A welcome back message from UFEA President Vickie Mahrt, delivered at the Opening Institute.
It?s great to see you here today.? I have been thinking about this day, and looking forward to this day, all summer.
In our family, like in your family, we measure our lives by the rhythm of the school year.? This year like? every year we are celebrating the start of school ? and not only because of my job.
We are packing our son, Will, off to his last year of law school.? What that really means is throwing a case of pop tarts and a jar of peanut butter in the back of his 12 year old Pontiac and filling the gas tank before he takes off for Minnesota.? But still, it?s the start of a new school year for him, and Steve and I couldn?t be happier to see him go.
Our daughter, Betsy, is starting her year as a middle school language arts teacher in Rockdale, and she is looking forward to seeing her colleagues and her students, just like all of us here.
The ?best is our daughter Abby sending her 6 year old off to start first grade at Carl Sandburg Elementary in Springfield.? Is there anything more exciting than first grade?? Let me tell you about that little guy, our grandson, Finn.
I got to do the school supply shopping with him.? We bought a Clone Wars backpack, the markers, ?the scissors, and the crayons.? In fact, he got an extra box of new crayons to use right away at home because it is so fun to draw with new crayons.? He?s ?off coloring me a picture and he always likes to give his pictures labels, so he calls out to me, ?Grandma, how do you spell God?? ?As ?I?m helping him sound it out, I?m thinking, ?That little angel boy is making me a drawing that will let me see into his heart. An innocent ?child?s vision of God.? Maybe his God will have a beard like his Grampa Steve.? ?And then he asks me, ?Grandma, how do you spell Zilla??
So anyway, our family is all wrapped up in the start of school, and I think most of America is right there with us.? We are all looking forward to a new start and a great year.? Then on Tuesday I opened up the Pantagraph and here is what I saw on the editorial page:
?America?s K-12 school system needs overhaul?
The editor devoted most of his column to praising the American land-grant university system, and then finished up with the following chestnuts:
?But before our children seek higher education, they are dependant (sic) upon a K-12 system that has become intricate, layered and overly dense; it seems designed to keep people employed rather than provide a solid, basic education.? The results- compared to other countries ? are bleak.
?We need to start over.? What should kids learn, and what?s the best way for that to happen? We need to throw away what doesn?t work and concentrate on what does.? All of us ? educators, legislators, business owners, parents ? must be held accountable.?
It?s the week before school starts in McLean County.? Teachers and students are looking forward to the new year, busy sharpening Number 2?s, filling backpacks, arranging desks in classrooms. All summer the Pantagraph has been publishing feel-good puff pieces on individuals and organizations who are spending a day here or an afternoon there distributing donated school supplies to needy children, and now, when the real, sustained, day-to-day, important work of education is about to begin again, this is what they have to say about our schools ?and the education professionals who work in them.? This is the encouragement and support they offer all of us.
The system is intricate, layered and overly dense?
Is he writing about this district?? 2000 employees and we can?t afford a real human resources department? Our high schools, with no department heads? Is he writing about our large elementary schools, where a lone building principal handles all employee evaluations, student discipline, budgeting, PR, parent meetings, and all the rest?? Does he mean those 4th grades at Prairieland with 30 students each, where their desks will hardly fit, and a single teacher differentiates instruction for students who are years apart developmentally?
The system is designed to keep people employed rather than provide a solid, basic education?
So does he think providing a solid, basic education could employ fewer people?? Is he suggesting that the students in our community don?t deserve a comprehensive, rich curriculum that includes the arts, physical education, foreign language, advanced placement, and after-school activities? No counselors or nurses?
The results ? compared to other countries- are bleak?
Is this a reference to Finland?? Where teacher candidates are provided free university educations, teachers are highly compensated, universally respected, and supported with plenty of paid time to collaborate? Where there are virtually no standardized tests?? Where they don?t even have a word for ?accountability??
