back of Jennifer Walsh’s shoulders. Jennifer is the Language Arts Department Chair at Forsythe Middle School, and I say the back of her shoulders because all you can do is follow her as she zooms through the exhibition hall seeking out as many materials as she can find to purchase (with her own money) to stock her classroom. A discount that allows her to buy an audio-book for $10 (three for $30) is an answered prayer.
Anne Gere’s stately elegance. Anne Gere is the director of the ground-breaking Joint English and Education PhD. Program at the University of Michigan, and if she wanted to be, she could be a Senator. Probably a Majority Leader. When she stands in front of a group of teachers detailing the research she and her colleagues Victoria Haviland and Jennifer Buehler have conducted, and the strategies they’ve uncovered to demonstrate how multi-cultural perspectives can help decrease the achievement gap, she owns the room. She makes the material she’s presenting feel as important as health care reform or climate change legislation. And it is that important. We can’t fully address any of our problems without a dynamically educated populace. Anne Gere insists every teacher understands why this means we can’t allow ourselves to give in to despair, and she’ll keep owning rooms until we all learn how to own them ourselves.
And then there’s the whole package - the hands, the eyes, the smile, the shoulders, the unyielding and dignified determination. That’s what you will find at Pioneer Middle School in Plymouth where educators Carmen Johnson, Jason Kaye, Ben McMurray and Claire Walton-Swisher last year created the Pioneer Peace Project.
Listen, forget about test scores. You don’t know what teachers are capable of until you’ve seen this crew show you what they did when they brought their eighth grade students to New York City along with the children’s author Todd Parr, and, equipped with 500 autographed copies of his book; Peace Bags donated by California Pizza Kitchen; and buttons that say Imagine Peace in different languages donated by Yoko Ono (!!!); they had the kids interview New Yorkers on the streets, read them Parr’s book, give them the Peace Bags and buttons, and then come back to Plymouth and create a spectacular museum-quality display of photographs, poems and essays detailing their experiences in the city and their reflections on the concept of peace.
You don’t know what teaching is until you hear the story about how some of these kids met a solider on the Staten Island Ferry who’d just returned from a tour in Iraq and was preparing for another in Afghanistan. When the students explained their project to him, he asked them where they were headed after they got off the ferry. When they told him Ground Zero, he said he’d been there when the terrorist attacks happened and asked if he could accompany them to the site and show them what he saw. The photograph one of the students took of this soldier standing in the rain, students huddled around him, as he points upward - presumably to where the Twin Towers used to be - his face an archive of emotion, is a picture of the very best teaching there is, the kind of teaching that’s unforgettable.
So props to Michigan teachers. Mad props. Our state’s economy ain’t pretty right now. No doubt. But these teachers, man, they’re miracles. They work hard. There’s hope.
** NOTE ** Speaking of miracles and hope … our biggest Poetry event of the year is coming up - Poetry Night in Ann Arbor - on Friday night, Dec. 11 @ Rackham Auditorium. This year’s show (our 10th annual) will feature the return of some of Ann Arbor’s favorite performance poets: Roger Bonair-Agard from New York, Kevin Coval from Chicago and Lauren Whitehead, a U-M alum currently residing in San Francisco. Joining these mic-rockers on stage will be terrific high school poets from the nationally acclaimed VOLUME Youth Poetry Project and the spectacular collegiate spoken word troupe Ann Arbor Wordworks. The show starts @ 7pm. Doors open @ 6:30. Advance tickets are $5 for students and $10 for general public and $7 and $12 respectively at the door. For more info or to reserve tickets at the advanced price, contact me @ 734-223-7443 or via email @ eyelev21@aol.com.
Jeff Kass teaches Creative Writing at Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor and at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, and directs the Literary Arts Programs at the Neutral Zone, including the VOLUME Youth Poetry Project, which meets every Thursday night at 7pm. He will post new blog entries every Tuesday and Thursday morning throughout the school year, but he won’t write one on Thanksgiving. See you next Tuesday. Give thanks.
Comments
A Voice of Reason
Fri, Apr 2, 2010 : 2:02 p.m.
These teachers and administrators need to be praised, rewarded and compensated for their outstanding effortsm, in fact, we cannot thank them enough. Unfortunately, we have have a teacher's union that protects the status quo and teacher who do not even have a lesson plan for the next day and do little to differentiate instruction in the classroom to accommodate different learning styles. Instead, these children are placed in Special Education which are expensive.
