October 1999 OCEA Quest
Negotiations Update
By Jeffery Greb
On October 6, 1999, the OCEA negotiation team met with the District. As a result of that meeting, we can say that most of the proposals that do not have a direct fiscal impact either have been decided or are very close to completion. Both sides will meet on October 20th and 28th to hopefully finalize all non-monetary items and make progress on our salary proposal.
Pleased to Meet Me
By Jeffery Greb
This article is the second of a series introducing you to both the OCEA officers and the offices they inhabit. This month it is my turn to expose myself to you (metaphorically speaking, of course).
I was born and spent my formative years in the Midwest (Indiana and Illinois to be precise), before moving to California when I was in the 4th grade. After moving around within that state for a bit, my family finally settled down in and around Placerville where I went to high school. Back then Placerville was not the trendy, over-priced, affected, neo-riche place it is today; rather, it was your basic backwoods, hick mountain town (albeit not quite as "backwoods" as the little mountain hamlet in the film Deliverance, but closer to that than what it appears today.) The goal for everyone at my school was to get out of Placerville. Some failed; I succeeded and graduated from UCLA a few years later. I lived and worked in the LA area until the early 1990’s when my wife and I decided to move to northern Nevada to raise our family. (We picked this location because my family moved here when I left for college. Needless to say, I found them in spite of this pathetic escape attempt.) This is the abbreviated version of the rather circuitous route by which I ended up teaching at CHS.
And now I am your Administrative Vice-President. The primary function of this office is to support the OCEA President. Toward that end, I am responsible to attend those meetings the President cannot and represent our Association in her stead as required. I am also a standing member of several committees: Elections and Nominations, Human and Civil Rights, Grievance, Government Relations, Instruction and Professional development, Bylaws, and Professional Library. Additionally, I coordinate and act as liaison between the President and the Building Representatives. Finally, like all vice-presidents I seize the bully pulpit for those causes about which I feel most passionate. It goes without saying (although I’ll say it anyway) that if you have concerns that relate to any of these areas, please contact me.Did You Know
By Jeffery Greb
You may recall from last school year references to something called the "Coalition for Carson City Education." This project began in earnest this fall. CCCPE is made up of OCEA, CCSD, CCBAA (the administrators’ association), PTSA, CHS Student Leadership, CHS Chapter of National Honor Society, and CHS Speech and Debate. These groups have all made a commitment to help provide the community with accurate and documented information about the successes achieved and unique challenges faced by public education at the local, state, and national levels. By community I refer not only to the general public, but all of us who work and live here, including educators. I hope that this modest campaign will enlighten those within the education meritocracy as well as those without.
The first program initiated by CCCPE is a series of small informational advertisements running in both the Appeal and Gazette-Journal. These ads appear in the Saturday editions of both newspapers, around the education page in the former and in the Carson-Douglas section of the latter. Beginning on September 25th,the first four ads were:
- Did you know…Over half the teachers in Carson City have 10 or more years of teaching experience.
- Did you know…project STAR results show that students from smaller classes are more likely to graduate from high school on schedule, less likely to drop out, and more likely to rank in the top 25 of their class.
- Did you know…Of the 16 industrialized nations, the US ranks ninth in per pupil expenditures in K-12 schools.
- Did you know…As recently as the 1950s, only about 50% of all students completed high school.
These ads will continue throughout this school year, so if you haven’t noticed them, keep your eyes open for them each Saturday.
In the future CCCPE will be providing each full-time employee of CCSD with a notepad with different facts about public education on each page. Hopefully, some grant money will allow us to expand our current newspaper campaign into other media.
If you would like to contribute to this worthwhile project, please contact me at CHS. At the very least, if you see an article with an educational focus in a newspaper, magazine, journal, or on the Web, take a moment to clip it out and forward it to me. Please be certain to include the documentation of the source of the information.New Technology Thrills 90’s Students
Announcing the new Build-in Orderly Organized Knowledge (BOOK) Device
The BOOK is a revolutionary breakthrough in technology: No wires, no electric circuits, no batteries, nothing to be connected or switched on. It’s so easy to use even a child can operate it. Just like its cover!
