Here’s My Lesson Plan

Posted on January 27, 2018 by Poetic Justice

Unchained and Free – My Life Lesson Plan

Unchained and free.
Liberated and alive.
Curious and full of wonder.

That is my lesson objective for the children.

Writing words of truth.
Declaring phrases or empowerment.
Thinking critically.
Creating new and awesome products.

Those are my planned activities for the students.

Making the world ripe for peace.
Fostering justice and equity for all.
Spreading love, learning, and awareness wherever they roam.

That is my home work assignment.

Unchained and free.
That is the title of my life lesson plan.

And what standard am I teaching?
The student will assimilate ways to save humanity.

Will you join me?
Will you engage in liberation?
Will you touch a generation with fierce passion?

If you do,
Your final evaluation score will be beyond innovating.

Together let us set free a generation chained to stupid standards, invalid tests, and abusive segregation.

This poem is dedicated to my friend Dr. James Avington Miller Jr. of The War Report on Public Education and his vision for schools where Positive Youth Development – PYD – is the key to life-long learning.

Let’s Call it What it IS – Educational Apartheid

Posted on December 11, 2017 by Poetic Justice

Please watch this short two minute video created by Michael Elliot – 2 School Districts, 1 Ugly Truth.

In our fight for justice for ALL children, this inequitable funding machine has got to be taken down. The fight is happening here in CT, in TX, and all across our nation. The answer is not more technology for the poorer districts. The answer is updated facilities, smaller classroom sizes, and well-prepared and supported teachers.

Please help spread this very vital message and help bring down a funding system that encourages the “haves” to have more and the “have nots” to be fed cheap online quick fixes.

Thanks to Superintendent John Kuhn and NPE for speaking up for education.

Dismantle the Boxes

Posted on November 8, 2016 by Poetic Justice

Dismantle the boxes and
cherish humanity
the old
the young
the poor.

Dismantle the boxes and
care for humanity
the rich
the intelligent
the challenged.

Dismantle the boxes and
embrace humanity
the artistic
the creative ~
in all the colors of humanity.

Despite Opposition, Board of Education Approves Controversial Teacher Prep Program

Posted on November 2, 2016 by Poetic Justice

We must stop this travesty in CT. Please read and share.

Please watch the testimony given today and ignored.

BLOGCEA

CEA Educational Issues Specialist Michele O’Neill was one of many who raised concerns about Relay at today’s State Board of Education meeting.

In spite of serious concerns raised by teachers, CEA leaders and staff, state university deans of education, and community members, the State Board of Education today voted to allow the controversial Relay Graduate School of Education to begin operating in Connecticut. Relay provides a shortcut to teacher certification whose methods and outcomes have repeatedly been called into question.

“Relay teachers do not receive the same training other teachers do,” said CEA President Sheila Cohen. “Instead, they are given a crash course in teaching that focuses on increasing student test scores, not student skills. There are no do-overs for the students whose classrooms are managed by unprepared, inexperienced teachers who weave their way into the profession through these dubious, subpar teacher training programs.”

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A Lone Teacher Talks Back: An Educator on the Impact of Teacher Evaluation

Posted on April 18, 2016 by Poetic Justice

As far as Poetic Justice is concerned, all metrics need to be eliminated from the evaluation process. This may be a radical thought in this age of teaching reform, but it is not a radical idea to those who are pure educators.

This is what a valid teacher evaluation checklist would look like if I were in charge of my own building. This is what my own personal self-evaluation looks like:

1. Are the children safe?
2. Are the children the focus of the classroom?
3. Does the teacher recognize and respond to the individual needs, strengths, and giftings in the class?
4. Is the teacher helping, not harming her students?
5. Is each student regarded as more than a data point?
6. Is the teacher connecting content to the life experiences of his students and their collective situations?
7. Is the teacher sensitive to the backgrounds and cultures of her students?
8. Is the teacher striving for synthesis of content into her students’ learning schema?
9. Is the teacher doing much more than just delivering prescribed content to a prescribed time table?
10. Is the teacher using her own teacher created lessons and materials?
11. Is the teacher respecting and cherishing student voice?
12. Are writing and reading considered a joy by the teacher and by the students?
13. Is there present a pedagogy based on love, joy, and compassion?
14. Is the teacher actively growing in her own professional development?
15. Is the teacher sharing and contributing to her colleagues successful practice?
16. Is the teacher aware of her craft as an art as well as a science?
17. Are ALL assessments used to help the student and to inform instruction?
18. Is there a holistic dimension to assessment taking into account cognitive as well as affective domains of learning?
19. Is creativity regarded by both students and teacher as the highest form of learning?
20 Are the children safe?

