pobod

The last thing Native children need is totally untrained teachers with huge turnover every year. We just had a piece that Finland does so well due to its highlt trained teachers. Why would we wish untrained second class non-teachers on this vulnerable population.

They deserve our best not a second class effort. Teach for America is a bad idea, why duplicate it here?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/02/28/its-time-for-teach-for-america-to-fold-former-tfaer/

Part 1

I had to laugh at Doug’s response, but then I stopped laughing, because his response is a common response to keep the status-quo of educating children based on the inequalities. Live in a rural area? Too bad!  Live on a native reserve?  Too bad! Live in an inner city low income neighbourhood? Too bad!  Then there is the sub-populations found in any school that are not part of the greater norm who have learning difficulties? Too bad! All of the above are students who received sub-par education based on their social-income status within the parameters of the beliefs and edicts of the public education stakeholders.

Sounds harsh?  It should be, but instead of me telling you, how about a few links that will tell the story of Teach Canada, and the two guys behind the project.

In 2011 - “There is a new movement concerning Canadian education attempting to get off the ground:”
http://pnhill.wordpress.com/2011/05/03/teach-for-canada-an-aspiring-movement-for-canadian-education/

On Action Canada - the bios of Goldenberg and Hill
http://www.actioncanada.ca/en/fellows/fellows/20102011-fellows/#adamgoldenberg

In 2012 - ““Educational inequality is one of the great unspoken public policy challenges,” said Teach for Canada’s Adam Goldenberg during a presentation at SPPG on Thursday afternoon. Goldenberg and Teach for Canada co-founder Kyle Hill stopped by U of T to deliver their presentation, “How Can We Make Education More Equal?” and to publicly discuss their Teach for Canada program for the first time.”
http://ppgreview.ca/2012/09/16/seen-and-heard-teach-for-canada/

A little bit more on Hill - who is getting the lion’s share of hits on the web - http://www.sauvescholars.org/en/scholar/kyle-hill

In the Huff and Post - September, 2012 - “Only 7.8 per cent of Canadians dropped out of high school last year, a figure that has steadily fallen for more than two decades, according to data from Statistics Canada. But scratch below that boast-worthy figure, which is lower than many other developed countries globally, and the dropout numbers actually climb from 17 per cent among rural students to more than 60 per cent for First Nations and Inuit students in remote communities.

“In our own country, in our own backyard, there are third-world conditions, and you don’t have to go to sub-Saharan Africa for a summer, or for a year or two years, to actually do development work,” says Adam Goldenberg, a former Liberal Party staffer on Parliament Hill who is now a law student at Yale University.”  http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/neil-parmar/teach-for-canada-schools-_b_1882963.html

The Globe concludes - “Ultimately, he says, Teach For Canada is a seeding strategy.

“The long-term dream is that we will have Teach for Canada fellows sitting at a Cabinet table, sitting in newsrooms, sitting in boardrooms on Bay Street, where they can have an impact on educational inequalities from those vantage points.”

Part 2

Aha - finally the beginnings of well-place people having economic/political/social power to speak on the behalf of the students who are getting a raw deal from the public education stakeholders, which Teach Canada is the vehicle that will begin the journey to transformed a public education system that refuses to change and wants to keep the status-quo, the false images and misconceptions of students and parents to maintain their authority over what will be and not be in the public schools. For many of the students living on reserves, rural communities and inner city schools, they become the have-nots saddled with poorer skills in the 3 Rs, because the public schools will not provide the education services and more importantly, the teachers who will not used excuses to maintained the disturbing data -  In Hill’s speech to the OISE, “Goldenberg and Hill’s data shows that the six least-populous provinces have the lowest national test scores, and that at the sub-provincial level, urban areas vastly outperform smaller communities. “This inequality is all but absent from public discourse,” said Hill, who emphasized that the media’s positive presentation of Canadian education focuses on good news at the expense of addressing more disturbing inequalities.

Citing the quality of teachers as the “number one determinant” in students’ level of achievement, Goldenberg and Hill have developed a Teach for Canada program modeled after Teach for America and Teach First in the U.K. Their plan consists of recruiting students from top universities, and placing them in under-serviced communities for two years to educate, influence, and hopefully inspire students. By showing young leaders the gaps in our nation’s celebrated educational system, Teach for Canada also hopes to prioritize the problem of education inequality.”
http://ppgreview.ca/2012/09/16/seen-and-heard-teach-for-canada/

Music to my ears. A good place to start is in Newfoundland and Labrador. Inequalities abound…......

As for the hypocritical stance of - “They deserve our best not a second class effort” by the public education establishment?  Considered the education data outcome streams - Is it the best effort by the public education stakeholders to keep 94 to 96 % of LD students from coast to coast at the bottom of the achievement charts? Is it the best effort by the the public education stakeholders of ensuring a steady supply of young adults entering the work force with low levels of literacy and numeracy skills after 12 years of schooling, and where the latest stats by the OECD are indicating 49.7 % and 55 % of Canadian adults have low skills in literacy and numeracy respectively?  Note - both groups represent a cross-section of all social-income groups, and is compounded putting more students at risk if they are attending school in the inner-city, rural and at the native reserves.