Compact and portable, it can be used anywhere — even sitting in an armchair by the fire - yet is powerful enough to hold as much information as a CD-ROM disc. Here’s how it works:
Each BOOK is constructed of sequentially numbered sheets of paper (recyclable), each capable of holding thousands of bits of information. These pages are locked together with a custom-fit device called a binder which keeps the sheets in their correct sequence.
Opaque Paper Technology (OPT) allows manufactures to use both sides of the sheet, doubling the information density and cutting costs in half. Experts are divided on the prospects for further increases in information density; for now BOOKs with more information simply use more pages. This makes them thicker and harder to carry, and has drawn some criticism from the mobile computing crowd.
Each sheet is scanned optically, registering information directly into your brain. A flick of the finger takes you to the next sheet. The BOOK may be taken up at any time and used by merely opening it. The BOOK never crashes and never needs rebooting, though like other display devices it can become unusable if dropped overboard. The "browse" feature allows you to move instantly to any sheet, and move forward or backward as you wish. Many come with an "index" feature, which pinpoints the exact location of any selected information for instant retrieval.
An optional "BOOKmark" accessory allows you to open the BOOK to the exact place you left it in a previous session — even if the BOOK has been closed. BOOKmarks fit universal design standards; thus, a single BOOKmark can be used in BOOKs by various manufacturers. Conversely, numerous BOOKmarkers can be used in a single BOOK if the user wants to store numerous views at once. The number is limited only by the number of pages in the BOOK.
You can also make personal notes next to BOOK text entries with an optional programming tool, the Portable Erasable Nib Compact Intercommunication Language Stylus (Pencils). Portable, durable and affordable, the BOOK is being hailed as the entertainment wave of the future. The BOOK’s appeal seems so certain that thousands of content creators have committed to the platform. Look for a flood of new titles soon.The Dress Code is Coming! The Dress Code is Coming!
by Lorie Schaefer
A well attended OCEA meeting recently evoked some heated debates. No, it wasn’t contracts, or salaries, or standards of safety, or insurance. It was a dress code for teachers. Of all things.
Yes, a dress code for teachers will be in place soon. No more mini-skirts or spandex. No more blue jeans or combat boots. We’re expected to dress like professionals—and not professional couch potatoes, camp counselors or cocktail waitresses, either. Well, duh.
Personally, I find it sad and embarrassing that some of my college-educated professional colleagues need someone to tell them how to dress for work. But the school board is anxious to put a dress code in place because of a few teachers who just don’t get it. Sadly, even reading this now, they may not know it’s about them.
Is it a generational thing? Maybe. And I think we baby-boomers are at least partly to blame.
You see, when we boomers were growing up in the fifties and sixties there was still a strict, if unwritten code of dress. We wore our "Sunday best" to church—including hats and gloves. Men wore suits, ties and shined shoes. Clothing was starched and pressed to within an inch of the wearer’s life. Our teachers wore dignified, professional—if boring—clothing. Men in ties, women in dresses with hose and heels. Then the Beatles arrived and with them hot pants, mini-skirts, bell-bottoms, and belly buttons. All hell broke loose.
I keep thinking about a time in 1969 while I was in college but still living at home. On my way out the door one day, my mom stopped me. She eyed my holey cords, my water buffalo sandals, and my brother’s worn, faded plaid flannel shirt.
"You’re going to school like that?" she asked, eyebrow raised.
"Yes, Mom. I’m not trying to impress people with my clothes," I asserted.
"Don’t worry," she said rolling her eyes heavenward. "You won’t."
We thumbed our noses at convention. We rebelled against just about everything. We weren’t going to be judged by our appearance. Heck no. Not us.
Even as we grew older, graduated from college, and got real jobs, many of us continued our "do your own thing" dress code. Blue jeans, T-shirts, and sneakers were just about as dressed up as we cared to get. As we raised our children, they followed our example and some of us forgot that there was any other way to dress.
