When NJEA supported the de facto elimination of the tenure law I don't see it as "fighting for our profession".
In the 70s this kind of thing would have been met with walk outs, picket lines and strikes. Today it's met with conciliation, sappy TV ads and cowering.
I read recently that NJEA spends the most of any organization on lobbying in Trenton. It surely doesn't appear that the money is well spent if the new "Elimination of Tenure Law" is the result !
 |
| For those of you who worked in at NHS, does the name "Presuto" ring a familiar bell ??? |
I received this comment today. It says a lot as to how teaching is being sanitized in to an assembly line process. The concern is only for the product and how that product is being made is of little importance!
ReplyDeleteWalt, what was our way of doing things is no longer existent and I do not believe this is one of those cyclical happenings. Truly sad. A couple of months ago at a retirement of a teacher with whom I had hired and worked for twenty or thirty years I was asked by the principal to say a few words. I said ok and completely, with out a prior thought given to preparation, spoke of happenings over the period of time that she and I and so many of her retired friends who were in attendance had experienced and with whom I had worked as well for some length of time. Cheryl told me I spoke for at least 45 minutes and I was amazed I had gone on that long. People were laughing and listening intently and the new young staff was truly into our time. I was told by many that the new staff was amazed at our friendships, and fun times, while maintaining sound educationally exciting and motivating programs as well as truly positive relationships with parents and students. When I related some of my interactions with kids such as having kids fall asleep in my arms or sitting and crying on my lap over a fall or a bruise or some other matter or having my arm around them while walking down the hall or that we were a hugging school and the kids and parents loved it, the look in their eyes told me tons. We were not staff and community we were, with out using clichés, a family. But our way was not permitted anymore and when I told them they would have to get across their love and compassion with their eyes and their smile and a soft voice they understood completely. We utilized our sense organs, as well, Walt, but kids need more than that. On an other issue I loved my autonomy, not total of course, but in many, many areas the staff and I called the shots. I came to see, however, near my retirement time that our educational programs, methodology and human relationships were changing. You may not want to hear this but the teachers' union as well as administration and boards of education all played their part in ruining a family. I believe in a holistic approach to education which I pray can exist in what is coming but I doubt it. I see the need for STEM approaches but without compassion where will it all lead especially when society becomes more and more relative to individual needs. I/me then you. That's ass backwards as far as I am concerned. I do not know if I mentioned to you guys the low esteem, high esteem eras and how little one thought of oneself or how much one thought of oneself played such a huge role in education and psychology when in fact what one should be doing is thinking of oneself less and that is as close as I can get to the journey I have been traveling for the past 3 decades and I have yet to travel so very far. Sorry for the ramblings but I truly believe the last few sentences if agreed to by all parties, would solve the Syrian and world debacles in a moment. But that won't happen in this world so I will continue to look deeply into myself and pray for correction of all that I find antithetical to the ways of the God I have come to believe in and love so that I may in some little way become an instrument of that love.
C______