In This Issue:
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HOW HARD IS TEACHING? |
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ADDITIONAL TWO-WEEK DELAY IN POSTING SPENDING REGS FOR LOCAL CONTROL FUNDING FORMULA |
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®EFORM GROUPS PUSH BACK ON CALIFORNIA’S TESTING PLAN |
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STUDENTS ONLY KNOW A FRACTION OF MATH TEACHER’S GOOD DEEDS |
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HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T FIT: The Rest (but
not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other Sources |
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EVENTS: Coming up next week... |
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What can YOU do? |
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Featured Links:
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There is a tendency at this time of year to look-back
and yearn-forward …and draw up lists o’ stuff – Good, Bad and
Indifferent from the year past.
THE GOOD: Almost everything accomplished by youngsters with the
assistance of teachers, parents, administrators and staff. Children
learned to read. Kids memorized the seven-times tables, Graduates
graduated and matriculators matriculated. As and Bs and Cs were earned
and recorded in permanent records. Students mastered subjects and aced
tests and academic decathletes from LAUSD crushed all comers. Models of
missions were built. Term projects were completed. Essayists wrote
essays and artists painted masterpieces that will adorn refrigerator
doors and art gallery walls. The All City Band marched down Colorado
Boulevard on New Year’s Day - marching not-to-war but to music of their
own making. And (spoiler alert) they do it again next Wednesday!
THE BAD: Adults behaved badly, misbehaved and did nothing at all when
doing something was called for. There wasn’t enough moral fiber in some
diets, ethics were compromised.
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity”
...And the upright?
Their hour comes round at last as they slouch towards Bethlehem.
THE INDIFFERENT: All the brouhaha about testing: The old tests and the
new tests and tests yet to come. On further review the results are and
were and will be meaningless; the proofs prove even less. We are only
incrementally closer to wherever we were going and we have the data to
prove it.
And next year, 2014, is the promised Year of No Child Left Behind: Every
child proficient or above; all schools wonderful or closed.
Steve Lopez’ column Sunday morning outlines 2013’s scandals, corruption and incompetence – and includes:
“(L.A. Times reporter) Howard Blume has been all over an L.A. Unified
School District in which political feuding and a botched attempt to hand
every student an iPad may have factored into the resignation of a top
deputy to Supt. John Deasy, who also threatened to resign. We still
don't know why school officials agreed to the $1-billion iPad rollout
with little planning and no explanation for buying unfinished software.”
| http://lat.ms/1d1NkMg
The smf who sits on the Bond Oversight Committee has warily supported
the iPads initiative thus far. The smf who edits and writes for these
pages is more critical. Maybe it’s because I’m a Gemini or pragmatic or
bipolar.
I believe 1to1 computing and digital delivery of instruction is a part
of the future of public education. I believe that the iPads can be a
part of the educational infrastructure and that they can be a wise
investment of school construction and improvement bond funds – when
invested in a conscientiously applied and well-budgeted long-term
program of construction, repair and maintenance alongside an annual
general-fund operating budget that invests in teachers and school staff
to support the capital outlay.
But dial back to those ‘can’s – “the iPads can be a part of the
educational infrastructure and that they can be a wise investment”. And
here my faith and support are challenged and doubt gnaws at the
foundation of the infrastructure.
Questions exist as to the legality of the investment, especially if
students take the devices home. I am convinced the premise is legal if
properly financed with the right kinds of bonds – but those plans have
yet to have been made public. Nobody has yet explained how the next
generation of 1to1 devices is to be financed once these wear out in
three-to-five years.
Darker questions exist as to whether the contract with Apple – and Apple
and Pearson’s contract with each other – are in the best interest of
the District.
And dark, dark questions swirl around the awarding of the Common Core
Technology Project contract, the floating of the RFP and the
relationships between some of the principals in the deal - including in
LAUSD, Apple and Pearson Learning and its non-profit Pearson Foundation
–implicated in other impropriety elsewhere [http://nyti.ms/1ip21R8] and suspected farther afield [ ].
A senior figure in the deal from Pearson (who worked with Superintendent
Deasy in other district[s] years ago) moved from the Pearson Foundation
to the parent to head up the LAUSD operation, granted a puff-piece
insider interview to the LA Weekly – and was abruptly transferred from
LAUSD to the Inland Empire. And the new Pearson LAUSD project manager
used to be an Apple project manager. The bedfellows get cozier.
Lopez’ prologue stated “I can't wait for 2014 to begin, because several
of this year's cliffhangers are likely to play out in coming months.”