As part of that generation, it is with some mixed feelings that I even address this issue. Anyone who knows me can tell you I’m no fashion maven, no cover girl, but I think I have learned a few things since college about how to dress for work. I offer you a "Common Sense Guide to Dressing for School." Take it or leave it.1. Remember you are there to teach. Unless you teach at a pool or gym, don’t dress like you’re on your way there. And you are not there to catch a date for El Charro’s happy hour. If the length of your skirt, the depth of your cleavage or the tightness of your pants prevents you from filing in the bottom drawer or climbing a ladder in the stock room modestly, don’t wear them.
2. Nicer clothes will not make you a better teacher. But many people will think you’re better, which is almost as good. It’s not fair--nobody said it was--but it’s the truth.
3. Dress for the job you want, not the job you have. This probably means dressing a step or two above--not below--the position you have. Wear a tie now and then, or a dress with stockings. It won’t kill you. And if you only want to dress up once in a while, make sure it’s for the staff meeting.
4. Dress like you want the job, not like you already have it. Iron the shirt for goodness sakes. Shine the shoes. Get a haircut. Clean your fingernails.
5. Express your individuality with subtlety or do it somewhere else. Outrageous may work in the WWF but probably not at IBM or CCSD.
The bottom line is we all want respect in our profession: respect from our colleagues, our administrators, our students, the community. Dressing in a professional manner is just the first step toward demonstrating our respect for the uniquely influential position we hold in our community.
Like it or not, we set the standard. The question is, where do we want to set it?
Learning Curve
Advocates of testing teachers should remember that teaching is an art that must be practiced before it can be mastered
.By Donald W. Thomas (citizen scholar at City on a Hill Charter School in Boston. Taken from Teacher Magazine)
When I applied for my first teaching job, the interviewer — a Mr. Tinker by name — told me that it took five years to make an English teacher. At the time, I thought this extravagant, the boast of an elder anxious to magnify his labors. With a master’s degree in hand, the arrogance of youth at heart, and a semester of student teaching under my belt, surely I could be exempted from Mr. Tinker’s rule. After all, one need only take stock of one’s notes, peruse the assigned texts, and get a decent night’s sleep to ensure the obedience, awe, and devotion of one’s students.
But nearly 40 years of teaching have convinced me that Mr. Tinker was right – indeed, profoundly optimistic in his assessment. I have been reminded of his rule in reading about the current controversy over teacher preparation and testing. I have no quarrel with tightening the standards maintained by our higher institutions of learning, to say nothing of our lower institutions of learning, where I continue to labor "doomed," as Samuel Johnson once characterized himself, "only to remove rubbish and clear obstructions from the paths of Learning and Genius, who press forward to conquest and glory without bestowing a smile on the humble drudge that facilitates their progress."
Is it too much to ask that our teachers become literate and more than modestly informed? Clearly not. But let us not dismiss the problem as one of standards alone, no matter how much such standards may be in need of repair. No, the difficulty runs deeper than this.
What we have here is a structural flaw inherent in the way we traditionally think about teaching.
Take the controversy about competency tests for teachers. Of course we want all teachers to be able to pass the test. But suppose every teacher passed—what then? Would our problems be solved? Probably not. As "Tinker’s Rule" implies, knowledge alone is not enough. Teachers can be told all manner of things about curriculum, clever strategies, aims and objectives, modes of assessment, cooperative learning, and the like, but in the real world—and contrary to popular opinion, schools constitute a world as real as any other—one must teach in order to learn how to teach. There is no substitute for it, for teaching is itself a form of learning that cannot be taught, an art that must be exhaustively practiced before it can be mastered. And even then its success is by no means assured.
In his famous essay "What Is a University?" Cardinal John Henry Newman maintained that "the general principles of any study you may learn by books at home, but the detail, the color, the tone, the air, the life which makes it live in us, you must catch all these from those in whom it lives already." Knowledge lives in teachers who are filled with life at the prospect of learning and helping their students to learn. To expect that some battery of tests will significantly alter the critical interaction in the classroom is simply to rehearse an ancient mistake in the annals of education.
