Teacher Town Hall MSNBC event

I previously posted an announcement of MSNBC's Teacher Town Hall that was hosted yesterday.  Here is the link: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39154226/#39384061 A lot of teachers expressed that you need a lot more than passion to be a teacher - you need a lot of skills in communication, classroom management, content knowledge, etc.  Also, many teachers expressed feeling like the scapegoat for everything wrong with our society. 

Because it's long to watch, I summarized the first half in segments (with minute times) and the second half as a whole:

5:00: A short 5 min. documentary following a beginning teacher and her struggles in the first year.  I thought it was really ... moving?  The discussion that followed this segment included the ideas that teaching is a calling, and that many teachers want to be better teachers but there is very little support and feedback provided for teachers in their first few years. 

17:00: Comments; Teachers are saying stress and burn out are two top factors leading to retention problems, we need to better prepare entry level teachers - first year teachers need mentoring.  Lack of resources and support, smaller class sizes.

18:30: Question: Are teachers under attack right now?  Many people wanted to give comments.  Teachers who weighed in were very passionate about their job and did feel under attack.  One comment said, yes teachers are under attack and they should be, they should be held accountable.  Another comment talked about not being under attack, but thinking about everything we're up against and not being able to make others outside of the profession understand what we go through and need to be supported.  Another talked about teachers being under attack because teachers are a very public face; she sited a nytimes article that suggested improving children's nutrition by teaching them to grow gardens at school, she said try as we might, even though we feel responsible, we can't fix every one of our nation's problems.  There were a lot of people who wanted to comment on this statement.

26:00 Brings "Waiting for Superman" into the discussion - specifically these statistics displayed in the movie: "1 in 57 doctors lose their medical license, 1 in 97 attorneys lose their law license, 1 in 2500 teachers lose their credentials."  One criticism is that in Waiting for Superman we keep hearing good teachers make a difference, good teachers make a difference, but there's no conversation about what it means to be a good teacher.  A lot of teachers who spoke, spoke about the many factors affecting teaching and with little support from parents and administration. 

35:00 Low income schools - 41.5% of students in the nation are considered low-income. A lot of applause to the statement: "The income level doesn't affect the intelligence level."  Just because a student is behind on an academic level does not mean he/she is behind on an intellectual or emotional level.  Teachers seemed pretty passionate in believing that

39:00 A teacher breaks away from the low-income discussion to defend tenure.  He says tenure is what allows teachers to stand up to administrators who provide too-simple solutions for complex problems, and to speak back to parents who don't want to do the right thing.  Tenure protects teachers from having to volunteer every time the principal says jump (This I know about from my experience as a para, the para's in the school were the primary "volunteer" force for every school event because teachers didn't feel compelled to - there was a lot of grumbling about that).  He says it's a due process system, if it's flawed, let's fix it, but teachers shouldn't be treated like other professionals because they are not working for the business, they're working for the kids.  Other comments agreed with the statement and the need for accountability.

I was really involved in watching the entire discussion.  The second half I watched at a different time with Justin, so I didn't want to bother him with the minute tracking.  Some hot topics for the second half of the meeting were tenure - while there was a pretty balanced representation of pro and anit tenure teachers, it was interesting to hear why the pro teachers were pro tenure.  All the anti-tenure teachers said was that bad teachers shouldn't have jobs for life (I agree) but I did learn a lot about how tenure supports teachers.  I think maybe the answer is reworking the tenure program.  Linked with tenure was a discussion about teacher evaluation.  Everyone who spoke was against test scores driving teacher evaluation, but as Justin pointed out, there were few alternative proposals.  I think that was just because speakers were short on time - there were a few who stood out who seemed to have a good plan in mind.