Stay tuned.
¡Onward/Adelante/Happy New Year! - smf
HOW HARD IS TEACHING?
Compiled+Edited by Valerie Strauss, The Answer Sheet in the Washington Post | http://wapo.st/19USf4K
December 27 at 4:00 am :: How hard is teaching?
Here are some answers to the question:
“Giving a presentation to NASA about how the thermal protection system
of a spacecraft is connected to its primary structure is a cakewalk
compared to getting 30 teenagers excited about logarithms.” – Ryan
Fuller, a former aerospace engineer who now teaches high school in
Colorado Springs, wrote in a piece on Slate. | http://slate.me/1bwsZOd
—
“Teaching is hard. Not only because of the curriculum, not only because
of the new tests, new rules, new measures. Not only because there are
tests, tests, and more tests. But because it so often feels like an
insurmountable, thankless, stressful endeavor. The rules are always
changing. The tests are always changing. And the blame for anything and
everything that goes wrong usually falls squarely on our shoulders.” –
Neyda Borges, teacher at Miami Lakes Educational Center in Florida, from
this piece on the website of StateImpact Florida http://n.pr/1kTPFA7 ][, a project of NPR.
—
“In the primary grades, we deal with gross bathroom-related issues. –
Even a high school teacher could never understand some of the crises
related to bodily functions that a typical K-3 teacher has to deal with
on a regular basis. Potty accidents (and more instances too disgusting
to reiterate here) are something that we can’t shy away from. I’ve had
third grade students who still wear diapers and let me tell you – it’s
stinky. Is there any amount of money or vacation time worth cleaning up
vomit from the classroom floor with your own two hands?” – Beth Lewis,
from About.Com | http://abt.cm/1fTDZJS
—
“American teachers deal with a lot: low pay, growing class sizes and
escalating teacher-bashing from politicians and pundits. Federal testing
and accountability mandates under No Child Left Behind and, more
recently, Race to the Top, have added layers of bureaucracy while
eliminating much of the creativity and authentic learning that makes
teaching enjoyable. Tack on the recession’s massive teacher layoffs and
other school cuts, plus the challenges of trying to compensate for
increasing child poverty, homelessness, and food insecurity, and you get
a trifecta of disincentives to become, or remain, a teacher.” –
Stanford Professor Linda Darling-Hammond, in this piece {http://huff.to/1hOzCkJ] on Huffington Post.
—
“Teaching is a hard job with long hours (with no overtime). It’s no way a
9-5 job (nor a 7-3 job). My job starts way before the students enter
the classroom, and it starts again when the students leave the
classroom. I work after school and I work at home at night. Most of the
work has to do with preparing lessons, contacting parents, grading
papers, going to numerous meetings, extra help for students, dealing
with tons of administrative paperwork, etc. etc. etc. I feel like the
time I spend in the classroom with students is like the end result…
you’ll have a good lesson and good rapport with the students because you
did all your ‘homework’.
“Just know that you will not sleep much the first few years (at least).
You will have to deal with difficult students, and even more difficult
parents. You will have to deal with stupid administrative crap, You will
be forced to follow curriculum and adopt teaching styles designed by
people who probably have not taught in decades. You will not get much
support from the administration. You will be pretty much on your own to
figure things out. YOU WILL BE OVERWHELMED. And everyone around you will
think that you have an easy job because your work is done at 3 pm
(yeah, right) and you have the summers off (yeah, we don’t get PAID
either).” — Ms. K on Yahoo.| http://yhoo.it/1eOMVUy
—
“We’re not just teachers. – The word ‘teacher’ just doesn’t cover it.
We’re also nurses, psychologists, recess monitors, social workers,
parental counselors, secretaries, copy machine mechanics, and almost
literally parents, in some instances, to our students. If you’re in a
corporate setting, you can say, ‘That’s not in my job description.’ When
you’re a teacher, you have to be ready for everything and anything to
be thrown at you on a given day. And there’s no turning it down.” – Beth
Lewis, from About.Com | http://abt.cm/1fTDZJS
—
“You know, this is precisely why I loathed being a teacher! Young people
are so infernally convinced that they are absolutely right about
everything.” – Professor Phineas Nigellus Black, in Harry Potter and the
Order of the Phoenix
—
“Teachers must take on a large agenda: to help students abandon the
safety of rote learning; to instruct them in framing and testing
hypotheses; and to build a climate of tolerance for others’ ideas, and
curiosity about unusual answers, among other things. Teachers who take
this path must work harder, concentrate more, and embrace larger
pedagogical responsibilities than if they only assigned text chapters
and seatwork. They also must have unusual knowledge and skills. They
require,for instance, a deep understanding of the material and modes of
discourse about it. They must be able to comprehend students’ thinking,
their interpretations of problems, their mistakes, and their puzzles.