Those who prate about holding teachers ‘accountable’ have either never known or too soon forgotten the accountability that lives in the eyes of every student who sits before teachers hour after hour all the livelong day. We can no longer afford to simply throw teachers at students and expect either to flourish. It is high time we held schools and the communities that support them accountable for educating and training their teachers, not for five years or 10, but for as long as they continue to teach children.
Why is it that institutions devoted to learning are so recalcitrant in educating their workers? In most public schools, after teachers receive favorable assessments in their first three years, they are granted tenure for the rest of their careers, irrespective of what else they may learn or do by way of instruction. Short of molesting a child or developing a drug habit, their jobs are secure. Over the years, teachers will earn PDPs or professional-development points, for attending occasional workshops on topics that may or may not-touch on the subject they teach. But the only available promotion track leads to the administrative ranks, so that the best that teachers can hope for is to be removed from the classroom.
What kind of profession rewards its best practitioners by taking them away from their practice? And why do we believe that testing new teachers and getting rid of bad teachers will significantly improve education? Such thinking ignores the span between initiation into the profession and termination. Surely we could focus on more than the beginning and ending points of someone’s career. As Tinker’s rule suggests, it’s the intervening years that count. The question is what teachers need to know and what they need to learn and do to become better. For to expect teachers to excel is to grant them the luxury of having a career, to give them the benefit of earning the status of a true professional.
What does it mean to treat teaching as a career? First, it requires us to ask what might constitute an ideal career in teaching and then to consider what changes teachers will face, what goals they should pursue, and what milestones they will negotiate. We can begin to envision a great deal that one must learn about schooling in general and about teaching in particular over the course of a single career.
In the first five years in the classroom, for example, teachers should not be inundated with too many students and too many "preparations." They need to work closely with a mentor who can offer constructive criticism and modeling, who can teach beside them. They need to watch others teach. And they need to work with students of all abilities.
As they gain experience, teachers need to branch out, supervising an extracurricular activity or coaching a sport, so they can interact with students outside the classroom. Because every teacher possesses unique talents and strengths, they should develop a specialty outside the established curriculum. At some point, they should also be encouraged—and financially supported—to undertake graduate studies. Ultimately, they need to take part in every aspect of schooling, be it coaching, extracurricular activities, administration, curriculum, publishing, supervision, research, finance, special needs, or teacher training.
Teaching is not unlike most other vocations in critical respects. If you want to start a restaurant, you have to know more than cooking. If you join the military, you have to learn how to conduct a war. Why is it not obvious that teachers’ careers need to be planned form start to finish, not by administrators, consultants, school appointed blue-ribbon panels, but by teachers themselves? It is teachers who need to define the ground rules and milestones of their profession and in so doing make it truly their own. Every teacher should be following a career path designed with and for them. And they should be paid in accordance with their progress in completing each step along that path, however long it is.
As I think about the ideal career, I remember a retirement party for a teacher who had managed to teach and retain her dignity over nearly half a century. She was someone who would have passed a teacher’s test with ease. Yet in a little speech that she gave at her party, she talked about the number of times she had mounted the steps to her classroom on the fourth floor. She had taught in that classroom her first year at the school and in every year thereafter.
And year after year, she had done exactly what she had done that first year: She had homeroom, English classes, lunch duty, study halls, and assigned extracurricular activities. The number of cumulative steps she had assiduously counted going up and down those stairs was truly staggering, positively Sisyphean. Everyone was very impressed; we toasted her, and she left.
I am saddened to think that so fine a teacher as this should have so little to say about her career. However much she may have contributed to children, she left without telling us anything about what happened once she got to class. One can only imagine what such a devoted servant might have achieved had she been encouraged to convey her triumphs as well as her tribulations, her tests and techniques, her revelations and insights, her ambitions and accomplishments. Perhaps for the administration she was an ideal teacher, always tidy and on time, keeping things calm, reliable at lunch duty, a stickler for attendance. But for the rest of us, she might just as well have been a ghost.
Sadly, our schools are filled with ghosts who labor quietly behind closed doors, humble drudges from whom we have neither the wit nor the wherewithal to demand a full and enterprising career, whether it comprises five years or 50.
