Thank you, Diane Ravitch!

My friends at the Clay County Education Association informed me this morning that my open letter to Governor Rick Scott was posted on Diane Ravitch's blog.

Dr. Ravitch is a respected and renowned education advocate and I believe that it is an honor to be included in her blog!

An open letter to Governor Scott

A matter of principals and principles

There is one question that I dread receiving as an educator.

“Why don’t you look into becoming an administrator?”

Thankfully, I am usually not sipping from the coffee that provides me with the sweet nectar of wakefulness for the day as I would surely be spitting it out in a random state of incredulity. Why do many good teachers refuse to cross over into the ‘dark side?’ There are quite a few Jedi knights in the classroom who would indeed make lovely principals and assistant principals, especially considering the increase in pay.

While the pay jumps a bit, the stresses and responsibilities make an even larger jump for already beleaguered educators.

When I am asked this question, I immediately think of the study in which college students were asked to play prisoners and wardens. In an experiment that made Lord of the Flies look like an Outward Bound romp in the wilderness, these students devolved into madness and depravity that destroyed the spirits of those who participated.

In this study, which needless to say, will never be conducted again, the randomly appointed wardens became drunk with power and took on a sadistic role that degraded the dignity of those who were once their peers in the classroom.

Egads, my friends! This Stanford experiment was all too real as the guards exacted psychological torture that were all too real to the same classmates who were their study partners a few weeks before. All it took was six days to teach us that this study was all too real a study in human depravity. Guards assaulted prisoners with fire extinguishers. Prisoners were forced to use buckets for toilets. Prisoners were forced to sleep naked on the cold, concrete floors of their simulated cells. When the experiment was called off, protests arose from the guards who liked their jobs a bit too much. Society learned that the roles that we play can sometimes take us over and make us forget our own humanity or the humanity of those around us.

But, I digress. The reason why I would never be caught dead lording over my colleagues is not because of a personal vendetta against any administrator in particular. The reason why I would never in a million years desert the classroom is because I wish to keep doing what I do best – nurture young minds and enrich learning to the best of my ability. I would never wish to get the amnesia that many folks get when they earn that much-envied promotion to what is considered the next logical step of their career. Most importantly, I do not want to be the good teacher who becomes a rotten principal.

I know that many people will ask me why a principal or any other administrator would take leave of their senses when they are working in the same schools with the same children as their subordinates. Allow me to provide some insights, with some help from One Mean MFA’s blog (http://onemeanmfa.wordpress.com/) and from colleagues who would like to speak up but either can’t or won’t for obvious reasons.

• The best educational leaders never forget that they were once followers. Once we get that office, it is tempting to cloister ourselves in an echo chamber that leads us to believe that we were specially ordained to command from on high. Unlike teachers, for whom it takes an act of Congress to be able to relieve themselves in a timely manner, administrators take for granted the simple dignities of having unlimited restroom privileges. While us humble teachers would be strung up for denying a restroom pass to a student, we face serious health problems that arise from putting our bladders on hold for the lion’s share of the school day. Furthermore, administrators have the luxury of closing the door to the world when they are overworked or overwhelmed. In this ivory tower, they can actually do their work in peace. The average teacher, however, must stay on his or her toes throughout the school day – balancing the duties of taking attendance, passing out graded work, delivering lessons, collecting work, disciplining students, cleaning up the room for the next class, setting up electronic equipment, writing hall passes, loaning supplies, grading papers, helping students, redirecting students, and a slew of other actions that go unnoticed by the people who once did the same but now are oblivious of. The insular trappings of an administrator’s office also come with a cliquishness that permits them to choose favorites and dish out perks and privileges that betray the equality and fairness that is supposed to exist on campus. Either we are all in this to accomplish a common goal or we are not.

• The best educational leaders never forget that they were once children. It should be obvious that none of us were born directly into adulthood, but there are many administrators who behave as if they have no earthly idea of how a child actually behaves. They treat every character, behavior and social aspect of the child as something that is directly connected to the teacher’s success or failure as a person. I admit that I was not the most attentive student in the classroom and was not the most ideal student to have in the classroom if the teacher was being observed by a person with a clipboard and that institutional amnesia that allows them to judge the teacher on the merits of a few supposedly bad apples. Perhaps I have failed as a teacher if the commissars and inspectors from administration grill my students on their lessons using the jargon that would trip up even the most gifted of children. We, as educators, know of the gotcha tactics that are used to trip us up. For example, it seems like administrators take a secret course in how to select the most out of it student and ask him or her which state standard he or she is learning. If the student fails this impromptu quiz, it is apparent that the teacher is a slacker who is dooming the class to a life of either a succession of probation officers or a menial living working at a half-empty strip mall. Please do not misunderstand me; I believe that standards are important as we should communicate what lessons need to be taught. I also am a firm believer in the Understanding by Design methods that create lessons and learning by identifying the goals of what is to be taught and working to meet those goals. What offends and outrages me is that a generation of educators is learning how to game the system by coaching their students on what to say when the clipboard wielding men and women walk in and start asking questions. There is no more fun in learning when the education Gestapo takes a more active interest in the aesthetics of a classroom that seem to be designed for their approval as opposed to the actual needs of the students. In my decade plus of teaching public schools, I have yet to encounter a student who can adeptly say to me, “Mr. Meeks, I am learning NGSSS SS.A.2.3.1, the essential question is ‘how has geography affected the way people live?’ and I am developing a word wall that includes the following terms: scribe, famine, empire and exile.” It would a lie for any teacher to claim that they are able to corral malleable young minds into a mindset that reeks of a Stepford community instead of a true laboratory of learning. The behaviors in the classroom that we once accepted as part of our youth are now openly condemned. There was a time when students had down time for the sake of giving their brains a rest. Today, any break in learning is seen as a demerit for teachers. I understand that classes must never be seminars in coloring and playing around, but we are raising a hardened and harried generation of students who associate school with non-stop work and no joy.