Best effort my foot. Sounds about right when Goldenberg is quoted - “In our own country, in our own backyard, there are third-world conditions…....” in reference to the education being received at the public schools”  I find it admirable and worthy, that Goldenberg and Hill is seeking equality in areas of Canada, that have never been the priority of the provincial education ministries.

pobod

http://pilantsbusinessethics.com/2013/10/10/teach-for-america-has-always-been-a-bad-idea/

lets give our 1st nations, first class qualified teachers.

You see Doug - it is empty words - on the public education establishment especially when it comes to natives. They are treated in the same way as other students - the soft bigotry of low expectations with side dishes of 19th century biases and misconceptions being reinforced in the 21st century public schools.

Teach Canada, will be attempting to change it by doing something that has never been attempted in the public education system in Canada - fixed the inequalities of the Canadian public school. The public education establishment loves to dance on the backs of the First Nations, the rural students, the low-income students, and all the other school factors to sort out starting in grade 1, in order to delivered sub-par education services based on the dated 19th century concept that children are hard to teach, because parents do not raise their children in the proper way according to the public education theorists in the ivory towers….....of course all the evidence is in the student outcomes and in the headlines of the news media but most importantly - in black and white - the public education theorists and pedagogy theorists who will tell you in black and white, the public schools need a better class of students and parents. Ergo - the only solution that is put out by the public education establishment - the soft bigotry of low expectations for one and all, in equal portions. The parents who have the means and the money are welcome to go to private services but the rest of them are condemned to equal portions for the next 12 years.

pobod

Funny Nancy, The Finnish experience is that perhaps the highest qualified teachers in the world get the best results so your conclusion is that anyone can teach and we should foist upon our vulnerable native communities, totally untrained well meaning amateurs.

Brilliant.

They deserve our best, not amateur hour.

See what I mean - Doug ignores the inequalities that are nursed and nurtured by the public education stakeholders and its establishment, to maintain first political power and second, their authority over all things education in Canada.

So instead of acknowledging it and discussing it, he moves to Finland - where A) the Finland’s teacher union is the virtue of being apolitical in the context that the teachers’ union has been neutralized, where the teachers’ union in Finland - will not be dancing on the backs of their students, to gain political and authority powers to control what will be or not be in the schools. Bonus, the Finland teachers are quite glad to supervised their students in the playground, which is so unlike the Canadian teachers who demand their paid breaks along with their perks of fancy staff rooms while insisting on school rules such as no rubber balls, no running, and now no touching in the playground in the poorly supervised playground for the few students that are lucky to have a recess in 21st century Canada.

B) The Finland teachers have total autonomy to choose curriculum and instruction methods within the national framework of the guidelines laid out by the Finnish government.

C) No where did I applied anyone can teach. Teach Canada are highly qualified candidates who may not hold a teachers’ certificate. However you are implying that Goldenberg and Hill are not qualified to teach, given their high levels of education, one being a Rhodes scholar. I bet both men would have more knowledge in understanding a parent’s concern over their children’s reading difficulties than a whole school full of educators with teachers’ certificates.

No doubt in their travels, they have encountered individuals who have not been well served by the public schools, and the incredible odds against them to have successful lives. I can give you a very long list of individuals across the globe include Nobel prize winners who were not well served by the public education system. They all have one thing in common, they were all told by the education establishment in one form or another, they were thick, stupid and any other adjectives of stupid that rests largely on teaching training, the curriculum, instructional methods and lastly, the pedagogy/education theories.

But alas, the public education establishment may be in for a rough ride, in the next 15 years - richly deserved - time to clean house from top to bottom and get rid of excuse makers.

pobod

Teach for Canada/America are not highly qualified. University degrees are only half a program. If you do not have a teachers certificate, you are not a teacher.

What next amateur doctors?

If you told public school parents in the white majority community their teachers would not be certified teachers they would run you out of town.

It is racism and paternalism to push UNQUALIFIED teachers on vulnerable populations. They turn over every year or 2 causing what is known in education as churn, the constant chaos in the system.

I understand the idea behind a Teach for America or Teach for Canada. It’s like Malkin said, if the way to bring up the less fortunate is through education then why invest in something shoddy. The programme should be designed like a Doctors without Borders so that trained professionals can take a year or two off and help in capacity building and the actual teaching bit. That being said, there’s also the debate about whether changing teachers that often is actually harmful or not.

I wonder if it is possible to
a) change the teaching techniques so you aren’t just putting out there just what is on the text book. Add role plays, educational games like this one I use with my students (http://www.jumpstart.com) . Maybe the student attendance will increase as well
b) make the job of teaching seem like a dream job for people - which probably means better salaries, more incentives etc.

I’m not completely sold on the idea of Teach for Canada. But it could be argued that it is better than nothing!

Local resolution: That the BCTF vigorously oppose the implementation of Teach for Canada program in the province of BC

Great hat deserver for this. The Finland teachers have total autonomy to choose curriculum and instruction methods within the national framework of the guidelines laid out by the Finnish government. Thanks for sharing.