And, when students cannot comprehend, teachers must have the capacity to
probe thoughtfully and tactfully. These and other capacities would not
be needed if teachers relied on texts and worksheets. In addition,
teachers who seek to make instruction more adventurous must take unusual
risks, even
if none of their students resist. For if they offer academic subjects as
fields of inquiry, they must support their actions and decisions as
intellectuals, not merely as functionaries or voices for a text.” –
University of Michigan Professor David K. Cohen in this paper, “Teaching
Practice: Plus Ça Change…” | http://bit.ly/1ekiZLa
►Strauss asks: Add some more in the comments [http://wapo.st/19USf4K] and I’ll do another post with the best ones.
●●4LAKids edited/wordbutchered some of the continuing responses. Here goes:
GABBY2 :: Here's an honest answer: The hardest thing for me, as an
elementary art teacher, was trying to persuade my colleagues to
appreciate my contribution to learning. B/c they didn't take my job
seriously, or respect my contribution to their students learning, it was
hard for me to maintain my own enthusiasm year after year. I finally
gave up and retired b/c my own intellectual and emotional needs were not
being met.
ASCHWORTZ :: I taught at a community college for 8 years, which is
much easier than public K-12. And then I returned to be a full-time
graduate student working on my PhD in astrophysics. As a grad student I
have more free time, less stress, I have weekends off, I can stop
working when it's time for dinner, I don't have to pick up my work again
after dinner, I sleep through the night, I rely on caffeine less, and I
get fewer migraines. All of this is a pleasant change from when I was a
community college prof. Yes, working on a PhD in astrophysics is easier
than being even a community college teacher.
TEEKY ::
1. Just to clarify for the public yet again, teachers are ONLY paid for
the 175 to 190 days they are contracted to work each year. The real time
spent is more like a minimum of 10 hours per day.
2. Hardest part is knowing that the literally hundreds of decisions you
make each day in your classroom on the run must all be the correct
decisions. (And that's just during the part of your day that the public
actually sees, the part when you're required to always be "on"--- 7:15
to 3:15.) Very little room for error without doing some kind of damage
somewhere--either to instruction, a student's ego, the way in which your
administrator views you, your working relationship with a parent.....
3. Keeping everybody happy: students, parents, department head, coaches,
principal, district administrators, school board, the state DOE, and
lastly yourself and your family. Many stakeholders, all wanting
different things from you.
4. Next to no personal life, and even carving out that time takes time.
5. Lack of professional respect from everyone, with the exception of other teachers.
6. The politics: parents, teams and committees, building, district,
7. Meetings and committees----usually work assignments, expectations, obligations, and more work to do
8. Differentiated instruction---necessary, but means that each lesson
all day every day must be taught appropriately so that the 3 to 5 layers
of students in your room each get something valuable out of it---from
the highest gifted to the lowest SpEd student, from the slow learners to
the middle students, and including
non-English-speaking students, the behaviorally-challenged. those with
emotional problems, those who don't care to be there, etc. Major
balancing act, that. All under daily schedule time constraints, of
course, and while honoring learning styles, and including movement,
activity, choice, hand-on.
9. Not getting a lunch or planning time due to weekly meetings.
10. Staying on top of constant, daily change.
PALAN :: There are the technically hard parts (dealing with the
pedagogical packing of your content for maximum effectiveness) and the
extraneous hard parts (dealing with the unending clerical and management
work of being your own "administrative assistant" and having to
constantly prove to seven levels of bureaucracy that you are doing the
job that you would have more time to do if you weren't constantly
reporting to seven levels of bureaucracy).
But in some ways the hardest part is never being enough.
You know what, in a perfect world, you would do-- the assignments you
would give, the personal attention you would give, the feedback you
would give on assignments, the preparation you would put into units. You
will never have enough time to do all of it, especially if you have a
life of your own (and you have to, even if only to be able to connect to
students), and so you must always decide what thing that ought to be
done is not going to be done.
You grow every year (if you're any good) and you get better at juggling
more balls faster. But every day is still educational triage and you are
still bothered by the things you know you ought to do, but you don't
have the time or the resources.
