Kozol Final Paper

Ashley Ort
12/14/13
Letters to Young Teacher Letters to a Young Teacher by Jonathan Kozol is one of the most influential, beneficial books I have ever read! As I read Mr. Kozol’s letters to Francesca, a first year teacher, I felt as if he was writing to me. Kozol described a battle raging on between politicians and teachers. Politicians are in charge of setting educational policy that gets implemented in classrooms across America. The problem, Kozol explains, is that these politicians have not spent one day actually teaching a classroom of students. This dynamic has proven to have detrimental effects on the skillful art of teaching. This paper will discuss the struggles that teacher’s today face, my personal observations of these struggles, and how I plan to face these challenges when I become a teacher. No Child Left Behind was an educational policy introduced during the Bush Administration. This policy deployed a series of high stakes testing to measure student and teacher performance. The problem with this policy is the lack of faith in teachers to give students a quality education without incentives and measurements, subsequently deskilling them. A Chicago educator expressed her sentiments about this treatment after being lectured to by an “efficacy man.” She sarcastically responded, “Here I am a simple soul who had thought my purpose all these years had been to strive for mediocrity…” Sadly teachers have little choice but to comply with the mandates from No Child Left Behind to keep doing what they love; teaching children. Every day teachers must struggle between practicing their art, and jumping through state mandated hoops, illustrated in the following paragraphs. Kozol first writes to Francesca, explaining that one of the first things a skilled teachers does when entering the classroom at the beginning of the school year, is to establish chemistry between themselves and their students. Establishing chemistry creates a sense of community in the classroom. Chemistry between a teacher and students sets a foundation from where trust and respect can be built. Sadly however, especially in Urban Schools teachers are opting for establishing obedience over chemistry. In order for teachers to cram all of the information students need to be prepared for the state test; students must learn to sit quietly, and obey all the rules and information given to them without hesitation. The consequence of emphasizing obedience above all else is that students develop respect for their teachers out of fear instead of love. This is not how skillful teachers want to be regarded by their students. I personally observed the effects that an emphasis on establishing obedience over chemistry can have in the classroom at Lindley Elementary School. The teacher proudly told me that the first two weeks she drilled the students in rules and procedures. To her credit she did a very good job with this; students raised their fingers to indicate a need, never spoke without first being recognized, and followed her every instruction to the best of their ability for fear of pulling a card. There was a major element I noticed that was lacking when I observed interaction between her and her students; tenderness. Establishing chemistry creates a family dynamic. Establishing obedience creates a military dynamic. Observing my teacher tirelessly pursuing obedience often gave me the image of a drill sergeant in a famous war movie, shaping the soldiers into a well uniformed machine. The difference was that soldiers are grown men and women, these were five year olds. However an argument could be made that there are more similarities than differences to be had here. In a military situation the drill Sargent stresses obedience out of necessity for the soldiers’ survival. In the classroom the teacher was stressing obedience for the student’s survival on the high stakes test, and her own survival of keeping her job. The fact that high stakes testing has likened the classroom setting to a military setting is very disturbing. In another letter to Francesca, Kozol emphasizes the importance of developing good relationships with students’ parents. This is not always easily done. Kozol explains that especially in inner city situations, parents themselves often do not have fond memories of their own education. These parents may have very negative views of teachers and accordingly may be very reluctant to collaborate with them. Kozol suggest that to remedy this situation the teacher must show parents that behind their title is a real person. He also explains that this process is equally rewarding for the teacher when she; “…is given the reward of loyalty and trust by those whom she has trusted with the knowledge of the human being she really is.” What has made the relationship building process more complicated unfortunately is the pressure that teachers feel to raise student’s test scores. Especially in underachieving schools, teachers feel desperation to raise students’ comprehension rates. In this desperation, teachers often hastily try to elicit parent participation. Hence when teachers do contact parents it is usually to inform them of a student deficit and ask only in their compliance to help remedy the situation. When a teacher seeks only parent compliance they are treating them like students. What the teacher must remember however is unlike the students, parents are not obligated to listen to them. I observed this complex relationship dynamic at Lindley. I would listen to teachers demonize parents of students that were not performing well in school. On a couple of occasions I was in the room when the teacher made contact with the parents. The teacher would always skip the pleasantries and skip right to the problem. It was little surprise to me that when parent teacher conferences rolled around she told me that only a handful of parents showed up. She justified this in her head as further evidence that they had no interest in their children’s education. I remember wondering