• The best educational leaders always practice what they preach. Only a heartless tyrant would run a classroom that is filled with constant condemnation and criticism. The same, in my opinion, applies to an administrator who believes that the beatings should continue until morale improves among the faculty. In my classroom, I have created incentives that regularly recognize students for their accomplishments. It is healthy to balance negative with positive feedback to create an atmosphere in which students are not afraid to make mistakes. Similarly, if we work in a school where the administration is always on the warpath about something and all of the teachers and staff are walking on eggshells, we are not working in an environment that is conducive to learning. For every educator who loses his or her cool and yells at or snaps at a student, there is an educator who toils away in fear that their work is constantly being criticized with no pat on the back from upstairs. These teachers are not manic depressive or bipolar but perhaps may be lashing out because they are being subject to the kind of workplace abuses from their superiors that manifests itself in unhealthy communications with students. While it is inexcusable for a teacher to verbally abuse a child, it is equally inexcusable for an administrator to create a climate of fear and loathing that affords subordinates with no real help or assistance. Speaking of communication, teachers are now on call every hour of the day. There is no escape from email messages asking about grades, classwork or homework as parents and families have access to their children’s grades online. Teachers must juggle their daily schedules around parent conferences which they are required to attend and address. The teachers have an open door policy that necessitates good listening skills and being responsive to the needs of their charges. Many administrators, however, claim to have an ‘open door’ policy but are far too eager to use that open door as an avenue to shut down dialogue, retaliate against outspoken teachers and ignore legitimate needs of their faculty and staff.

• The best educational leaders always understand the big picture. While students spend most of their waking hours inside the school house, there indeed are factors that are beyond the control of the teachers. Thanks to Response to Intervention (RtI), we are beginning to craft teaching to meet the needs of students who all were not raised by June Cleaver. The factors of poverty, abuse, hunger and neglect must be factored into the work that we do for our students. These circumstances are directly connected to the inability to create perfect children as the government demands. The budgetary limitations that restrict how we aid students, however, allows bad administrators to oversimplify problems and make scapegoats of the very teachers how have worked to comfort students who lost a parent, spend money from their own pockets to buy lunch for a child, lend school supplies to students who do not have a permanent home of their own, or wince when they see a child come to school with bruises from a beating from a parent who decided to take out their anger on the nearest person. Many administrators are willfully ignorant of the teachers who deal with situations that were unimaginable even a decade ago. Teachers have to work in an atmosphere in which students are coming out as gay, students are being bullied on the Internet, students are witnessing their parents wrestling with the demons of drug abuse, students are missing school to take care of their siblings. The solutions that educators seek, develop and implement will never be included on their respective evaluations because this is the kind of work that, although it is ignored, still needs to be done by someone.

• The best educational leaders believe that putting students first does not mean putting teachers last. Every idea that comes down the pike might look great on the surface, but that does not mean that we must jump on every passing trend and fad like a fickle socialite who changes wardrobes with every issue of Vogue. The justification for spending massive amounts of tax dollars is just as silly. We are told that, if we do not blindly drink the Kool-Aid of the latest administrative fancy, we do not care about the children. While it may work for totalitarian regimes to hide behind the children to push their twisted agendas, it is counterproductive to demand that educators jump on the bandwagon to adopt the next big thing only to see it discarded the following year. This, in my opinion, is why so many veteran educators look at these whims with a jaundiced eye. A bad administrator does not listen to experience, but yearns to purge the learned hands in the classroom and replace them with more obedient rookies in this anti-tenure environment. Thankfully for other professions, they are not subject to the same instability in their respective fields. The clergy have been working with sacred texts that are older than time. Attorneys study laws that have descended from the same codes in place since the time of Robin Hood. Physicians, although medicine has made leaps and bounds over the centuries, are still faithful to the same fundamentals that the ancient Greeks pioneered. The same cannot be said for teachers, who witness the creation of program after program, attend training and professional development, spend their precious time executing these fabulous plans and then bide their time until something better comes along. Do they rebel? Do they mutiny? Do they strike? No, the keep doing what is right for the students.

At the end of the day, the main reason why I cannot move into that comfortable office is that I cherish my freedoms too much. I can take the time to express myself about what troubles me in public education. I can advocate for issues in which I believe. I can look myself in the mirror every morning and say with pride that I have done something for the betterment of society. It’s not that administrators are useful idiots or cowards who dare not do the same, but they agreed to take on the duty of leading at a price. If I was a principal, I would not take the risks that I do by speaking out. Yes, there is retribution exacted on loud mouths like me, but I would get beaten down no matter what I did if someone really had a mind to take me down a notch. I only fail if I do not bother to try. This is why I continue to work alongside my comrades in the trenches and why I continue to speak up on our behalf.

Solidarity!