This checklist is is direct opposition to the findings at this weekend’s Network for Public Education convention report and is in opposition to current evaluation systems. Poetic Justice is not saying all data is irrelevant; I am saying that data is only one small part of a teacher’s toolkit.

I left a career in the business sector expressly because I wanted to help children. I wanted to devote my life to the welfare of humanity not to some corporation’s bottom line. Today’s approach to teaching and learning is far more dehumanizing than even the approaches I experienced in business. At least in the business sector, the customer was always considered and any harm to that customer could result in litigation.

My plea is for those in educational power positions, to please consider the harm being done to children and teachers when only metrics are considered important.

Please join a FaceBook page I administer with the Walking Man – Dr. Jesse Turner – Teachers Are More than Test Scores.

Tribute to the Warriors

Posted on February 21, 2016 by Poetic Justice

This is a tribute poem for a great warrior in the fight to save our children – Dr. James Avington Miller Jr. – and to all his radio show listeners and Facebook followers. Today is the second anniversary of his show entitled The War Report on Public Education.

Dark, deceitful, dreadful
The war continues.

Hidden from the public
Children succumb to oblivion.

Masses are found naked
In the valley of corporate reform.

Masses of children
Stripped of their humanity.

Masses of teachers
Rendered voiceless and faceless.

Masses of parents
Left with no option but to escape the dark night
And cover their children with a blanket of compassion
That heals hearts, minds, and little bodies.

And in all the darkness
In the dreadful abandon of humane concern
In the deceit and lies that spew from media and our elected officials

There is a light

There is a voice

There is hope.

Only love can chase away the hate.
Only the light of truth can fight off the darkness.

That little voice is in each one of us
That little voice and that tiny ray of light
Can fight off the usurpers of our future hope.

So today – on the second anniversary of
The War Report on Public Education –
I encourage all of us to keep on fighting the war
To keep on telling the truth
To keep on exposing the lies that warp our understanding

Because

We will find each other one day
And we will unite together
And parents, teachers, professors, politicians, community leaders, pastors, shop owners, even the media will unite

And together we shall bring down
The evil Machiavellian Agenda
And we will win
The war against public education.

My Criteria for a Model School by Mark Naison

Posted on January 31, 2016 by Poetic Justice

1. Children are loved and walk around the school with smiles on their faces.
2. Teachers are respected and stay in their jobs for a long time.
3. Parents are welcome in the school and are made to feel an integral part of the culture of the school.
4. The culture and history of the community the school is located is honored in displays and in what is taught in classes.
5. Arts, physical education, recess and sports are NEVER sacrificed for higher test scores.
6. ELL and Special Needs students are treated with respect and are given the counseling and special attention they need to thrive.
7. Students have such a positive experience at the school that they return on a regular basis after they have graduated.

If you think that these features are only found in private schools or schools in affluent middle schools, you need to visit the CASA Middle School in the Bronx where Jamaal Bowman is the principal.

This is not only something that CAN be done in all communities, it is something that MUST be done so that ALL our children can grow up with confidence in their abilities.

And Poetic Justice would add to the list the following:
8. All children will be encouraged to find and use their voices in academic subjects and particularly in creative writing and POETRY classes.

A Special Guest Posting from The Walking Man – Dr. Jesse Turner – “An Ode to Education”