at the time, if she ever put herself in their shoes. As far as I could tell she never made any attempt to get to know or understand where they were coming from. The only time she made contact with them was to discuss in what ways their children were lacking. Truthfully if I was a parent I would not have been very eager to sign up for parent teacher conferences either! Chapter five, titled Wild Flowers was beautiful. In this letter, Kozol reflects on words that Fransesca once told him; “young children give us glimpses of some things that are eternal.” This phrase is a reflection on children’s innate knowledge base. This idea recognizes that children come into the classroom with pre-existing worth. This rejects the notion many politicians have today that students are little investments, their worth depending on what they accomplish academically. Students are not valued for what they are but what they can be, and what they can mean to the future of the global market someday. To help ensure a return on this investment state standards are established. These standards are often so rigorous and encompassing that it leaves teachers no time to pursue children’s individual curiosity. Students that ask questions off topic, even if they have good questions, are directed back to the required content. I also observed this many times at Lindley. The teacher would go through a scripted reading lesson, and ask one or at most two questions about the reading. It would break my heart to witness students just beginning to get enthusiasm for a reading or writing lesson just to be shuffled on to the next activity. All the blame could not be placed on the teachers because she answered to a curriculum team that expected her to keep the same pace as every other first grade classroom. With the pressure put on administration to plow through the content to meet course objectives the teacher I observed could not stop and engage students in off topic learning even if she wanted too. Unfortunately this resulted in many disengaged, uninterested students that were developing feelings of contempt for learning instead of a love for learning. If well behaved students struggle under these methodical forms of instruction, than what about the “Little Piper” student? Kozol describes this student as an individual that refuses to open up to his teacher despite all attempts made to reach out to him. Students that are distrusting toward their teachers usually have been disappointed by adults at some point in their lives. A skilled teacher will patiently work with these students, coaxing them out of their shells until they learn to trust again. A deskilled teacher however does not have time to coax these little ones, when they must follow a rigorous teaching schedule. These students are left to fend for themselves in a place that they feel no one cares for them. Being the extra eyes in the classroom, I certainly observed these “little pipers” at Lindley. These little ones were the misbehaviors. These students would have benefitted so much from a little bit of individual attention. The teacher may have given these students the attention they so badly needed if she had any time in her day to do so. From the moment the students entered the room until the moment they left it, their entire day was structured. Stringent schedules allowed the teacher no time to get to know her students on any personal level. This leaves students that already feel disconnected to adults feeling even more withdrawn. In confronting these classroom struggles it would be nice to draw on the wisdom of veteran teachers who has lived through many policy shifts in education during their time. What happens though if there are no veteran teachers in the building? Where did they go? A very bad result of ever tightening school budgets is the removal of veteran teachers. Kozol explains that Veteran teachers are paid more contractually. When their pay is too much for the administration to allot, these teachers are offered incentives to retire. While some older teachers should retire, there is a wealth of information to be gleaned from a teacher that has dedicated a large portion of their life to teaching students. What this does to young teachers is leaving them without a mentor. The beauty of education is that teachers share their ideas for making students more successful. With some of a schools most valuable resources being shoved out the door, a new generation of teachers are brought in without any guidance. The results of absent veteran teachers can be observed at Lindley. The vast majority of teachers there are comprised of first and second year teachers. While these teachers collaborate with each other, bouncing ideas off, they lack a point of reference. They have no older teacher to share personal their personal success and failures with them. It would be great if the teacher I was observing would have had a mentor to help her in her first few weeks at Lindley. My teacher was hired in on the first day of school, when the teacher that was supposed to teach quite the day before. Another troubling revelation Kozol made in his letters to Francesca was the “undercover” segregation occurring in many inner schools today. The phrase “diversity” is being used to describe schools containing only three white children in the entire district. When students do not even know the famous African American activist for whom their schools are named, that’s a problem. Activist like Martin Luther King and Thurgood Marshall bravely stood up for the rights of African Americans that are no longer present in today’s education system. History books gloss over the actions taken by these great men, leaving minority students today with no notion of what equal education really entails. Kozol further illustrates this point home when he writes about his interview with the ninth graders at Dr. Martin Luther King High School, when he questioned them on diversity. The majority of students, at first believed that their school (that was 95% African American) was