 |
Panorama | January 2009 |
|
Panorama | January 2009 |
|
President’s View By Marisa Hanson
|
Miracle
on the Hudson By
Ralph Giannini ESTA
Organizing Chair
I am sure that all of you were struck by the skills of the US Airways pilot whose plane lost power in both engines recently. He managed to set the plane down in the Hudson River safely in the middle of America’s largest city (New York). His skill and expertise saved countless lives and injuries both on the plane and potentially on the ground. The
captain
didn’t
do it all by himself, he had a lot of help. His
co-pilot and the crew
members
on the plane did their part.
The passengers
on the plane did what they were told and followed directions as they
waited to be rescued on the wings of the plane patiently. The first
responders on
the ground moved quickly. Many
of the first responders were highly
trained professionals from
the city’s finest—the police officers, the fire department personnel, the
medical professionals—but the unsung
heroes
were the many nameless
people
who pitched in during the emergency.
These were the ship
captains and crews of
the ferry boats, tug boats and individual small craft, who rushed to the
scene despite imminent danger to themselves and began to remove the
passengers from harm’s way.
There were the Red
Cross volunteers, who
rushed to the scene to help and console those on the plane. The Miracle
on the Hudson
was a co-operative
effort by
a lot of people just like you
and me. By
now you might be wondering why I am writing about the Miracle
on the Hudson during
these difficult times for all of us in the East
Side Union High School District.
The
reason is that I and the East
Side Teachers Association need
your help. I have been
feeling the whole range of human emotions as we go through the horrible
personal financial
times. Every day that goes by
the news just seems to get worse.
The State
Legislature struggles
to come up with a budget.
There is little hope in Sacramento. Every story indicates that there
will be massive cuts coming up at least for the next eighteen months. I was reminded about that by the
letter
I
received by the district asking me to verify my date of hire and my
teaching credentials. Then I
received the
Superintendent’s email talking
about interim steps the district is taking. It
is obvious that there are going to be lay-offs for teachers. The other bargaining units will
lose people as well. What
we don’t know about the lay-offs
is
how many there will be and what kind of a lay-off it will be. Will it be a general lay-off or
will it be a RIF
(reduction in force of a particular kind) that
will affect only certain programs or departments? I don’t have the
answer. I
feel like I am on the world’s largest airplane carrying over 2,000 passengers.
There
is engine
trouble
and we will soon be making a rough
landing. Unfortunately not everyone
on the plane is going to be able to walk away from the rough landing and
survive
in the sense of having their jobs next
fall. THERE
IS SOMETHING YOU AND I CAN DO.
We need to be like the first
responders to the scene.
Your
Site Presidents and
Local
Representatives
are collecting your non-district
email addresses and
perhaps phone
numbers in
case of emergency
measures are
necessary. The
next Organizing
Committee Meeting will be on March 4th,
at the Mt. Hamilton CTA office.
The time will be 4:00 p.m.
We need any and all first responders to be there. Please
email me at RGiann9862@aol.com
to let me know if you are coming to the meeting. Put
March
10th
on your calendar.
That
will most likely the night that the East
Side Union High School Board of Trustees will have to act on the
LAY-OFFS. BE PREPARED
TO
SERVE AND TO PROTECT.
Some
won’t be back to join us in the fall and all of us will suffer as our jobs
will be more difficult in the fall as well (larger class
sizes). YOUR
ESTA GENERAL OFFICERS AND YOUR SITE OFFICERS AND REPRESENTATIVES CANNOT DO
THIS JOB ALONE. THERE IS MORE
SAFETY AND SUPPORT IF WE ALL COME TOGETHER. Substitutes By
Mike Brennan, EV I
recently had occasion to call in sick. Besides vowing to never go another
year without a flu shot, it also got me thinking about a 2008 study by
Raegen Miller from the Center For American Progress claiming that
frequently absent teachers were reducing their effectiveness by as much as
if they were teaching without a credential. That’s a serious reduction in
effectiveness for what most of us would consider a natural part of work
life. Things happen and
people need time to take care of them whether it’s recuperating from an
illness or staying home to take care of a sick child. The study proposed a number of
good ideas but like most “progressive” ideas for educational reform, it
suggested improvements on the status quo rather than a solution to the
problem. The
problem, of course, is how to ensure that students consistently have
quality educational experiences when their regular teachers aren’t
there. This is a subset of
the overall problem of ensuring that students have consistently quality
educational experiences every time they go to school. I was about half way through my
methods courses reading reams of pedagogy when I realized that we approach
teaching like Henry Ford used to make cars. Turn out the highest number of
units for the least cost in dollars possible. I wasn’t learning how to teach
well, I was learning how to teach the largest volume of students
well. Students weren’t unique
individuals, they were discrete collections of Maslow hierarchies, Piaget
developmental plateaus, and Vygotsky cognitions. It’s no wonder that substitutes
became place holders for the real thing in our post industrial assembly
line model of education. We
all know how the appearance of a strange face showing up to conduct a
class elicits a round of cheers and remarks like, “no work today, there’s
a sub!” We understand that
students naturally expect to relax when they are “edutained” by a
substitute teacher. I’ll bet
few of us believed the consequences of taking a few days off during a
year. According to Raegen’s
study every 10 days of absence reduces the equivalent experience level by
2 to three years for math teachers.
