Tag: blogging

A Blogging Hero Says Goodbye

rbe

There are an number of exceptional bloggers in the public education blogosphere and I thoroughly enjoy reading many of them.  However, as much as I enjoy a number of them, my absolute favorite has always been “Reality-Based Educator” from the Perdido Street School blog.  I enjoy his willingness to call it like it is and cut through the nonsense to get to the heart of issues.  Nobody’s voice has better represented that of the rank and file teacher than his.

So it is with tremendous disappointment that I read his goodbye post today.  He certainly has every right to stop blogging as the frequency of his posts and the research and reading behind those posts must take a tremendous amount of time.  However he will be greatly missed by many readers.  Here is to hoping he still keeps an active presence on Twitter.

Thank you RBE for being such a strong voice in favor of students, teachers, and communities!

Here is his Goodbye and Good Luck post…

Goodbye And Good Luck

This will be the last post at Perdido Street School blog.

I have been blogging for ten years at various sites.

For reasons that have been brewing for some time now, I have decided ten years is enough.

I can no longer give the blog the kind of attention I have given it in the past and so, I’ve decided it’s time to shut it down and move on.

Thanks to all the readers and commenters over the years.

Thanks especially to Arthur Goldstein at NYC Educator, who got me started at this all those years ago, and thanks to my blogging buddies Norm Scott at Ed Notes Online, Sean Crowley at B-Lo Ed Scene, James Eterno at ICEUFT blog, Brian at Port Jefferson Station Teachers Association blog and Chaz at Chaz’s School Daze.

The battles in education these past ten years have been brutal and we have seen our profession transformed into something barely recognizable from when I first started teaching fifteen years ago.

Common Core, teacher evaluations tied to test scores, EngageNY scripts and drive-by Danielson observations have ensured that many of us are teaching by numbers if wish to remain in our jobs for any period of time.

If you’re a reader of this blog, you know that all the “change” we hear that is happening in education – from Cuomo’s Common Core Task Force “reforms” to the changes NYSED Commissioner MaryEllen Elia says we’ll see out of the State Education Department, is just so much window dressing.

The instructional focus of the Common Core remains.

The bludgeon of the Endless Testing regime on individual schools remains.

For many teachers, teacher evaluations tied to test scores remain.

The unions have run ads lately touting change, but quite frankly, there is no change  – just more of the same with minor tweaks.

Thankfully there is a parent-led pushback movement in Opt Out that continues to terrify the politicians and educrats, that continues to keep them off balance and on the defensive.

I must admit, I don’t have a ton of optimism for any positive substantive change coming to public education in the near term, but if any does come, it will be as a result of the Opt Out movement and all the tireless folks there doing the work to end the Endless Testing regime.

When I first started blogging, the corporate education reform movement was in the ascendant, with no real pushback to them in the media or politics.

Despite the media narrative of the “powerful teachers unions,” the unions never really tried to counter the reformers – they instead  collaborated with them on teacher evaluations, Common Core, Danielson, streamlined contracts and the like.

But the Opt Out movement has become that pushback and therein lies the hope I have for the future of public education – that parents, along with teachers, will take back their schools from the corporate reformers, the educrats, the consultants, the edu-entrepreneurs and the bought-off politicians.

If there is any bright light in the maelstrom of deform that we inhabit these days, it is the advent of a parent-led movement against the powers that be and their corporate backers to transform schools into one size fits all factories and children into interchangeable widgets.

On the union side, there are many great folks pushing back against the union leaders in the AFT, NEA, NYSUT and UFT, trying to end top-down unionism and make the unions more representative of the views of the rank and file.

In NYC, that movement is led by the people at MORE and before I go from the blogging scene, I want to say that I fully support the MORE candidates in the coming UFT elections and hope that we can finally get some people into the UFT leadership who fight for teachers and the teaching profession rather than sell us and it out piece by piece.

And with that, I say goodbye and good luck.

Let’s Try Something New

I’d like to take a bit of a break from our typical posts on here, consisting of news related to unions and public education in general to focus on something new.  Across the school district we are employed in, PJSTA members can be found doing extraordinary work of all different varieties.  Much of this work tends to go unrecognized as it is fairly ordinary for teachers to do extraordinary things all under the umbrella of “doing our jobs.”

I am on Twitter and tend to follow any PJSTA members who I discover to be on there.  Early this fall I followed one of our members, Matt Drucker, and quickly discovered something very cool that he was working on.  At the time Matt had very recently started blogging and was starting off by taking on a challenge titled, “Reflective Teaching: A 30-Day Blogging Challenge.”  The challenge asked teachers to write a reflective blog post each day for thirty days in regards to our profession.  Matt decided to give it a try because he was new to blogging and thought that it’d be a helpful way to get started.

” I feel that this blogging experience has opened my eyes to a whole new way to make connections with other teachers from all over the world.  It’s great to see that we have so many things in common and it has provided an additional support system.  It has also helped open my eyes to new ways to integrate and use technology in and out of the classroom.” Matt said.

Following that initial challenge Matt has gone on to continue blogging about his teaching experiences while at the same time taking on additional blogging challenges.  I highly recommend that you check out his blog Sig. Drucker’s travels through education…

Over the course of my career, as a teacher at Clinton, Norwood, and Terryville, I have had the chance to work with the overwhelming majority of our elementary teachers.  I have gotten to know many of the others through meetings, professional development, and other district related activities.  However one of my regrets is that I haven’t had the opportunity to get to know many of the secondary teachers outside of my union work.  As is the case with our elementary teachers, it is clear that there is some really outstanding work going on at both JFK and Comsewogue High School.  Social media has given me a bit of a window into some of the exceptional work that our members are doing at the secondary level.  As an elementary teacher it is both comforting and exciting to see my students heading into such capable hands.

If you have examples of PJSTA members doing great work in your buildings (and I know there are many examples in every building!) feel free to pass it along to me.  Additionally if you want to share some of your own best practices I would be happy to publish them here on the blog as well.  You can contact me via email at wogteacher@gmail.com