EDUC2250 BLOG When Reality is Your Own, When Your First Teacher Dies

Margaret Telfer Connell 7/28/26-2/19/2012

I last spoke with her Feb 13, 2012.  She had been admitted to the hospital with dehydration and a fever about 72 hours earlier and very rapidly lost consciousness due to a right lower lobe pneumonia and sepsis.  Antibiotics, fluids and some assorted pixie dust and two days time roused her to full alertness and she appeared to be on the road to health.  I spoke with her the morning of my birthday and she sounded a little frail, but sharp and in her usual inquisitive manner she asked if I had taught the instructors of my ATL classes anything.

That was my mother's approach to learning; be positive, a little satirical and supportive.

We chatted for about 15 minutes that morning and she mentioned how happy she was that I was moving forward down a different path, quoted a bit of Robert Frost and said she couldn't wait to get back to, "those old women at the residential living center and finish the book she was three quarters of the way through."  We ended with a little reminiscence of the beach house she was determined to visit this summer for a month, a discussion on how she could have a son turning my age since she was 39 and she wished me a happy birthday and that I should call her tomorrow.

That night she slipped back into a semi-comatose state that made the next day call not possible.  Physically she was improving and they sedated her due to pain from her osteoporosis plagued back, again making calls to her not feasible. My brother kept me informed that she was improving slowly, he is an Anesthesiologist, and the funny looking guy in the middle of the picture.  That Friday night there was a distinct change in her condition.  The pneumonia was better, but there was an irregular heart beat (atrial fibrillation) and tests revealed possible cardiac damage.  Saturday morning she was unresponsive and breathing erratically.

Early Sunday morning, 12:30 A.M. MST she passed away, 3 of 4 children by her side and another (myself) completely unaware of the past 48 hours due to cell phone failure.  I heard of her death 12 hours after she passed away when I realized the phone wasn't working and reset the processor.  A flight of emails, voice messages and texts detailed the course.  To read more(http://grokkingforscience.blogspot.com/2012/02/margaret-july-28-1928-feb-19-2012-much.html).

I'm getting a land line.

But this is my blog for the week.  It is longer than normal (some might question that).  Being not as sharp as usual I have asked a friend to finish writing from notes I gave him.

I wonder why every decade or so we have a crisis in education.  I just haven't quite fathomed this as of yet and frankly, I probably never will.  When I was a kid it was different, not perfect, and certainly not equal.  Mr. Frawley was my favorite teacher, that I do remember. He made learning fun and interesting.  He was the High School science teacher (they didn't have special teachers for special areas in my day) and he taught biology, chemistry, physics and something else I can't remember, but it was fun.  My favorite memory was the day that Sue Gross accidentally mixed baking soda and vinegar instead of water, the whole room became this slurry of white foam and they evacuated the school.  That was science.  Nowadays he probably would have been fired, back then it was funny.  We didn't know much about toxic stuff, heck my dad got me a radon wristwatch for my 12th birthday, glowed in the dark.  I feel sorry now for that happiness knowing hundreds of women in Korea or somewhere got cancer from making my watch.  School was different, it was reading, writing and arithmetic with most of my other teachers keeping us in order with the ruler or the dreaded walk to Mr. Facey's office and the belt.  They call that corporal punishment these days, then it was just what to expect for lighting a couple firecrackers under Suzie McCann's desk. I think I still have a small scar from the buckle and used to show it off to the guys as my right of passage.

We didn't have diversity or special needs or no child left behind (except for Rupert Jones when we ran the 440 dash, he liked chocolate way too much).  And many of us learned enough to get to college, but then most people didn't go to college, they went to work.  Seems to me when jobs started getting taken over by machines that colleges got a lot more popular.

My kids time was the new math and the idea that the answer wasn't as important as how you got there.  That always bothered me.  I don't want to go up in a jet that has been made by engineers who did the work the right way and then got the wrong answers.  I like right answers.  So did Mrs. Phillips the math teacher, she taught to the curriculum but made the students do it the "right" way as well.  I'd fly in her kids' planes.  I remember my daughter coming in one night and saying  14 + 10 = 23.  I nearly broke my Princess phone calling her.  Then my daughter said it was Base 5, silly.  You have to understand the process, a little Tom Lehrer:

This was the early 60's. Odd, strange, no wonder so many students dropped out and drop in, hippies, free love and learning was infinitely obscure.

