Here's my latest editorial on Ka Leo
http://www.kaleo.org/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/03/16/40569e49023ce
There is no 'i' in teacher
Pablo Wegesend
Ka Leo Staff Columnist
March 16, 2004
Imagine your favorite football team has been getting bad results the last few years. This has been very embarrassing to you. You demand new leadership for the football team. You demand team management terminate the current coach and replaced with someone more fit. Others publicly agree.
But the coach won't take the criticism lying down.
He says to the public: "How many of you have ever been a head coach? Don't you know all the hard work I put in?" His words don't satisfy you since other coaches work hard, but got better results.
The coach then says: "Look, my players come from disadvantaged backgrounds! A lot of them come from single-parent homes, a lot of them live in public housing, some of them have been racially profiled, some came from the South Pacific and had to deal with cultural bias."
The coach's words don't satisfy you since other coaches have players who have been through the same problems and have gotten better results on the field.
The coach then says: "My players are good athletes, they just don't do well in big games."
The coach's words don't satisfy since a coach is supposed to help the players do well in big games.
The coach then says: "My players are hard to discipline, some of them come from broken homes."
The coach's words don't satisfy you, since it's the same excuse you've heard before!
You see, we don't accept our favorite football teams losing. We would never accept the coach's excuses.
Usually, coaches of losing teams get fired. On this campus, Fred von Appen got fired after 3 losing seasons, with his last one being the worst. June Jones led the team to a bowl game his first years, using a lot of the same players that were coached by von Appen. And von Appen didn't make the same excuses I mentioned above.
Yet, year after year, we accept the same types of excuses from Hawaii's public school teachers. While we call for the coach's firing after a losing season, it is politically incorrect to even make mild criticisms of public school teachers, even though the public schools have been getting von Appen-like test scores for years.
We say too many of the public school children come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Never mind that Kaulawela Elementary School (in downtown/Liliha area) has a lot of immigrant children, yet have decent test scores. Never mind that movies like "Lean on Me," "Dangerous Minds" and "Stand And Deliver" are based on true stories of school officials effectively reaching out to students in America's most dangerous inner cities.
Never mind that football coaches have high expectations of their players, many of whom are black or Polynesian or coming from low income households.
We claim that tests are culturally biased against island youth. Never mind that on the mostly black Caribbean island of Barbados, the students do very well on the same exact tests given out to American kids. In fact, they do better. And never mind that on real SATs, in the reading comprehension section, there are paragraphs talking about minority experiences (I've taken the SAT, so don't tell me it wasn't there).
But too many of us have this religious faith that SATs and other tests are 100 percent biased towards white suburban youth! Facts arguing against this faith be damned.
We accept the excuses that some kids are smart but don't well on tests. Yet when Timmy Chang screwed up in a big game, a lot of us booed him, even though that game is nowhere as important as the scores our kids earn in the academic and real world.
We let teachers guilt trip us about never being in their positions. Never mind that 99 percent of us have never been head football coaches or the President, but still make harsh comments about their real or perceived shortcomings.
And before you start writing an insulting letter to the editor about me, let's get some facts about me clear. I am a son of an immigrant from Mexico.
I spent my youth living in a low income community of Kalihi which had its drug and gang problems. Yet I was able to get into this university with test scores and GPA ABOVE the general admissions requirements. This has made me LESS accepting of the excuses promoted by the teacher's unions and their defenders.
I am also teaching a Freshman Seminar this semester, so I do have an idea of what teaching is like. In a few weeks, I will be under a mid-semester evaluation, plus I'll be evaluated again at the end of the semester.
I know I could've done a few things better, and I am accepting of constructive criticisms of my teaching. But if I end up having a von Appen record, I will not use the students' background as an excuse! I will learn from my mistakes and learn to be more effective. But I guess that is too much to ask from our public school teachers.
Actually, that Freshman Seminar evaluation has passed, and it was suggested that I improve on making difficult subjects clearer, that I talk to the students face to face instead of over-relying on email, and that instead of reading the handouts word for word, I let them read em silently, then we go over them as a group! So I'm still learning to improve myself! It comes with trial and error!