One by One, we can help our students and our future

We are the brain trust for improving our public schools for all of our children.

During the years of depression and war, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt assembled some of the greatest minds of his time to coordinate efforts to create a better nation. Today, our elected and appointed leaders have a broad and deep reservoir of ideas and solutions in our community.

Mayor Alvin Brown was right when he said that the key to reducing crime lies in our efforts to transform education to prepare us for the future. Our economy and our quality of life depend on the students of today who will be entering careers and jobs that will form the foundation of our community.

This is why I support the Jacksonville Public Education Fund (JPEF). They are working with the best existing resources in our community to seek consensus for constructive change in how we educate our children. We can either take a greater interest in building strong minds or we can continue to squabble and argue while more of our youngest citizens fall behind.

I know that we can all agree that we can passively lament the crime and poverty that plague Duval County. I, too, have been guilty of turning the channel when the latest tragedy unfolds on the evening news. In our provincialism, we tend to relegate these incidents to the back of our minds as they are supposedly limited to one neighborhood or section of town.

What JPEF accomplishes in their work is to open our eyes to the fact that we can only save a generation by addressing the needs of all of our children, one by one. On a personal level, I took great interest in JPEF as I observed their outreach to all stakeholders in our education system. The school board, educators, education support professionals, parents, students and businesses each have a voice, but we have been weakened by the lack of a unified mission. Through their community meetings, JPEF has succeeded in creating an honest and positive environment for all to be part of the change we sorely need.

I recently ratified the One by One Community Agreement, drafted by a convention of concerned citizens because I endorse their goals, drafted by the grassroots and the foot soldiers in our war against poverty and ignorance. The fact that JPEF actively and openly solicited buy-in from all comers is why I support their consensus-based goals.

Educate the whole child: It is essential that we foster a love for learning in all of our students. The problem with today’s education system is that we have become one dimensional in our zeal to make the basics (e.g. reading, writing and arithmetic) the central theme of educating our students. I believe that we should balance the cognitive and the affective needs of our children in a way that encourages them to appreciate the kind of creativity that fostered a spirit of invention and innovation that led the world in culture, technology and commerce. The whole child requires that we move away from one-size-fits-all learning that neglects the beauty of the world that we want to instill in our students. We also wish not to relegate education to merely bubbling in Scantron sheets and teaching them how to be better test takers.

Great teachers and leaders: The trouble with attracting men and women into the field of education has been that we have been focused on filling vacancies and positions. The gravity of the work that educators do requires a change in our consciousness. More than just mere parts of a large machine, educators are integral parts of an education system that should inspire the best and the brightest citizens to become teachers. Not only is learning a lifelong process, so is teaching. The recruiting of good teachers is only half the battle. It is necessary for us to continually train and develop strong teachers after they are hired. It is also necessary for us to treat these professionals with respect and dignity that we would afford to any other career field.

Policy and political reform: For as long as I remember, politics has been a battlefield that has left many good men and women scarred. The rough and tumble of the political debate has discouraged the very people to whom we should turn for support and solutions. I am grateful that JPEF is encouraging us to take a united front on behalf of our children and to let our elected and appointed leaders know that we will not give up until they listen to our concerns.

Family and caregiver involvement: At a recent town hall meeting with the new superintendent of schools, I heard Dr. Nikolai Vitti talk about the creation of programs to involve families in the education of their children. The bureaucracy and jargon of education speak is enough to scare away the most hardened of administrators and faculty. Imagine how a single parent might feel about having to deal with a labyrinth of paperwork and meetings that confound their attempts to do right by their sons and daughters. We cannot be afraid to adapt our schools and their norms to include more families rather than alienate them.

In closing, I dedicate my heart and my mind to helping to make these priorities a reality. I invite all interested parties to join me in doing so. Thank you, JPEF, for all that you do!

Backpage Editorial (FOLIO WEEKLY)

Time to re-evaluate

Teachers are victims of negative typecasting

Folio Weekly, December 25, 2012-January 1, 2013

Every day is judgment day in our public schools. This sounds like hyperbole on my part, but there is a kernel of truth to what I am saying on behalf of educators who are responsible for shaping our future.

At a time when administrators are being trained to nitpick teachers over the most minute of details, such as whether their students are in single-file line, paying perfect attention during lessons or are prepared for class, we overlook the items that fall outside of the rubric with which we judge and ultimately will decide how to pay the troops in the war against ignorance and poverty.

It will never be reflected in the evaluations, observations, or feedback that I receive, but I wish to advocate for one seemingly small experience that I had in the classroom. It has to do with a student who came close to leaving Duval County Public Schools because he feared for his own safety.

Once it came to my attention that this sixth-grade boy was being bullied on a regular basis by a classmate who appeared to be more interested in terrorizing than learning, I worked with administrators and counselors to help this victim overcome the challenge to his own education.

I took the time to listen to the boy's parents as they expressed frustration with what they felt was the glacial pace of a system that had to maintain low disciplinary statistics and pressured its schools into under-reporting incidents for the sake of not losing face in the community. The unintended consequence was an atmosphere where the victims were fleeing for greener pastures such as private schools, charter schools, and homeschooling. The inmates, however, continued to run the asylum. Incidentally, the student who was doing the bullying ended up being arrested for assaulting another schoolmate with a knife later in the year.