We need to start over.? What should kids learn, and what?s the best way for that to happen? We need to throw away what doesn?t work and concentrate on what does.
What does he think we do, all day every day.? Did he talk to even one educator or visit one classroom before expressing these pompous opinions?? Start over?? We start over every year.? Every semester.? Every Monday.? Every 2nd hour.? We are continually thinking about what our kids should learn, the best way for them to learn.? We regularly discard what doesn?t work and ?focus on what does. It?s the last thing we think about at night and the first thing in the morning.? Sometimes we wake up in the middle of the night to think about it some more.? We talk about it at lunch.? In July.
I would have expected the editor of a small-town paper like the Pantagraph, in the week before school starts, to have enough respect for the students and educators of our community to publish a few words of encouragement.? Save the pokes and jabs for some bleak day in February when the weather is dismal and we?re feeling dreary anyway.? Right now, we could use a little support and encouragement for the work we know is before us.
Well, we?re not getting it from the Pantagraph editor, or, for that matter, from our friends in the Illinois General Assembly, who spent Friday trying to think of ways to slash our pensions.? Looks like it?s up to us to encourage each other.?? So what I want to say to you today I?m borrowing from Abileen Clark, who repeated ?it to little Mae Mobley every morning, because she needed ?support and encouragement? to face the challenges facing her, too.? Here it goes, though I don?t have the style Abileen had:
?You is smart, you is kind, you is important.?
We have to be smart.? Teachers have to know all about their subject content, all about child development, all about pedagogy.? And then put all of that together and make hundreds of decisions every day, based on what we see and hear from our students, to tailor our instruction to their individual needs.? And then afterward, we figure out what worked and what didn?t, find ways to improve, and hit it again.
We are kind.? Kind enough to care deeply about other people?s children.? We worry about them, buy them school supplies, make sure they have a lunch on field trip day and a costume for the Halloween parade.? We attend their concerts and ball games and graduation parties.? We remember them for years, and send cards when we read their wedding announcements in the paper.? Of course we care about our salaries and working conditions, and what worker doesn?t, but the bottom line is always our students and how much we care about them.
Most of all, we are important. What we do every days matters to our students, to their families, and to our community.
There is so much pressure these days about test scores, that sometimes we forget that much of what our students learn from us- maybe the most important things we teach -? cannot be measured with a standardized test.Teacher know that a child is more than a test score, ?and certainly a standardized test score cannot measure a teacher?s worth.
If you listen long to TV pundits or the Chamber of Commerce or the Business Roundtable, you can begin to believe that the goal of our teaching is to prepare workers for factories and chain stores and insurance offices.? But of course, what we do is much more important than job training.
Our mission ? and this is the stated, published mission of Unit 5 ? is ?Educating each student to achieve personal excellence.?? ?Now that?s definitely more than a test score, and more than job skills training.? Personal excellence? ?That ?is a way of life.
In June, I attended my 40th high school class reunion, Camdenton High School, the Lakers? Class of 1972.? It was my first time attending a high school class reunion, and the thing that struck me ?-Well, one thing that struck me was how lucky I am that I did not marry my high school boyfriend. It turns out my dad was right about that. ? but besides that, what really struck me was that many of the things I learned from my high school teachers have very little to do with any job I have ever held.? I was the top math student in my class- and you can look in my year book if you don?t believe me, because I got the math department award my senior year.? That was back when girls weren?t supposed to be especially good at trigonometry and calculus.? After ?that, I never even took a math class in college, and I hardly ever used my slide rule in any job.? My teachers taught me math, but they also helped me feel smart, and made me believe I could learn anything I wanted to learn.? Those math teachers ?made a difference in my life, even if math isn?t a part of how I make my living.
