Autumn days have zipped by. I’ve met with the parents of every student in my class and sent home report cards for the first of three evaluation periods. We’ve been to Mission San Juan Bautista, the culmination of the first unit of California history, from the Native Americans to the explorers to the Californios, settlers governed from Spain and later Mexico.
This year, writing process procedures have been established much earlier than I managed last year. Most are busy writing the third or fourth in a collection of pieces, non-fiction personal narrative or reports on, for example, the Miwok, California Native American tribe. “How to Annoy the Teacher,” is a composition that seems to be loved by all, even the most conscientious, well-behaved students. They can fantasize by leaps and bounds.
Not long after the latest update on our district school budget problems was presented at a staff meeting, I read an article on the front page of the Sunday, November 15, New York Times, “Selling Lesson Plans Online, Teachers Raise Cash and Questions” by Winnie Hu.
While I can find an abundance of lessons and teaching ideas to download on the Internet, this was the first I’d heard about selling lesson plans. I suppose, in a free market society, teachers can sell their plans, just like a book or a better potato masher. It may make sense if the money is used to upgrade the materials in the classroom, but when I read that someone had used the cash for new kitchen countertops, I thought enough is enough. Want to see the new thing? Check out Teachers Pay Teachers.
Just shows, though, the problem for teachers who wish to be innovative and have access to the best for their students and the inability of taxpayers, even those wishing schools well, to bring themselves to pay for the success of public schools in this country.
Here’s another school budgets issue. I was talking to my sister-in-law who has a six-year-old in a Los Angeles charter school because the local public school is too big and too overwhelmed by second language and poor families. She didn’t think her child would get enough attention. Funny thing, the charter school uses classrooms in the public school building which leads to complaints on both sides about space, storage, and access to the playground.
My cousin sent a series of articles from the September 2009 Denver Post on charter schools, detailing the sunny-side-up viewpoint of the League of Charter Schools and the down-side views of longtime public school educators. A “Letter to the Editor” from Louise Benson, Broomfield, Colorado, way back on Sunday, September 20, suggested my point of view: improvement for public schools means “teachers and staff buy in to programs known to increase achievement, and… avoid some union work rules that impede better instruction.”
Late November my class started its unit on earth science, analyzing rocks from each strata of the earth’s crust, delving down to the core of burning magma, always enjoyed by fourth graders.
What got in the way?
My jury duty summons from the Santa Clara County Superior Court arrived in the mail. Same problem for every working adult, it came just at the wrong moment. I spent my time writing lesson plans that will disrupt the class as little as possible, while doing my citizen’s duty checking on the Internet daily to see if my number had come up.
I never had to go to court, we spent our days looking at rocks and using all the strategies I know and the lesson plans I’ve gathered (without paying a penny) to make sure my students are achieving.
I feel lucky. The parents in my district are happy with its highly-qualified teachers, innovations, and facilities; not asking to set up a charter school with funds from my strapped district.
Next is the Gold Rush unit. Nuggets of shiny metal from the dark earth glittered in men’s eyes, a symbol of California wealth, hidden right now in the dark of the state legislature.
Tags: charter schools, highly qualified, jury duty, lesson plans. pay for lessons, school budgets