Because there was no metric or data to gauge efforts to cooperate with the boy's family and to listen to their concerns, it went overlooked. The state-mandated evaluation system focused more on the superficial aspects of what could be considered "poor" teaching on my part. For example, many teachers get low marks on their evaluations for petty points such as students talking about something other than their work during a lesson. Yes, off-task conversation may reflect negatively on a teacher's ability to keep the focus on the lesson, but we must never lose sight of the fact that there are indeed factors that even the most firm and focused pedagogy cannot deter.

Do not get me wrong here: I did not seek to save a child from chronic bullying and harassment because I wanted to earn a medal or praise for what I was doing. I merely wanted to serve my fellow human being in a way that I would have expected to be helped if I had been a student in the same situation.

On the last day of school before spring break last year, I stayed after work to grade the last of my papers and decided to have a brief meeting with the student's family on my way home from work. Even though I was off the clock, I knew that my vacation could wait until I handled what was a more important matter than packing my suitcases for a week down in Naples with my goddaughter and her family.

I explained to the parent that I was willing to be his child's advocate and that I didn't mind being contacted at any hour, by email or telephone, to remedy their child's situation. After all, he wasn't just a source of funding for our school system; he was a talented young man who had the potential perhaps one day to play major league baseball, report on sports for the media or coach a team when he realized his bright future.

The parents were grateful for the work that our school did on their behalf and they ultimately kept their son enrolled in Duval County Public Schools. They even left a message with my school, thanking us for the work we did for them. Somewhere along the line, the gratitude was ignored and lost in the maelstrom of criticism and stereotyping of rank-and-file teachers as being selfish, lazy bureaucrats who were only in the field of education to collect a paycheck and spend their summers off.

Contrary to popular belief and demonizing, we teachers truly do care. We do what we do because we are giving back to the community that inspired us to answer a higher calling. We have teachers, coaches, administrators and counselors who believed in us and we believe that we can pay it forward.

I should know, because I was a "late talker" in my younger years. My parents feared that I would be mute for the rest of my life. Thanks to speech therapy at W.E. Cherry Elementary School in Orange Park, I learned to become confident in verbally communicating what I had been thinking all along. I learned to express myself thanks to people who didn't give up on me. I, in return, cannot give up on the young people whom I serve every day.

In my own junior high school years, I faced problems that I was able to solve with support from an educational community that helped this introvert learn how to make friends, in spite of losing so many peers to military relocations, and an educational community that helped me to overcome insecurity over my short stature in the shadow of peers who seemed to be growing by leaps and bounds over a child like me who seemed destined never to reach 5 feet tall.

I understand that not all will appreciate with work that we do, because there will always be students who resist our attempts to help them grow academically. But, thanks to remediation, interventions and other methods, we are learning to serve every student who enters our schoolhouse doors.

Bean-counters and micromanagers aside, I continue to soldier on because it is more than a profession for me; it's a moral duty that I must fulfill to justify my continued existence on this earth. It is an obligation that allows us to bear the slings and arrows of "reformers" who wish to visit upon us so-called improvements that are aimed more at punishing us than enriching us. It is something of which we should all be proud, because we keep going in spite of it all.

This is why I continue to do what I do when it's not reflected in the judgment that we receive. The days when I have guest speakers, like the supervisor of elections, the state attorney and members of city council, are days that my former students remember. The times when we have international food days, mock elections and trips to New York are times on which my former students reflect fondly. The memories of students whose funerals I attended, and one where I served as pallbearer, are what I believe to be the true indicators of our dedication.

Perhaps our friends in Tallahassee will never recognize our true value in our work, but I continue to teach not for them, but for the future.

Meeks has been teaching social studies in Duval County since 2002. He is a 1998 graduate of the University of North Florida.

Learning knows no color - my Times-Union commentary

Four decades after strife and struggle marked race relations in our nation, Florida appears to be taking a step backwards in our work with minority children in the classroom.

In 1965, President Lyndon Baines Johnson addressed Howard University on this very issue, telling Howard University of the perils of freedom when Americans have been playing a catch up game with regard to all Americans having a fair chance to succeed.

You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, "you are free to compete with all the others," and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.

While I understand the reasons behind the state Board of Education’s directive to set student progress goals by race, I respectfully disagree on the grounds that this new policy directly contradicts the goals that we have planned for real accountability in schools.

All along, teacher and parent organizations chafed at the punitive approach that our state’s leaders have taken with what was supposed to be standardized testing to diagnose the ills that are harming our students. All along, teacher and parent organizations pleaded with the state to take into account the factors that negatively affect our public schools.

Our problem is not racial, our problem is poverty. We miss the point when we believe that an African-American student in a relatively prosperous ZIP code needs to be given a pass in meeting the standards. I would point out that students, regardless of race or ethnic group are struggling because they happen to come from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Look at the neighborhood schools with high percentages of students who are on free and reduced lunches. The data will point out that failure knows no color. Socioeconomic status is what really dictates how students will perform on standardized tests.

While it is easy for us to change the rubric for student success to yield better numbers, the real work at hand is for us to change the circumstances that hobble our young people.

Regardless of our ideology, we all continue to fight a losing war on poverty that can only be addressed in ensuring that all citizens prosper with better jobs, better wages and better quality of life.

This, of course, is not going to be easy because we have been fighting a recession that seems to be as endless as the number of students who are dropping out of school and being lost to the criminal justice system or the welfare state.