My choir teacher taught me to sing madrigals and the band teacher encouraged me to memorize the piccolo part to ?Stars and Stripes Forever? ?so I could play and march at the same time.? I got to participate ?in the spring musical, ?Carousel.? ??I don?t do ?any of that stuff in my job.? Don?t even own a piccolo any more.? But my high school teachers helped me learn about and appreciate the arts, and my life is so much richer today as a result, even if none of it prepared me for a ?job or even a ?college course.? All that happened long before school districts thought about writing mission statements, but I am sure my teachers? goal was to help me ?achieve personal excellence, ?just the same.
Of course we want to give our students the skills they need to succeed in a job or in higher education, but there is more to teaching and learning ?than that, and our goal is broader and deeper.? We want to help each of them achieve personal excellence.? We want them not just to be able to make a living, but to make a life that includes ?appreciating ?the arts, enjoying exercise, reading good books, understanding government and participating in the process. ?We want them to get along with each other and cooperate, not just to function in work groups, but so they can enjoy healthy relationships. ?We want them to think critically, not just to solve problems at work, but to become the kind of citizens who can understand issues and politics, and can make decisions that move our society forward. This is the important work of teaching.
And while I?m speaking of politics, there is another kind of important work that I think educators must do. ?Nearly everything that goes on in our public schools is determined or influenced by decisions our elected officials make. And because there is no one else who knows better what a quality education looks like, and what it takes to provide a quality public education to every child in our community, we have to make sure that we are strong advocates for our students, our schools and our profession.
There are plenty of individuals and organizations ? like our Pantagraph editor, or Stand for Children, or the Gates Foundation ? who want to ?reform? education by focusing more on test scores, by narrowing our curricula, by cutting corners and to cut costs. Maybe even replacing live teachers with computer programs.? Some of these people have lots of money, and they use their money to buy enormous political influence.
We educators can?t muster the cash like they can.? But we do have a resource they don?t have.? We have us ? Almost 1,000 of us here in Unit 5, 120,000 in Illinois, millions of us nation-wide.? And we can use our collective voice and our votes to make a difference in education policy and education legislation at all levels of government.? We are a special interest group ? there is no doubt about that ? and our special interest is public school children and public education.? We understand that? teaching is a profession that requires special skills and training, and that it is a cooperative, not competitive venture.? We know that our working conditions are our students? learning conditions, and that you can?t get quality public education on the cheap.
So whether it?s working with our school board members on our District Core Team to develop the district?s strategic plan, or lobbying the McLean County Board to block a gravel crushing operation planned across the street from one of our schools, whether it?s emailing our state legislators what we think of their proposals to gut the pension benefits we?ve earned, or calling our senators to talk about the problems with the so-called ? No Child Left Behind,? ?it is important for us to stand together and speak up.? That is what our union is for.
We know from experience that we can make a difference.? Teachers have had a significant voice in improving our strategic plan.? It was our effort, in large part, that prevented the gravel crusher being built near Fox Creek.? Our calls and emails have stopped pension-cutting legislation more than once.? And when the Elementary and Secondary Education Act is finally reauthorized, I am confident that the worst parts of NCLB will be eliminated.
This year, I will be working along with our other UFEA officers ? our vice president, Karl Goeke, our Secretary Kathy Britnell, and Treasurer Dean Brown; our association Representatives in every building, our UniServ Director Ben Matthews, and our affiliates and allies at the state and national level to keep us all ?informed about the issues that we are facing, and to get you the information and tools you need to be actively involved ?as an advocate for our enterprise.
I know we are busy, at school and at home, and as volunteers around our community, but we need to take a little time ? to make a phone call or write a letter or send an email or cast a vote ? when we know that our elected officials are making decisions that impact us.? These things are too important to be left up to folks whose only knowledge of education is the time they spent as students decades ago, who have never taught anything to anybody.
Thank you for all you have done and all you are going to do for our students, their families, and our community in the next 180 school days.? I know you will make the most of this shiny new year.
You are smart. You are kind.? Most of all, you are important.? I am proud to represent you.
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Source: http://ufea.org/2012/08/27/you-are-smart-you-are-kind-most-of-all-you-are-important/
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