A Voice of Reason
Fri, Apr 2, 2010 : 1:56 p.m.
#4th in the nation in teacher's salaries, #49 in the nation for ACT Scores. We cannot afford to be #4 in the nation any more.
toomuchtodo
Mon, Nov 30, 2009 : 10:26 a.m.
@David Fitzpatrick- Wow. I'm not seeing the "anger" that you are. I'm seeing concern. Is it wrong to have concern about how to best use dwindling funds to provide the best education for our kids? Is it morally outrageous to even "question" whether, perhaps, salaries or professional development costs may be out of line with what our funding might currently allow? Are teachers so sensitive that these questions might not even be "spoken out loud" without loud proclamation from the rooftops of their aggrieved status?
The Grinch
Thu, Nov 26, 2009 : 10:57 a.m.
The incredible anger at teachers expressed by so many of the remarks on this essay and in other comments on other articles at AnnArbor.com is quite remarkable and very disturbing. No wonder 1/3 of new teachers leave the profesion after three years and 1/2 of new teachers leave after five years. Who in their right mind, if they were capable of doing something else, would want to put up with such anger, ridicule, and disrespect? Wall Street bankers don't get this much grief.
toomuchtodo
Tue, Nov 24, 2009 : 11:30 p.m.
@tchrmom, The article did not mention (at least that I could find) the funding source for the Michigan attendees, so I don't think a reminder is in order. However, I appreciate that travel expenses were funded by attendees and won't be diluting the sparse funds remaining for the direct and daily education for kids.
Theresa Bassett
Tue, Nov 24, 2009 : 11:20 p.m.
Just curious....what is a teacher's actual worth?
tchrmom
Tue, Nov 24, 2009 : 10:57 p.m.
As one of the teachers mentioned in the above blog, I have to remind people that NO ONE was funded by the school district to attend this event. Everyone paid with their own money and used their own days in order to further his/her pedagogy. I find it so interesting that teachers are the ones who get bashed time in and out. Who else is more important in a child's life besides his/her parents? Don't you want your children to have teachers who are up to date on the latest research in teaching? You would expect the same from your surgeon/doctor. Why is it that just because everyone went to school, he/she thinks they are able to make judgments on whether or not teachers are teaching "correctly?"
Rosie
Tue, Nov 24, 2009 : 10:47 p.m.
DagnyJ, you must have missed the great paragraphs about what the kids did in New York City. You make it sound as if the article is simply about teachers and has nothing to do with students. The information about each of the teachers affects the students that they work with. Reading the paragraphs about each teacher tells us what is happening with the students in their classrooms based upon what the teachers are doing or what kind of people they are. Jeff happens to be a teacher who has volunteered to write for annarbor.com. If you read Jeff's columns you will see that the stories are typically about students and if not about specific students, about things that affect them. You almost cannot be a teacher and tell a story without it having something to do with students. If you would like more stories about students or from students' points of view then you ought to direct your comment to the annarbor.com staff and have them work on it.
bruno_uno
Tue, Nov 24, 2009 : 9:05 p.m.
alan- maybe because while you enjoy the next 5 days off, countless people who never get any praise for the jobs they do will be working their tails off to get food on the table...and we all get sick of hearing about teachers as the only profession that gets never ending praise which I think is tied to propaganda in making sure we continue to fund them at a dollar amount well beyond their actual worth.
Alan Benard
Tue, Nov 24, 2009 : 8:59 p.m.
My last comment being to succinct and to the point and truthful, I will attempt to generalize and obfuscate sufficiently to meet this site's alleged standards. It is great that someone took the time to write about what's good in our schools. Pity it will be sullied by the ceaseless complaining of union-bashing ideologues.
bruno_uno
Tue, Nov 24, 2009 : 8:17 p.m.
Same old, same old, the only profession that we need to hear how amazing they are at the job they do, day in, day out, just a never ending propaganda machine to grease the wheels of the strongest most powerful union in Michigan.
Theresa Bassett
Tue, Nov 24, 2009 : 2:58 p.m.