The beginning of the real solutions is for our state’s leadership to finally listen to the people and to finally set aside petty partisan grievances and games to afford all Floridians a chance to work together for better schools that work for all.

The obvious answer, say many, it to divert more public funds to charter, private and parochial schools. This neglects the fact that we still have to operate public schools as our state constitution mandates in accordance with a paramount duty to do right by our students.

We are right to decry efforts to water down standards for minorities for the sake of moving children of color along. We are right to question Affirmative Action programs that ask more from white and Asian children simply because of the color of their skin.

What frustrates me about this issue is that this is a bed that we have made and now we are being forced to sleep in. What frustrates me is that we are tacking the same problems that we were warned about when FCAT turned from a helpful tool to a cudgel with which to assault educators who toil daily to meet the needs of all children.

The right thing for us to do now is to stop and repair this dysfunctional system that begins not in the classroom but in the pocketbooks that deprive many of our young people of an equal chance to succeed and in the economic policy that can put more people to work.

John Louis Meeks, Jr. currently resides in Jacksonville, Florida where he teaches social studies at Mayport Middle School. He is a 1998 graduate of the University of North Florida and a veteran of the United States Air Force.

Source: http://jacksonville.com/news/florida/2012-10-14/story/florida-taking-step-backward-setting-standards-based-race

Starving for knowledge

I cannot teach on an empty stomach. I already know the consequences of allowing low blood sugar to dictate how the rest of my day is going to go because I have often sacrificed breakfast in the triage of having a quick morning routine. We know of that devil's bargain that we make when we wake up after the snooze was activated for the ninth time - I will jump in the shower, shave my stubble and get dressed on the way to the car (not literally!). Breakfast is the first of the things that I chose to omit because a smelly teacher was ostensibly much more noticeable than a hungry teacher. Well, thanks to decreased functioning and a crankier outlook on the day, I realize that breakfast can have as much an impact on my work as five o'clock shadow. Both problems make me appear run down even before the clock strikes twelve. Conversely, we are very aware when we notice that a student has skipped showers. The smell can especially pungent in a middle or high school setting. All of the Axe deodorant in the free world cannot mask a deficiency in bathing. When students arrive in the classroom after missing breakfast, however, the results are a lot more subtle. Stomachs may not growl and teachers may not know the warning signs of a student who has a challenge with nutrition at home. I was made aware of this, as I posted on my school blog, when a student came to class with what seemed to be a giant monkey on her back. She could not focus on her work and I was worried about what was troubling her. She forthrightly told me that she did not have anything to eat that morning as her cupboard was bare. I made a deal with her that I would bring breakfast foods so she could ask for help when she needed it. Upon further research (http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/08/25/where-americas-children-are-going-hungry/), I discovered that over a quarter of Florida's students live with 'Childhood Food Security' and one out of ten Floridians experienced the same issue of having little to nothing to sustain them. If we truly believe in education reform, we must reform the way our children are fed. Private partnerships are necessary to help all public school students to not just feed their minds, but their bodies.

TEACH!

Community-based education reform TEACH: Together for better schools

By John Louis Meeks, Jr.

Instead of pointing fingers, this conference was about joining hands to improve public education at the first TEACH conference hosted by WJCT and Community First Credit Union at downtown’s Hyatt Regency Hotel.

Over 1,000 educators and education advocates attended this conference which carried the theme, “Better Together.”

Mayor Alvin Brown helped to kick off the event with a pep talk for the attendees with whom he shared his personal story of how family, friends and supporters helped him to better himself through college and in his career.

Although his grandmother and mother did not attend college, he said that they had a “PhD in common sense.”

The father of two boys who attend public schools in Duval County also shared how he was a supporter of education in both words and deeds as it is “an investment in our future, our workforce and our economy.” In the past 14 months, he said, his administration has worked hard in “meaningful ways that have brought results” – including an aggressive campaign to remind families to send their children to school during the first days of school, visiting classrooms and seeing the work that is done every day and appointing the city’s first education commissioner.

“I believe in education. With education, come many opportunities,” the mayor said. This is why Mayor Brown said that he worked to either implement or promote programs like Mayor’s Mentors, Communities in Schools, and Teach for America.

As a former professor at Jacksonville University, Brown especially took pride in his Learn to Earn program that gives students a firsthand look at college and the workplace as many young people are familiar with post-secondary education or the means of advancing themselves.

“It’s not where you start off, but where you finish,” the mayor said in his remarks, addressing the chance for all students to achieve the American Dream through setting goals and playing by the rules. And, to teachers, Mayor Brown expressed his gratitude.

“I am proud of the work you do,” he said, adding that educators are the “salt of the Earth.” The morning general session keynote speaker was Dr. Lucy Calkins, who seeks to transform the new Common Core standards from a mandate into a mission for all educators.

The ambitious new national standards have been written and ratified, Calkins said, but they have yet to be implemented.

She said that the key to putting Common Core into action is the buy-in from the educators and education leaders who are responsible for executing them.

“It is up to us,” she said.

As an object lesson, Calkins gave an anecdote in which she talked about the word ‘curmudgeon’ with her students. She explained that she asked students to treat a book like they would a soiled diaper – in the way a curmudgeon would approach something new. She said that this illustrated how some educators approached new programs and initiatives and how their attitude carried into their delivery.