If a 5 year teacher is absent for 10 days in a school year it’s
like having a 2 or 3 year teacher for the whole year. This is something they were able
to measure regarding math teachers but it must have a corollary for the
rest of us.
Problems
with the current system are that substitutes don’t have to be well trained
and aren’t necessarily going to be substituting in classes for which they
earned their undergraduate degree.
Combine this “fitness for duty” with the fact that regular teachers
usually try to prepare simplified, ‘sub-proof,” lessons and you understand
the reduction in learning that happens when you’re gone. I
suppose we all have our horror stories. I remember coming in to see a
substitute in a pony tail, torn, stained, T-shirt, jogging shorts,
sneakers with dress socks, playing his guitar by himself in a corner of
the room completely ignoring the students. Recently, my students reported
that the sub tossed my lesson plan aside and pontificated on some subject
or another as an explanation of why there was nothing on paper to verify
that anything had been accomplished that day. I know this was true because the
story was consistent throughout my classes and the same afore said
pontificated subject was mentioned each period. Raegen
suggests that subs should be as well trained as regular teachers and
teachers should be provided significant monetary incentives to keep their
attendance levels as high as possible. I think he means well and he’s
being pragmatic. Our
educational system is not going to change radically over night. Raegen is making suggestions that
he knows can reasonably be accepted and implemented by both management and
the teachers’ unions. I can
envision a more radical approach.
Reduce student to teacher ratios to 15-1. This would not only improve
everyday learning but every second teacher would be a prospective
substitute for a sick colleague.
If one teacher can look after 30 students right now than one
teacher could look after 30 students to cover for a sick colleague. Teachers and administrators have a
vested interest in solving this problem. As usual, this problem hits
underperforming schools hardest but all schools will benefit from a more
efficient methods of handling teacher absences.
Classifieds
Notary
Service Discount
to ESTA members and family. Contact Chris Tsuji,
408-226-0674,notarychris@cheerful.com. Wedding/Event
DJ. $120.00
per hour. We are a husband wife team that will work very hard to make your
special day perfect. Contact Anthony Kudsi (IHS) at (408) 858-4555 for
more info or to make an appointment. Fancy
a nice cuppa tea? Invite
family and friends to enjoy an English tea in the comfort of your home!
Contact Jan Treadgold (IH, ret.) at 916-691-9725 or email:
jteatime@frontiernet.net for details. TEACHERS
EARN EXTRA DOLLAR$$$$$$. EARN OVER $36 PER HOUR TEACHINGDRIVER TRAINING IN
YOUR CAR. GO TO www.economicdrivingschool.com AND SELECT THE LINK TITLED
“instructors and training.” WE HAVE TAUGHT DRIVER TRAINING OVER 29
YEARS. 2GB Flash Drives for
sale for $15 each. Buy as many as you can; this is a scholarship fund
raiser. Make checks payable to Yerba Buena High School/RUC. Contact
person: Mr. Ortiz Remember
Spirit Demerson? Spirit
has created an online 100 percent renewable energy website for Green Glamour! Teachers will receive 10 percent
off on all purchases on top of other great savings on organic and
eco-friendly beauty products and lovely accessories and handbags - all
researched for re-cyclable and organic content. Just enter Teach20 at
checkout!
www.spiritbeautylounge.com
And check out her interview with the Today Show editor at
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27283097/from/ET/ TRAVEL: Traveling
to New York City. Call the
expert. Flat fee for 2 hour
consult on all things NYC (cheap eats,sights, shows,
etc). Call
Silvia Amico for appt at 510-552-2276 or e-mail at
gregandsilvia@sbcglobal.net.
|