Taught to the tune of a hickory stick

Election day, for the June cycle, is fast approaching and everyone is making their final push to jockey their position on varying topics.  Of course in Alameda, our big one is Measure H.  Last Friday’s Journal had two notable commentaries on the subject, but notable for very different things.   First off, Jeffrey R. Smith, who has clearly taken criticism of himself as the “worst teacher at Encinal” to heart, so much so that he included it completely out of context as a throwaway line in the article.   The gist of the article is more of the same we generally see from Mr. Smith, administration services aren’t worth paying for.  I can do it alone, which means that other teachers can do the same.   And so on and so forth.   Here’s the thing, he could have said that in about 200 words less than what he submitted to the Journal, what kept running through my mind while reading his commentary was that this had to be the written word version of Charlie Brown’s teacher.  

It is odd that Mr. Smith has pinpointed certain things as being redundant and unnecessary simply because they are already mandated from the state.   The logic, I suppose, is that we don’t need no stinkin’ administration to act as a middle man between delivery to our classroom doors and then from our classroom directly to the state.   He uses the example of standardized testing and curriculum development as two departments within AUSD that are unnecessarily replicated by the school district.   Here’s the thing, while Mr. Smith would be perfectly happy getting a fat FedEx packet in the mail every time he needs to administer a standardized test, complete with return postage back to the state, I wonder who he thinks compiles and combined the information from hundreds of other teachers and classrooms like his own in the Alameda School District.   Does he suppose that the assessment office simply dumps thousands of those bubbled-in forms on the state assessment office and says, “Have at it!”    If staff at the local level isn’t available to do that sort of job, then there will need to be staff at the state level to do that sort of job, to sort through the piles and piles of returned FedEx packages from the different schools around the state from each individual teacher.   Doesn’t sound very efficient to me.

Some other questions that I had after reading Mr. Smith’s editorial:

• Who provides the discipline?  While Mr. Smith wants to be a granted a “strong-arm poised to extricate troublemakers” would that be within the classroom itself, doled out by each individual teacher, or would it be done by an administrator?  While clearly, as we have seen from the recent suspension reports, there is a differing level of discipline methods from school to school, would we be better served by having those discipline methods differ from classroom to classroom?
• What about all the other services provided to students?   Unfortunately school is a lot more than what happens in the classroom itself.   It often acts as a safety net for students in less fortunate circumstances.   Kids that come to school hungry and need subsidized lunches.   Kids that come from abusive homes.  Kids that may need help just getting to school every morning because they don’t have a stable home.  Is Mr. Smith proposing that each individual teacher, each classroom will be responsible for that as well?
• What about the kids who need help to reach their full potential, using career and college counselors to help guide them through the college admissions process that their parents simply can’t help out with.   Is Mr. Smith and his already overworked teacher colleagues willing to take that on as well in order to cut out more bureaucracy and administration services that exist outside the classroom?

It appears that Mr. Smith has a lot of critiques and criticisms without providing a whole lot of globally applicable alternatives.   Other than proposing that money be funnelled directly to the individual classrooms and to let each teacher decide what they want to do with the money.  But as Mr. Smith well knows, or I would hope that he would know, is that schools provide a whole heck of a lot more than what goes on in the four walls of a classroom.   Beyond simply pontificating in an op-ed, I would challenge Mr. Smith to come up with a solid plan for implementing his vision. 

The next notable commentary was from Ian Merrifield who wrote very eloquently about his reflections on why passing this parcel tax is important.  And will, more notably, be voting for the very first time!   If you have not read Ian M.’s commentary, it is a direct valdidation of why funding our schools is worth it.   If AUSD can churn out even one more future leaders like young Ian, then it is well worth your $120 per year.