I don’t get to attend the meetings between educators and policymakers when they talk about teacher ‘accountability,’ but this is how I envision the conversation often plays out…
Happy viewing! (with captions!)
I don’t get to attend the meetings between educators and policymakers when they talk about teacher ‘accountability,’ but this is how I envision the conversation often plays out…
Happy viewing! (with captions!)
Okay. This is seriously funny, with the emphasis on both serious AND funny. I love the dripping water in the background (a leaky roof for sure, but also torture, I wondered?) and the upward pointing finger as the politician repeats the words: “We want your students to get higher test scores.” I know the mechanical voices come with the program, but, well, they certainly added to the “atmosphere.”
Sometimes the best critique is laced with a deadly dose of humor.
Thanks.
Thanks, Steve. I had a lot of fun making it. Laughter takes away some of the sting of horrendous policy…
Yes, humor takes away the sting and calls attention to the stink, simultaneously.
Also, I agree with Bill below (probably you do, too.) These conversations don’t happen in any place but an educator’s own mind…about 2AM in the morning, usually. 🙁
Here’s the hitch, Scott: These conversations never actually happen. Policymakers are completely uninterested in what teachers have to say about education and/or accountability.
Heck — I’d take this conversation as is because it would AT LEAST give me the chance to be heard. As it is, I’m ignored.
That’s what’s so frustrating about the conversation around holding teachers accountable — we’re not even a part of it.
#sheeshchat
Bill
“Is it time for teachers to be revolting?
I do not believe, except for civil action, we can change what is happening today.
The lunatics are in control of the asylum.
What we can do is try to do is teach in ways that we know the students can relate too, to attempt to give our students the education they deserve, not the pedantic hearsay that bears no relation to their needs, for their futures.
We just need to share our ideas and support each other.”
http://theuneducatededucator.edublogs.org/2013/05/13/revolting_teachers/
Wonderful! 😀 Well, you know what I mean :/
We watch with horror on this side of the pond – as it’s coming our way next 🙁
Monkey Dust – Government School Targets
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLvDKI1T14Q&feature=related
Marty Gull – Targets
http://martygull.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/chris-port-blog-130-marty-gull-targets.html
That is the status quo thinking – of the business but not the workers. They know that things must change. But we can’t do it scattered all over the world. We must do it together. Come visit our site. Check out our video: http://youtu.be/c03vnPbzbAk
Change is happening. Are you going to be a part of it?
“Higher test scores.”
Last year, in a heated discussion, one of my raters asked if I wouldn’t agree to some minimum improvement in test passing rates.
I told him I wouldn’t, and couldn’t. What’s the barrier? he asked. Don’t I know that we need to be flexible and change.
I reminded him that I worked with Ted Bell, and was “Present at the Creation” of the Excellence in Education Commission Report, by my old university president David Gardner, with the executive director my then-future colleague Milton Goldberg. I told him he wasn’t recognizing flexibility, nor achievement.
“Just a 5% improvement in passing?” he begged.
I asked him if math rules apply in social studies, where I was teaching.
Yes. Okay, how can I improve 5% on a 100% pass rate?
“You don’t understand,” I was told. “You must improve.”
He’s right: I don’t understand that sort of reasoning.