“We could take the same approach with Common Core standards. We can either use a curmudgeon attitude toward the new standards or we can treat the new standards like gold,” she said.

With the challenge of implementing new standards at hand, Calkins addressed the biggest problem facing American schools – poverty.

Twenty-five percent of American students live in poverty, she said, and as many as thirty percent of students in a city like New York live in such conditions.

While the United States was a pioneer and leader in creating public education as we know it, Calkins said, other nations around the world were taking the lead because they do not face poverty on such a level that American educators face.

“If the United States had less than ten percent of its students in poverty, we would be the number one nation in education.”

Instead, we are putting the blame on the teachers, she said.

“One of the best things that we can do for children is to give their parents access to jobs and health care.” Calkins cautioned that, as a solution to failing schools, Common Core is not a curriculum that micromanages schools and recommended that educators study the new standards for themselves. “If we are to make a difference, we are to read the Common Core.”

The necessity for new national standards rose from a wake-up call she said in which forty percent of college students graduate and in which the average college student reads only one book a year. “We are not doing well in education,” she said, “Business as usual is not okay.”

This was particularly true in a world in which eighty-five percent of our jobs require high levels of literacy, she said, on top of the fact that the careers in unskilled labor were a thing of the past.

On the bright side, Calkins said that Common Core was much better than the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation of the second Bush administration.

Even under the previous president’s education policy, Calkins said, the federal government listed Florida’s core reading programs as bad for comprehension. One reason is because they focused on main ideas and not central ideas. And this was after putting over $87 billion dollars into such core reading programs after four decades of research that dispel the notion that such work is not effective.

“We are looking not just for high-level comprehension, but critical reading,” Calkins warned, saying that students need to move up the ladder in text difficulty and to learn the new standards on all grade levels.

Calkins is aware of the way to apply Common Core in the classroom because she has written “Pathways to the Common Core,” a bestselling book that explains the standards’ three main clusters – key ideas and details, craft and structure, and integration of knowledge and ideas.

“Those are the standards. The question is what you do with them.”

After the morning keynote address ended, attendees moved on to various breakout sessions addressing topics like technology, involvement and advocacy. Because advocacy is an issue that is close to my heart, I chose “Telling Your Story: Becoming an Ambassador for Students and Public Education.” Facilitated by Deborah Gianoulis and Colleen Wood of Save Duval Schools, this session was designed to help education stakeholders find a voice in the corridors of power in Tallahassee.

“We are watching our public schools lose resources every day,” said Gianoulis, a former WJXT anchor who ran for the Florida Senate in 2010. She said that state leaders are shifting these resources to private, charter and parochial schools because of the aggressive lobby that private interests have in the state government.

Instead of a level playing field, Gianoulis said, politicians unfairly compare public school ‘apples’ to the ‘oranges’ that exist among the private education interests.

“We need choice between apples,” said Gianoulis, referring to the uneven accountability and standards to which public schools are held.

“Can you imagine if the Jaguars played by different rules than the [Houston] Texans?” she asked rhetorically, saying that public education is the most over-regulated industry in the state.

Floridians have the power of the vote to advocate for their public schools, Gianoulis said, but they are not using it.

It does not have to be this way, she said, pointing to a recent town hall meeting at Jacksonville City Hall with then-education commissioner Gerard Robinson. A mother of a special-needs student shared her frustration with how she had a difficult time reaching the education commissioner’s office. After publicly calling out Robinson, Gianoulis said that the mother finally got a telephone call from Robinson.

Most of the time, however, it is up to Floridians to make the trek to the state capital to truly make a difference in public policy; Wood acknowledged that it can be like crossing a very wide gulf for people to take time from their already busy lives to visit Tallahassee.

In spite of the logistical difficulties, Wood said that it is up to families to rise to the challenge because we “have to be fighting for the very existence of what public education can be.”

There are ways, however, for everyday citizens to communicate with leaders.

Wood said that it is essential for education advocates to admit that they do not know an answer if asked by a politician about their issues. Otherwise, these well-meaning people will be perceived as ignorant, unprepared or unprofessional and would not be taken seriously. This is especially true at a time when private, parochial and charter school interests have an open door to legislative offices and chambers and public school advocates are often locked out.

“Tallahassee does not take the field of public education very seriously,” Wood said, “It is petty. It is stupid. They will judge you and walk out the door.”

Wood said that the goal of education advocates is “champion building,” however, as they develop working relationships with allies on both sides of the political aisle.

“Every interaction is a chance to create a champion,” she said.

This work, Wood said, involves looking beyond today into the future.

The Florida House of Representatives and the Senate elect their respective leaders (House Speaker and Senate President) up to a dozen years in advance in a leap of faith that trusts potential leadership based on their personal connections and pledges.

“You don’t know if they can speak well,” said Wood.

Wood pointed to the example of a new state legislator whose college roommate is married to a member of the Duval County School Board and how the school board member has been advocating for causes that are important to local schools.

As the legislator rises through the ranks, it will be harder for him to say no to the personal connections that he has developed over the years with local leaders, said Wood.

Because of this, Gianoulis said optimistically, “Things can change and leadership can change.”

To best influence the changing leadership, Wood and Gianoulis recommended that public education advocates communicate with the legislative staffs that serve as the gatekeepers to lawmakers, to get to know the lawmakers on a personal level (Wood used a colorful ping pong story to get the attention of one elected official) and to know the lawmaking process.