Now we have social workers, psychologists, diagnoses and medications.  We have beautiful schools with no books.  My schooling started in an old tobacco warehouse they turned into a school when it shut down.  We had books and desks and a teacher.  And most of my teachers I hated because they were strict, but looking back they really cared.

I have to admit though, my favorite ritual my dad did each 4th of july was to end the fireworks with a little red school house you could buy that shot screamers, burned and blew up.

So what is the next and best method to school kids. I believe I have the answer,  Educate them and teach them well.  And to do that you need teachers that aren't considered the sole source of a child's learning.  You also need teachers that have experienced something other than teaching.  I am a pretty good writer they say, most of that I learned by reading and because I had a role model.  There was this girl three years ahead of me who got a scholarship for writing an essay on Emily someone's poems.  She was the student assistant for my class and taught me more about format and structure and all that textbook stuff by the red ink method.  I knew I was writing better the less red and the more black on the paper.

So I have put a lot of effort into putting red marks all over John's ideas.  Pluralistic and multicultural teaching was his idea.  Make all students from KG to 12th grade learn half a day in Spanish and half a day in English.  Sounds like Canada and they end up bilingual.  What a thought.

But I like it, with a little difference.  I want a four day school week, all year long with 2 or three 2 week breaks.  I want schools to be less than 300 children and I want them to stay together as a groups from K to 12.  I want leaders and the leaders to mentor the less motivated from the beginning.  I want them to know the basics and to have the capacity to think and not regurgitate.  I want every child to have a fair chance and to be given an equal opportunity.  My mother said that,"Education is the power to think and open doors".  I don' want my child to think Africa is a country and ketchup a vegetable.  I want a 10 year moratoriumon changing anything, because it takes time to see if something works.  And I want teachers who are paid for performance and not a time card. I believe that no lesson should be left behind because one student can't master it.  Get rid of the reams of forests and electrical compillations and teach to the student to the students' strengths.  Let the mentors learn to teach by helping the slower graspers to catch up.  And keep the school boards for honor awards at the end of the year and make them work on funding schools.  Positive images, positive roll models and positive teachers.

As for teachers, there should be no formal classrooms. Mix them throughout the classes through segments of three years.  400 students, makes 32 per year.  And keep them together the entire 12 years.  Diversify them and mix them from the start and keep them as a unit.  Make them a family that is taught by strong ethics.  A kid knows that he or she is going to have to get along with the others. Instead of the posh and highbrow schools and the deprived lower SES schools- lets mix them from stage one and keep them together. Of course people move in and move out, but direct fits from the new to replace the old.

And add competition from an academic standard from school to school.  Sports teams might be a group of four of these small communities.  Call them sister schools or something. Not everyone (and this may be the only line I didn't redden like a steak tartar) has a mother who pushed him to write, read and think by providing books and reading to him every night,  This is a family forming as a school and one which will be purposely diversified, they will read to each other and support each other- eventually.

The world has far too many paper and pencil pushers of the ideals of education.  Fire them all and replace the experts who never taught but have degrees and let the teachers teach to the student needs.

Mr. Johnson was born a couple years after the Civil War.  He got his education from his parents and his work.  He never went to six grade, yet he was the smartest man I ever knew.  He needed to know something, he would read about it and put it in action.  He is now the breeder of bulls that are stronger, better for consumption (sorry my vegetarian friends) and produce strong offspring.

Of course there are a hundered things wrong with this approach, but there might be a thousand right.  Relationships build learning,  Let's look at a model of diversity, bilingualism and students that stay together through school.

Then in 10 years we can start all over again.

Or maybe not.  I'll be watching, and crossing my fingers.  I believe that teacher knows best, and if all teachers continue to teach each other and identify and combine into a smooth unit, good things might happen.

I have to go now, I'm talking with this neat lady who just got here and she's reading me some Hemingway before bed.  Sleep well and if you do want a day off its 2 parts vinegar to one part baking soda.  A little red dye makes it all the funnier.


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