I just can't believe that people are so critical. Jeff wrote a great post. Why is it that people are so bitter and mean spirited? Good gracious. Kudos to those teachers. They get more negative feedback and criticism than anyone should so when a little nugget of positive comes their way, let it be. I suggest for everyone who complains about teachers, go do what they do for a day! Good luck!
toomuchtodo
Tue, Nov 24, 2009 : 12:36 p.m.
In this time of crisis for our kids, I question whether out-of-state trips for so many Michigan educators is the best use of dwindling public funds. Was alternative funding was used to pay for travel expenses and substitute teachers, or are taxpayers picking up the tab? Also, while I appreciate the passion and inspiration felt by the author towards fellow educators, a healthy dose of humility would make this infinitely more palatable.
Stub
Tue, Nov 24, 2009 : 11:38 a.m.
Using standardized tests to measure student achievement makes the same sense as weighing cows to determine quality meat.
mpeterse
Tue, Nov 24, 2009 : 11:02 a.m.
A terrific piece, and I can personally attest to Chuck Hatt's wonderful smile and enthusiasm for teaching literacy. Given the positive nature of this report - yay! - here's a further "shout out" to several wonderful AAPS teachers who have had a huge positive influence in our son's life (he is currently a successful 7th grader at Tappan): Robin Jackson, former Angell principal and s/o who was not quick to label as a "bad kid" an overly rambunctious student; Sally Freeman, Bob Yaeger, Betsy Richardson - all Angell teachers extraordinaire who persisted with same overly rambunctious student to help us diagnose a controllable learning issue - they did not give up on him!; Melissa Peters, who provides awesome support and understanding at Tappan; and all Red (6th grade) and Gold (7th grade) team teachers plus band teachers Ms. Maconochie and Mr. Smith who hold my kid accountable and engage and teach him to the best of their abilities. You are all priceless.
DagnyJ
Tue, Nov 24, 2009 : 10:57 a.m.
It's interesting to me that this column and many comments are all about the adults in school, rather than the kids. How do we know that kids are benefiting from all these great teachers? What evidence do I have that most kids are achieving and improving learning, capacity to learn, and knowledge? This isn't about union bashing. This is about turning the focus away from the adults and their interests/benefits and instead looking closely at students.
baitm
Tue, Nov 24, 2009 : 10:36 a.m.
it's nice to hear something good for a change. the same union bashers will surface from the holes they hide in to snipe at whatever education news they see. if charters are so good why do their teachers keep going into public education? i asked a few and the answer was that charters are not as good as some want us to think. plus they wanted to make a living as a teacher. anti-union people may hold that against them but at least they are working for now! keep up the good work teachers and never give up hope.
Gloriagirl
Tue, Nov 24, 2009 : 10:06 a.m.
We have great doctors, nurses and medical staff at U of M too and one could write warm and fuzzy tales about them, but the reality is if they don't produce, the patient suffers. In the case of our educational system the same result, students suffer long term consequences Public education in Michigan is driven by teacher unions,(the largest lobby, in Michigan. With a 10% absenteeism rates any given school day while test scores and graduation rates for ALL students continue to fall below national standards there needs to be change and the optionof charter schools and a voucher system that lets parents choose where they want to place the future of their children.
stunhsif
Tue, Nov 24, 2009 : 9:04 a.m.
I don't need to "pat" you guys on the shoulder and say "job well done". You all do it very well yourselves! Teachers bloviating about other teachers?
Will
Tue, Nov 24, 2009 : 8:49 a.m.
I have a great amount of appreciation, respect and admiration for Michigan teachers. They have pursued their bachelors, masters, doctorates and continuing education certifications for the purpose of providing a wealth of knowledge, enthusiasm and encouragement every day for our children and their dreams. How many other highly-educated professions are willing to be with, let alone educate, so many children day-in and day-out.
Jon Saalberg
Tue, Nov 24, 2009 : 7:19 a.m.
Listen, forget about test scores.I appreciate the praise lauded on our state's teachers. Bravo. However, this particular sentence made me smile on a Tuesday morning. If there is anything less helpful in evaluating our children, I'd like to know what it is. And particularly standardized tests, which try and fit our children into the same mold. If there is one vestige of the previous presidential administration I hope our country is able to unfetter our society from, it is the reliance and belief that measuring every child the same way does anything other than extinguish the creativity that radiates from every child.