The unseen power structure, they said, included receptionists, aides and assistants who have a great deal of say in the operation of legislators’ offices – including the drafting of legislation and who gets access to the legislators.

One important tip for increased access to such staffers is to make an appointment to the home offices in their respective districts. Constituents, said Wood, are more likely to get access to someone than with arranging for a meeting in the state capital.

With regard to the cumbersome process of lawmaking, Wood advises that advocates not wait until the bill is on the floor to take action.

“It is important to speak out during the committee process,” she said, using the recent failed ‘parent trigger’ legislation as an example. If passed, the parent trigger will give parents the opportunity to vote on the fate of their children’s schools if the schools do not make the grade. It even goes as far as to allow middle and high school students to have a say in whether a public school is turned over to private interests.

This legislation will be back, said Wood, and the time to speak out is by asking to attend committee meetings and to show up in full force.

“We will be texting and tweeting and Facebooking,” she said about getting the word out about this fight. Gianoulis said, “None of you will ever have to do this alone.”

“This is your life,” said Wood, “You know more about this than anyone else in the room.”

After this session and a lunch break, I attended the breakout session that was hosted by Co’Relous Bryant, the manager of community mobilization for the Jacksonville Public Education Fund.

Titled ONE by ONE: A Conversation with Teachers, it was a chance for educators to learn more about the JPEF, a private partnership that is engaging the community in solutions to challenges in the education community.

JPEF has actively solicited solutions from the public for solving the problems that face students today. Mr. Bryant, a product of Duval County Public Schools, moved to the area from Perry, Florida when his mother left the rural town for economic opportunity.

At eight years old, he went to Oak Hill Elementary School. He took a moment to acknowledge Vicki Wall, his former teacher.

Mr. Bryant explained how he became a “son of the school” because adults believed in him and entered him into the school’s gifted program in spite of his circumstances and his environment. He later went to Darnell-Cookman Middle School, where he gave the morning announcements.

“Make it a great day or not – the choice is yours” was Mr. Bryant’s daily sign-off. This sign-off is still used to this day at the now Middle-Senior High School.

Mr. Bryant entered the International Baccalaureate program at Stanton College Preparatory School, he said because he had educators who told him that he was capable of rising to the challenge.

Mr. Bryant, as a youth, found his gift as a speaker. He won American Legion-sponsored oratory competitions, rising through the ranks as the best speaker in the county, state and then represented Florida in national competition.

One of three finalists in the competition, speaking about the United States Constitution and then speaking on a topic drawn out of a hat. Of the three, Mr. Bryant became the 2007 national oratorical champion. “I trusted my teacher. They handed me the road map and I took it,” he said. Branded a modern-day Cicero, he was offered a free ride to attend New York University and graduated with a political science degree.

“I came back home to join the fight,” he said.

In March 2012, Mr. Bryant drove back to Jacksonville to take part in what he called the “number one fight in Jacksonville.”

“Sign me up,” he said.

It is a high capacity, independent non-profit,” he said.

When he asked how many attendees knew about JPEF, about half raised their hands. He set about telling the audience what his organization is about.

“We have got to put the public back into public education,” he said, explaining what JPEF is about. “How to you make community involvement essential to systemic change?”

It is the responsibility of the public, said Mr. Bryant, to become actively engaged in the public education system.

This can help combat is situation in which one out of three Duval County public school students graduate from school on time.

“The community has heard you,” he said, “How do we make it happen?”

To create the One by One initiative, JPEF looked to Mobile, Alabama because it had similar historical circumstances to Jacksonville and faced similar challenges. He said that they had low achievement rates. The community created the “Yes we can” campaign and gathered input from the community.

After five years, the percentage of schools that were proficient by state standards increased from 23% to 90%.

Innovation after innovation after innovation leads to incoherence, however, said Mr. Bryant, referring to the morning keynote speaker – Dr. Calkins. He said that the first step toward progress in Jacksonville involved listening to the people.

One by One participation, he said, represented all sectors of the community. This was no small feat, as JPEF had a staff of half a dozen people. A team of volunteers had 165 conversations with over 1,600 participants.

JPEF illustrated this mission with a special exhibit that was featured at the Cummer Gallery of Art and is now at Jacksonville City Hall. Over 75,000 people have viewed this art exhibit that was designed to portray the students who have the potential to become leaders in the community – if only with the right support from all stakeholders.

Mr. Bryant said JPEF took on the mission of documenting the district’s educational needs because it was important, in his opinion, to present the next superintendent of schools with input from the people whom the school system serves.

“There is a variety of… input,” said Mr. Bryant. All of this conversation is available on the JPEF website. He said that the data and evidence includes a cross section of ideas from all over the county – from San Marco to the Beaches, from neighborhood to magnet schools.

One problem is communications, he said, because 72 percent of survey respondents were unable to understand what the school district was telling them. They believed, according to the same JPEF study, did not feel fully integrated into the school system.

Climate and culture is one of the top three priorities that the community is talking about, said Mr. Bryant. He said that educator morale cuts to the question of whether educators can actually teach or if they are beholden to mandates.

Resources, Mr. Bryant, said are another community concern. For years, funding is part of the divide that separates the more affluent neighborhoods and their schools from the schools in areas that have to do the same work with less.

Third of all, community support was a factor that respondents said they include as a priority in public education. The community understands, he said, “how important it is to partner with you.”