Posted on January 25, 2015 by Poetic Justice

From the Walking Man – Dr. Jesse Turner

An Ode to Education

I Love Public Education
I cried the first time my Mother left me at your door,
I would learn to love you with every morning cookie and container of milk,
I would love you more with every song we sang within your hallowed walls,
I found your love in every teacher’s smile in your halls
I loved the reverence and respect you showed our flag every morning.
When the evil darkness of assassination
took the life of President Kennedy ~ you were there,
You calmed us, and helped us understand that although things could never be the same ~ our nation would be mended,
You kept us warm during the winters from 9:00 to 3:00 ~ when there was no heat in our old cold-water flat,
You were there when they murdered our heroes Martin and Bobby, to help us wipe away our tears,
You ensured that although they were taken from our world ~ these men would remain in our hearts forever,
You gave us hope through the riots and the protests,
You gave us color when there were no crayons in our homes,
You gave us poetry to ease our pain,
You gave us poetry to celebrate our lives,
You gave us history to give us roots,
You gave us geography, the stars and the moon landing ~ just to let us know we had no boundaries,
You taught us mathematics and science,
But most of all you gave us literature,
You gave us a love of books,
You handed us a little more of our dreams every single day,
You were there, year after year, as we spent our summer vacations under the cooling spray of fire hydrants ~ dancing in the streets,
As every summer ended we longed for another school year to begin,
You were beaming with pride at every graduation,
My loves still grows
I am confused by:
A nation’s leaders ~ who bash public schools at every opportunity,
An American media ~ that ignores 150 years of noble service to our nation’s children,
I find myself distraught ~ by the titans of industry, who blame you for every social ill, while they drink from the cup of plenty, time and time again,
I am troubled by their mantra of testing will save us,
I am saddened by their infatuation with fictional heroes like Superman, and homage to those with no real classroom experience,
I am bewildered by leaders who say teachers are the essential ingredients to success, and then in their next breath say our teachers are not good enough.
All I am I owe to you,
I can’t remember one single standardized test,
I do remember teacher after teacher telling us those tests were no measure of who we really are,
I remembered loving Mr. Bass’s reminders that poor boys and girls could be anything they dreamed,
His boys and girls were more than test scores,
We were his endless possibilities,
Yes, I love public education,
I love public education enough to fight for it,
I love public education enough to stand up for it,
I love public education enough to take it back from the
The billionaires club,
The politicians,
The policy makers,
The ones who only see test scores,
The ones who count numbers not tears,
The ones who refer to America’s children as “Data”
Yes, I love public education; enough to walk to Washington DC again in 2015.
Forever in your debt,
Jesse Turner

You are all invited to take part in Jesse’s 400 mile walk from Central CT to Washington DC beginning this June 11th. Jesse be walking to protest the education malpractice that is demoralizing parents, teachers, and turning our children into human capital.

He will be walking 400 miles in 40 days.

Please check out his FaceBook Event page.

Ten Snippets from a Poetry Teacher’s Poetry

Posted on January 19, 2015 by Poetic Justice

Looking through my poetry from the last 20 years, I excerpted just a few “snippets’ and put them together in this blog post. I hope you enjoy.

1.
We stand as poets strong and tall

while our roots reach deep to find the perfect

word

to place, so delicately, on our paper.

2.
In a perfect world ~

you and I would understand each other
we would talk and write and text and share
all the glory and awesome events in our days

3.
The jubilee in this lighthouse trip is that I am no longer so heavily burdened by the problems of my students – their difficult lives, their wrong choices, their inability to say no to peer pressure. The burden has been lightened and my liberty is real. I am ready to be restored and renewed and to take on new beginnings this summer.

4.
Listen to me my students, as I sit reflecting in my quiet
captured and clutched in the frenzy of faith for this time.
Faith for you, faith in you, faith that surpasses this moment
and enters the realm of the spirit of truth. Faith that does not pause
for even a moment. Faith that will abide
and bring joy not sadness or fear. I am certain.

5,
We teach because we are called to teach.
We teach because the children need us now.
We teach because we need to love them.
We teach because it is life to us.

How can we say “no” to them and walk away?

6,
The achievement gap widens.
The terrain becomes more barren.
The house falls into further decay.
The green in the landscape
slowly
silently
serenely
melds into
grey.

When will
no child
be left
behind?

7.
She is like thousands of children
abandoned and neglected
in this prosperous country we call
America.

When will no child be left behind?

8.
Save the children –
all the children –

even the dark and lonely

and silent children.

9.
To meet each student with a smile and a happy word,
to execute my lesson the way it is planned,
to correct with kindness and to praise with integrity,
this is an excellent day.

10.
Priceless is the smile
on each face –
as they sit in cap and gown
with their senior class
and receive their high school diploma.

Who could ever put a price tag
on even one of their miracles?

I hope you enjoyed my little verses. If you did, I have a lot of haiku and senryu about being a teacher I can share as well. More to come because “POETRY IS LIFE.”