Jay's Seminar

Genevieve Patthey-Chavez (ggpcinla who-is-at ucla.edu)
Mon, 2 Sep 1996 19:37:54 -0800

Dear Jay,

enjoyed reading your response to Angel about the different layers to keep
in mind in her analysis ...

re: your seminar, here are some random thoughts:

have you asked teachers what their issues might be? and if so, what did
they say?

an important distinguishing dimension to me would be urban-suburban-rural...
can we assume the teachers you are talking about teach in NYC? or do they
teach in the burbs? the material and social conditions change dramatically
- the organization of space, the extent to which teachers have the same
background as their students, the extent to which they understand where the
other (Other) is coming from, the way they frame and interpret the basic
experience ...

another dimension is primary-secondary: communities of scholarship between
one elementary school teacher and (even 30 to 40) kids are so much more
viable, so much better supported (by the activity system) than between one
teacher and five classes, so the whole institutional organization of
secondary schools mitigates against it ...

some things I appreciate as a teacher:

having students who want to be there - the great privilege of teaching
older students - I appreciate it and also understand that with younger
students, we may just have to bite the bullet and cop to coersion it its
its variegated forms ... I now think that we may move towards less coersive
environments, environments in which students choose what they want to do
and take responsibility for those choices, but we'll always have some
coersion ...

having the freedom to teach as I choose, and having my teaching choices
respected - this extends to choice of materials, choice of pacing, choice
of assignments, choice of pedagogical "mix" of approaches

the joy of seeing someone improve

thoughtful discussions - it's this respect thing again ... between teacher
and students, and extending to the Others whose voices and presence slip
into the discourse - who all do we have to respect when we discuss
problems? how do we extend that respect?

some things I find REALLY annoying:

turning into mom in the classroom: do your homework! pay attention!
study for your test! that kind of thing (a good discussion can usually go
a long way towards mitigating that tendency)

people shooting their mouths off and solving all my teaching problems for
me - when they haven't seen a classroom in years

"experts" from universities getting paid lots of money and lots of respect
to tell us how to teach better

having this horrible two-tiered teaching work force - the "full-time" set
(to which I belong), and the "part-time" set, with the cost of education
clearly shifting from the larger public to students and part-timers

adding insult to injury with suspicions about the quality of part-time
teachers: there must be something wrong with them, since they can't get a
fulltime job ... (there are several variations on this theme, depending on
the institutional contexts)

"paper" mandates - e.g., equivalent "quality" education is defined in terms
of instructional minutes so they can be more easily manipulated and the
mandate for equal protection of the law can be satisfied on paper ...

spending millions of bucks on assessment - of students, of teachers, of
standards, of programs - but no money on development - I have now been
directly involved in (that is, paid for some analytical labor towards)
statewide efforts at "improving assessment" for California community
colleges, for the state university, and for one small part of an elementary
curriculum ... there's something quite obsessive about improving assessment
in this state

the total lack of respect, no the active disrespect directed at my students

do keep us posted as your seminar progresses,

genevieve

ps the only ref I can think of is _Jocks & Burnouts_, by Penelope Eckert,
but that's a book ... and maybe something by the Scollons ... but I'll
think about it some more ...