Becky has quit her job. After 9 years teaching in the Oakland Unified School District, with declining support and increasing demands on her each year, after losing student after student into the maw of poverty and violence, she has given notice. She’s almost certainly landed a job starting in September with the Berkeley schools. By “almost certainly” I mean that the principal has assigned her a classroom and she’s moved her stuff into it, but the district hasn’t yet finished the paperwork necessary to hand her a contract to sign. No matter: the important thing is that she’s out of Oakland.
And now it can be told, without risking her job: there was a salient piece of information I left out of the post linked to above for fear that she would suffer — well, perhaps not retaliation exactly, but certainly increased stress. There was this passage in that post:
They time my wife with a stopwatch. The government curriculum must be followed! An afternoon behind schedule, or ahead, and the warning letters come. No matter that the children struggle, or that having mastered the material, they sit despondent, bored. If her students learn too quickly, she is deemed out of compliance. If she takes time to explain, she is deemed out of compliance. If she is far enough out of compliance, she is deemed substandard.
This was not hyperbole. There were staff people, at the Oakland school where Becky taught the last nine years, whose job it was to time to the minute teachers’ compliance with the Open Court Reading curriculum. The one that caused Becky the most stress — a banal, bland, affable man — was notable for having taken some time away from the school a few years back to work at something else.
He was interrogating prisoners at Guantanamo.
And then he came back to regulate the learning process in the Oakland public school system.
Becky’s out of there now, and our home is a brighter place.
Note:Many old comments were lost in a database crash in 2008. Some conversations may seem to make less sense than they would have. A few will make more sense now.
17 comments on "On the homefront"We are a ‘Reading First Grant’ district and the state was undergoing ELA textbook adoption at the same time initial grant awards were being made. The Open Court (SRA) people were all over us to pick their textbooks/program. And were clearly unhappy when we (and many other districts) did not. The pressure these companies exert at the classroom level is frightening.
I hope Becky’s move to Berkely relieves her stress—too many good teachers are leaving in droves. But I’m left distressed at the fate of the children of the Oakland District.
I truly admire Becky for all that she does, and for holding on under those circumstances as long as she could. Like Phyllis, I worry for the kids in Oakland, but I also believe that no one should have to work under those conditions, teachers OR students.
I’ve thought a lot about teaching at the pre-college level, and I have come to the sorry conclusion that I am not suited to it. That’s a failing in me, and I am really humbled by Becky and others who can and do.
Congratulations to her and to your household on what is sure to be a very positive move.
Certainly hope that NEA suit against NCLB goes well.
By “almost certainly� I mean that the principal has assigned her a classroom and she’s moved her stuff into it, but the district hasn’t yet finished the paperwork necessary to hand her a contract to sign.
Won’t be a problem if she’s not starting until September.
This is fantastic news. I hope Berkeley works out well for her.
My Daughter is going into 1st at a Berkeley school. Welcome to the system, Becky! I think it’s a pretty good one; certainly the best lunch program around!
This hasn’t happened to my lovely fiancee yet, but that’s cause she’s a science teacher. It’s in the pipeline though.
Congratulations to Becky on the new job.
I just hope this post doesn’t bring out the school privatization trolls.
And, while I realize Hannah Arendt’s line about the banality of evil has itself become banal, surely the bland affable teacher who takes a sabbatical to waterboard hapless Afganis is the sort of thing she had in mind. (After I wrote this I looked back at your post, and I saw that you already used the word “banal.”)
YEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH.
Congratulations to you both. That she was treated that way—that anyone ever thought stopwatches could have a positive effect on learning in the first place, actually—is appalling.
I celebrate her escape. I don’t think I could have stood the stopwatch that long - would have done something unmentionable with it. I’ll probably post a follow-up comment later; there’s more to say.
I’m glad she’s out of that. Stopwatch man taking an interrogation sabbatical at our illegal internment camp just leaves me flabbergasted.
Congratulations Becky. I’m both relieved and retroactively outraged on her behalf.
I said I’d be back. The first paragraph I’m pasting below I wrote in my blog last year.
I once heard a principal say, “The sole measure of the success of this school is its scores on the [state] test.� My heart sunk like a stone, and if I had actually believed him, I would have resigned that day, loaded up my car with all the stuff I’ve bought over the years for my classroom, and never come back. It’s not that testing is so much an evil in its own right - it has potential diagnostic uses, if well designed - but when it becomes the be-all and end-all of a school’s efforts, that’s a crime against our children and our future. Used in that way, testing mediocritizes education and attempts to standardize young people in way that alienates students and teachers alike. Students know when their schools care more about scores than about students themselves, and they withdraw their investment in learning. They are rightfully cynical. Teachers feel like automatons, their intelligence, humanity, caring and creativity squandered, when they are required to focus solely on teaching to a test. Truth is, the most important ends and accomplishments of education simply cannot be measured on a standardized test. They are measured instead in the scope and reach of lives. That principal can worry himself into his grave over test scores; I’m going to empower lives.
There’s something truly insidious about the kind of education Becky was being required to implement, especially if it’s stretched over twelve years. It’s mind-numbing, and it rewards compliance. It’s a torment and a deterrent to creativity and curiousity. Who wants that? I’ve begun to think that there are those who do indeed want to produce a skilled population of workers trained to comply and long discouraged from asking big essential questions like “Why are we doing it this way?” or “What are the larger consequences of this course of action?” These graduates are likely to depend on others to think for them without deeply analyzing and are thus fairly easily manipulated by those who know how to orchestrate their prejudices, fears, and desires to net votes at the ballot box. One can fleece their futures and simultaneously make them grateful for crumbs, lead them off to war waving flags, keep them stirred about minor moralities instead of issues of global consequence. The result can look like a democracy when really it’s a ruling class managing its sheep.
Er..,Hmmmm…???!! Hmmm…...
White Flight.
Er..,Hmmmm…???!! Hmm.
Becky isn’t white, dipshit.
In any event, she stuck it out in a dysfunctional school district for nine years, during which time we got priced out of Oakland’s housing market. We tried to stay in Oakland and couldn’t afford to.
So take your lefter-than-thou crap and stick it somewhere uncomfortable.