We’re the ones standing up for students

MR. GOODWIN: Last week, I was forwarded your commentary about me after you read an e-mail exchange between myself and another teacher. Please find my response to your commentary below:

"But there's another hurdle that's not so well known [to fixing education]. It's harder to root out because it hides in plain sight."

There are no substantive arguments or points in your piece. The only way your words have power is through the use of fear.

"But with his views of what teaching is about, Sam has gone 'round the bend. His plan to help students learn has precious little to do with the classroom."

I don't actually share my views of what teaching is about in the e-mail I am quoted from. What I do write about is my belief that it is our responsibility to fight injustice. If we want all of our nation's students to have access to quality education we must insist on equity in all spheres of society.

My view is that teaching takes incredibly hard work and dedication. I am in my school building from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. most days, if not later, yet my work hours are 8 to 3. As a dual language teacher, I strive to engage my students in ways that tap into their rich lives, cultures and experiences of the world. And, as I mentioned in my e-mail, I find culturally competent and anti-racist pedagogy is more effective in engaging students than the monotony of test-prep.

Do our students need to learn to read, write, have strong mathematical literacy and critical thinking skills? Definitely. Do we need to teach these skills and competencies in the most engaging ways possible? Absolutely. In the long term, the goal of education should be for students to love learning, to think and engage intellectually with aspects of their world that matter. Those are some of my views on teaching, in case you were wondering.

"We get it that you don't have a clue about the role of your profession. You're a 'social justice' type, too much a community organizer to be stuck in front of bored kids who can't read. Street protests definitely are more exciting."

Part of what makes me "well-educated and qualified" for my job is that I understand the relationships between structural inequalities in this society and the failure of the education system to provide equitable opportunities for my students. I know this because I see these connections every day in my school and city, and because it has been well-documented by the nation's top scholars.

Mr. Goodwin, if you're interested in doing some homework, you should read the work of Gary Orfield, professor, UCLA, and Pauline Lipman, professor, University of Illinois-Chicago, on the political economy of schooling and the civil rights implications of school funding formulas; Daniel Solorzano at UCLA and Pedro Noguera at NYU on the school-to-prison pipelines for Black and Latino students; and Kris Gutierrez at the University of Colorado at Boulder on culturally competent educators.

These readings will get you started on understanding the reasons why social justice education is needed in this country, and why we know that these connections are more research-based and relevant than the policies backed by the 1 percent trying to capitalize on public schooling. Part of being a well-educated professional is knowing the research, and the research says it's time for some meaningful change in our public schools and systems.

"Heaven help New York, and especially the students of teachers like Sam. With 'educators' like that, they don't have a prayer."

The implication that I could not be a good teacher because I fight for justice and a quality education for our students, and believe that tests deform that quality when their importance is exaggerated, is outrageous. The quality of a teacher can never be measured by student test scores alone; not even by basing 40 percent of an evaluation on scores, as has been proposed in the new teacher evaluation system.

A teacher, for example, who has a gift for connecting with struggling or hurting students in his or her class and helps them achieve an emotional state where they can learn again is a quality teacher. This process is often not reflected in test scores. A teacher who raises their student's test scores through endless test prep is not, and should not be, the definition of a quality teacher.

Do we need a better (or actually, one at all) supervision program to mentor and support teachers? YES! Instead of educational consultants, we should hire more coaches and master teachers as mentors to do the real work of supervision and support in the classrooms.

Of course, those positions cannot be contracted out to your unqualified friends. I refuse to simply allow the mayor and governor, or you, Mr. Goodwin, to use the educational crisis facing our students as a political chip in the great game of "how to make the rich richer."

That has been the biggest "reform" we have seen under Mayor Bloomberg: more million-dollar contracts to private companies, billions spent on high stakes testing, more highly paid consultants in DOE central, a transfer of public monies into private hands under the veil of charter schools, fewer teachers and resources, larger class sizes for our students and privatization of our public school space. It is disgusting, and as a teacher who cares passionately about my students, I won't stop fighting.

Thank you, Mr. Goodwin, for laying bare the paucity of your knowledge and the corruption of your belief system. Yours are not opinions based either on fact or experience, but on a script written by the wealthy and powerful--people who do not want those whom they oppress to learn to think critically about that oppression.

And thank you for the free publicity for this movement. You had so little to say about the issues that you allowed my words to speak for themselves. Real teachers, doing the day-to-day work of educating students, have no voice these days. Our sweat equity cannot buy airtime from the 1 percent.

In solidarity,
Sam Coleman
3rd grade dual language public school teacher, Brooklyn