diverse. When asked why they believed it was, one girl responded, “because white kids can go here.” The sad fact was that while white students were allowed there they had no desire to go there. Any student, white and minority alike that had the means to go elsewhere went to a school where more of the tax money was allotted, and therefore could afford better teachers and more teaching resources to make their school a more quality place to receive an education. The error in this was that these students completely believed that they were being treated fair, and that success or failure was entirely up to them. Some people believe that pointing out these social issues will give affected students a crutch to blame their failures on. Hiding these truths though pits students against hidden adversity and does not make it any less real. Acknowledging that students in urban schools do face adversity that many students privileged enough to go to suburban schools do not face, gives them a new perspective on the circumstances that they were born into. With this fresh perspective students can develop greater motivation to pursue an education so that one day they may have the power to promote social justice like the great leaders for which their schools were named! I absolutely saw this dynamic at Lindley. In the class that I visited weekly there were five Caucasian students, the rest of the students were Hispanic and African American. Lindley elementary school prides itself in bilingual education. While this initiative is commendable, it seems that it is the only effort the school makes to foster a multi-cultural education. In the numerous weeks I attended Lindley I never once witnessed teachers making any efforts to get to know their students. When know attempt was being made to raise cultural awareness on behalf of the teachers or administration it led one to believe that their bilingual education effort seemed superficial at best. Relating the letters Jonathan Kozol wrote to Francesca to what I observed at Lindley made me realize that the teacher was not exclusively to blame for the way she was schooling her students instead of educating them. I am sure that she did not envision her role as an educator as what she is doing today. I sat in with her on a couple of data meetings. I now understand that she is a puppet in a politically controlled production being passed off as education. With this revelation I can now begin to construct a plan that will allow me to break this cycle. A teacher is required to follow educational state policy, but unlike the teacher that I observed at Lindley, I won’t succumb to being a robot. I am working hard to be a teacher; possessing a unique set of skills to this profession that I will not allow to be taken from me. The biggest reason I do not accept this teacher deskilling is that it will not benefit the students. Mr. Kozol explains several times in his letters that if there was any evidence that high stakes testing and stuffy state standards helped children truly learn, than he would give into those methods, but there is no evidence of this. In fact there is much more evidence to the contrary. So if a teacher’s ultimate goal in life is to foster a lifelong love of learning, than they must skillfully balance the standards with their pedagogy. I plan on doing this by having a full understanding of what is expected out of me in the way of standards and testing, and create fun enriching lessons to cover that material. I will weigh the risk of deviating from the schedule in order to pursue a little one’s curiosity. Ultimately what requires these goals to be achieved is initiative. The desire to go the extra mile for my students will propel me to go to great lengths to ensure that I am giving quality instruction. I will also realize that I will also learn from them along the way. It is my sincere hope that both the students and myself benefit and grow from our time together. Kozol calls on Francesca and other teachers to be witnesses in their profession. What he means by this is that teachers must be ready to stand up and defend their right to educate in the political sphere. I personally drew motivation from this passage; “This is why I find myself encouraging the strongest-hearted teachers that I know to start the work of building a coherent oppositional mentality that will reinforce the willingness of other teachers to speak out not just as educators but also as public citizens.” In what Kozol suspects is an effort to move America’s educational system to the private sector, politicians are constantly attacking teachers in the public school system. This has resulted in distrust between citizens and teachers and has put teachers on the defensive. A lot of teachers are left feeling weary as a result of this treatment. Kozol suggest that in these times teachers draw strength from the little ones they have gone to great lengths to protect by giving them the gift of knowledge. It is time for teachers to once again take the offensive. Teachers need to witness to the citizens all the benefit that public education still holds and work together as a team, to create new and innovative ideas to educate our students! In conclusion reading Letters to a Young Teacher, along with this class and my experience at Lindley has changed me for the better. I am so much more aware of the challenges that lie ahead in teaching, and will prepare myself accordingly. It is my firm belief in every child’s right to be given the education that they need to succeed! I have decided to attach a letter I wrote to a little girl (I call Allie) that is witnessing great injustice at Lindley. While I do not believe that great benefit would come from writing her principal, I felt compelled to write a letter to her. While she will probably never get the chance to read it, this letter will serve as a reminder to me of my duty to be a transformative intellectual for my students so that one day I can become part of the solution for these turbulent times in education.