Should we select teacher candidates for their smarts? asks the National Council on Teacher Quality Bulletin. If so, “can we raise the bar without endangering equitable access to strong teachers or limiting diversity?”I wouldn't want to work at a place that hired me, or not, because of my skin color.
The complete idiocy of the statement quoted floored me. Can they not see the contradiction when they state they want smarter teachers but they are worried that (code-words-for-non-white-males) might not be smart enough?
ReplyDeleteUnintentional racism and sexism for the Win!
How about reasonably bright and also engaging? Sometimes, unfortunately, skin color matters. In my first job in high school, I taught at a high school in a predominately agricultural region slightly northwest of where I live (narrow it down bough for you, Darren?) and it was predominately hispanic/latino. I was the same teacher I was before becoming successful at my second school… but I could absolutely not engage the hispanic segment of my classes. They hated me; they hated the white students who tried to acquiesce by underperforming; they pretended not to speak English … yet, somehow the Latino teachers had no problems. I'm not saying it's right, but I was virtually useless. It's the only time I've ever had a math class where the highest grade was a D+ … Might have been my fault; I don't know. But it was not a good situation for anyone.
ReplyDeleteMaxutils, that's an interesting situation. Was it your fault? No,I doubt it. Your training was in the subject, and you were hired to teach it. But where were you supposed to learn that kids who were "different" from you would not hold up their end of the contract?
ReplyDeleteThere is a BIG difference between a teacher who can't do the work, and the students who won't do the work.
So, they could hire a person who is Latino/Latina, but what about the Anglo kids in the class?
I wonder if evidence shows that typical Anglo students can't or won't learn in a class run by somebody of darker skin color.
It was definitely a cultural problem. there was tension between the races in the student population as well. Another problem was that due to the nature of work, a lot of students only attended part of the year … so they generally came to me underprepared. Which isn't really their fault.
ReplyDelete@maxutils But was your failure to reach Hispanic students a result of their racism or yours? And that's the problem. The assumption is that the teachers are racist and therefore ignoring or picking on minority students. Is it not possible that the baggage imposed on these kids by their families in terms of attitude toward people who are not like them plays a huge role in this? How do we combat that? I teach in a pretty diverse school both racially and economically. My observation is that the minority students who come from families where parents value education also value education. And that applies to Anglo students as well. But this still doesn't address why one demographic group-African American males age 14 to 16 lag behind all other groups in terms of testing and seem to participate more in activities that get them in trouble. We only have these kids in class, someone else is teaching them this behavior outside of school and short of adopting them, that's not going to change. So once again we get into the debate over the role of entertainers as teachers. When you see the bonehead owner of the Dallas Cowboys give a lucrative contract to a clown who beat up his girlfriend and got away with it, then you have a cultural underlay that makes this same demographic group think such behavior is not only doable, but acceptable. Teachers can only do so much and I don't think looking the other way is the solution. Minority parents HAVE TO STEP UP. They have to stop blaming schools and everyone else for their kids' behaviors and start requiring their kids go to school, do their work and stop playing. As one of my coworkers-who is Hispanic and African American said-it is the ultimate racism to assume these young men are not capable of achieving and behaving. In that regard, liberals are the true racists.
ReplyDeleteEllen K, to be honest? I only taught at this school for a year, a summer school, and a couple of months because I was offered a much better job with one third the commute time. so I don't know how it would have played out had I stayed. I came in not being racist at all, and treated all of my students equally … but as the year wore on, I developed a healthy contempt for --well, all of m y students. Because the white students were lazy too, (it was a low level math course) but they at least didn't sit with there arms crossed staring at me hostilely all period. So, while I tried to remain fair … I'm sure I developed a bias. Not to Latinos in general --but to the ones I was trying to teach. I completely agree with you that it's the parents who matter most … but expectations vary, and if the parents don't care, neither will the students. Add to that the language barrier of many of the parents not speaking English well, or at all, and the students pretending not to be able to understand when the situation suits them …it was just a bad situation.
ReplyDelete@Maxutils This is the situation most teachers in borders states face far too often. Gaming the system has become a nightmare in terms of testing. Trying to leap through the hoops laid out when assessing Hispanic kids for Federal programs. When I look at my classes, in a school where kids from Pakistan, India and Korea outnumber HIspanics, I stop and wonder about the effectiveness of ESL/ELL programs. We have Spanish speaking kids who have been in special support classes since PreK who still can't manage to pass basic tests by the time they are 18. Then we have kids who come here from places like Vietname and Cambodia-where their language bears no resemblance to English-and they manage not only to acquire English quickly, but actively avoid ESL programs. There's really not a difference in the socio-economic data-other than the Asian parents insist their children achieve no matter what. Asian parents also step back and let their kids excel or fail on their own. I've never had a parent from India, Pakistan, Korea, Cambodia, Vietnam or Japan make excuses for their students failure to succeed.
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