Closing out the day, Dr. Brad Cohen, the afternoon keynote speaker, told the conference about how he grew up with Tourette’s syndrome to become an educator.

Before he made his remarks, the audience watched a clip from a made-for-television motion picture that showed the inspiring story of how one principal helped Cohen to transcend shame to enter what he called “a brand new world.”

Tourette’s or no Tourette’s he said that he knew that he was going to be a teacher. “I know what it’s like to make a difference,” Cohen said.

“I have a story that I believe each and every one of you need to hear,” said Cohen.

Growing up, he said that he wanted to be treated like everyone else – with respect.

He related how his mother sent him to an overnight summer camp for one month.

On the last day of camp, there was a camp fire. Each of the counselors announced awards for each of the counselors gave out prizes.

Cohen, then in grade school, received the ‘Froggy Award.” He was the most popular child at camp for making sounds mimicking that of a frog. He said that he was on top of the world and ran to his mother upon returning home from camp. He excitedly shared his noise with his mother.

Over time, the young Cohen could not control his involuntary sounds, even though the consternation of others around him was growing. His family refused to take him out into public because of the shame that he caused them.

The young boy’s mother researched his condition and soon learned that he had Tourette’s. His fifth grade teacher, however, was merciless and made the young boy apologize for making what she called annoying sounds. After she made him promise not to make these noises, his tics continued.

When he entered middle school, “No one wanted to be friends with a noise maker,” he said.

In math class, “that math teacher didn’t get it,” Cohen said.

The young boy’s mother tried to educate his teachers, but this did not stop the math teacher from sending him to time out.

“I tried to learn anyway that I could,” he said, “I knew that I had more in me than the teachers and students saw.”

The bullies paraded around him and mocked his noises.

“They tried to shut me up because they knew the teachers couldn’t.”

“I hated every single one of those bullies.”

He needed someone to understand what he was going through.

“It is the people who don’t know and the people who won’t want to know,” he said.

The principal stepped forward and asked the boy if he would like to educate the student body about his medical condition.

In Cohen’s family, he was the first generation to be born with this hereditary condition and he explained that it was not contagious

“On that day, I knew that we were making a difference.”

He made himself available to his schoolmates to ask him questions about Tourette ’s syndrome. At the end of this lesson, the school gave him a standing ovation.

He said that it was then that he realized that the students’ negative treatment of him was rooted in the need to know more about him.

“On that day, they learned.”

It was then and there that Cohen wanted to be the teacher that he never had who focused on their strengths and not their weaknesses.

He wanted to be the teacher who gave out scratch and sniff stickers, he said to the amusement of the audience, because he never received such positive reinforcement because he was too ‘noisy.’

In high school, he had a new confidence and could finally focus on his academic work. He no longer faced bullies who exploited his perceived weaknesses. He developed relationships with others around him to not only succeed in school, but life.

“I began to make genuine friends,” he said.

One day at high school in St. Louis, Cohen told the audience how he fell in love with Bradley University.

“You cannot fall in love with a university just because of its name,” his father implored him.

“Let’s go Bradley!” The cheerleaders shouted at games.

The crowd spelled out his name.

He added that he did not just choose the university because of its name, he appreciated the proximity to his home, the size of its student body and the school gave freshmen the chance to teach in the classroom. As a college student, Cohen asked his professors to allow him to share about his condition with his peers at the beginning of class.

His education professor said that he did not have time to allow the college student the two minutes to explain his Tourette’s because there was no time at the beginning of class.

During the first day of class, the education professor ended up giving the time to the nervous student who became more at ease because he knew that the students understood.

For four years at Bradley University, “I studied my tail off,” Cohen said.

“I never made excuses,” he said, “I tried to learn like everyone else.”

“My resume looked nearly flawless.”

“I was ready to take on the world.”

He headed to Atlanta to begin his teaching career. It was cool going to the Olympics at night. But during the day, he endured interview after interview. He could not convince any elementary school administrators to hire him. They were concerned that they would be unable to explain Dr. Cohen’s medical condition to the education communities.

He was even cautioned by one principal that their fifth grade students would react violently.

He walked out of one interview with a principal angry because he asked a principal how a school would treat its special education community if they treated an applicant like him with such disrespect. He decided that he did not want to work for such a person.

“I knew I could do it,” he said. Feeling dejected, he went to bed in tears.

His family asked him to return to Missouri, but we woke up with a new positive attitude. His father recommended that he work as a substitute teacher until full-time work was available.

He printed out a stack of new resumes and set forth to find a new job with a newfound assertiveness. One day, a principal called and asked if Cohen had been hired yet. The principal invited Cohen to an interview.

Instead of focusing on the Tourette’s, the interview was geared toward Cohen’s teaching skills.

Mountain View Elementary School in Cobb County, Georgia hired Cohen after his 25th interview, three weeks into the school year. The new second grade teacher, however, was not in the clear. Having joined late in the year, the other second grade teachers farmed out their children with the greatest challenges and the most high-maintenance parents to him.

After graduating cum laude, he did not know what lessons would help him reach the parade of children who literally moved their desks into his classroom.

But Cohen had the talent and the gifts to come full circle and rise from disability to ability and being able to be the kind of teacher that everybody, including a young scared child making funny sounds, deserves. I am looking forward to what TEACH has in store for us next year.