You will never be perfect, even though you have a pretty good idea of
what perfect looks like. You will always be better than you used to be,
but all good teachers know exactly in what ways they are failing.
PMICHAELS-ARTIST-AT-LARGE :: This is specific to teaching in the ARTS:
your class is generally the last to be scheduled as English. Math and
the Sciences get first priority. This means that your classes often have
VERY wide discrepancies in the skills and knowledge of students: one
student may have the drawing skills of a Rembrandt and another may
barely be able to mix blue and yellow together to get green.
Administrators constantly pull students out for various resource
classes, sports practice, testing, etc. because "Art is just an
elective". Often students with behavioral problems and little interest
are 'dumped' in a class because it's not one of the 'serious' ones. An
Arts teacher is constantly dealing with budget & inventory issues,
be it fighting for supplies, ordering supplies, keeping track of
inventory, or trying to figure out lessons that will go with the
supplies available.
The above constraints interfere greatly with what should be one of the
most joyous and creative, affirming environments in a school.
MS. SUSANNAH :: Teaching is a holistic practice that is more than just
lecturing in front of a classroom and dolling out pre- and post-tests.
It is the planing and thinking of how you will impart real world
information with current implications that will help children connect
the past to the future. This is not done within the confines of the 9-3
classroom. The lesson/activity is only a small portion of our factual
research, planning of a lesson that will meet the needs of 25+ vastly
different students, and gathering the materials (often at our own
expense). At the same time we need to be sure we will be meeting all of
the other needs of our students. We do not teach in a vacuum. What
happens outside of the school impacts what we do in the classroom. We
can do everything right but that child who suffered a trauma at home,
albeit no breakfast, violence, poverty, a parent going away for
business, or extreme change in routine, will not get the full benefit of
that lesson.
Compare teaching to someone in finance for a moment: The best investment
adviser tells you to invest in widgets only made in Madeupland. You do
pretty well but a war suddenly breaks out without warning over there.
You loose money. Do you blame your adviser? Why blame the
teacher?
ARTHUR CAMINS :: Teaching, that is, effective teaching, is hard not
just because of all of the current challenges wrought by the current
anti-teacher climate or the challenges of children’s lives constrained
by relentless poverty. It is hard because children are wonderfully
diverse complex human beings. It is hard because teachers are charged
not just with helping students develop myriad skills and content
knowledge, but also with teaching them to think, make judgments and
learn what it means to be responsible citizens and friends. It is hard
because becoming an effective teacher is not about learning a set of
“best practices,” but rather to develop an enormous repertoire of
teaching and insight into human behavior and relations and the nuanced
judgment about when to do what with whom and under which particular
circumstances. It is hard because effective teaching requires deep
knowledge of subject matter, the ways of developing knowledge that are
unique to each discipline,
how children come to understand different concepts, their confusions
along the way, and how to help them move along the journey from naïve to
sophisticated understanding. It is hard because teacher need to
negotiate the complexity of children and their relationships with their
families and communities. In fact, it is hard to imagine a harder
job.
PONTIFIKATE :: Many people in business can imagine this:
You have 5 presentations a day, every day and they can't be the same.
You have to prepare for those 5 presentations every night
You have to write critical yet encouraging remarks on the papers for the attendees of those presentation
You have 165 attendees every day
Those attendees are often restless, distracted, rude and disruptive
Your pay is low, you get no respect and are blamed for the whole business failing.
ENGLISH UPPER CLASS TWIT :: I spent a year teaching 10th Grade
biology. The really bright kids who wanted to know everything I knew,
and more, were a pleasure. The disruptive kids were a cost of doing
business. The days when I was able to induce a light bulb moment for a
not so bright kid were total pleasure. What drove me out were the bright
kids - some very bright - who were only interested in accumulating A
and A+ grades although actual learning was not part of their program.
ADDITIONAL TWO-WEEK DELAY IN POSTING SPENDING REGS FOR LOCAL CONTROL FUNDING FORMULA
By John Fensterwald, Ed Source Today | http://bit.ly/1h7Hgcc
December 20th, 2013 :: There’ll be no pre-holiday look at the
much-anticipated spending regulations for the Local Control Funding
Formula. Instead, the draft rules for California’s new school finance
system will make a post-Rose Bowl appearance on the California
Department of Education website on Friday, Jan. 3, state officials said
Friday.
The State Board of Education had set a self-imposed deadline for Dec.
20, but staff are still working on it, taking in written ideas and
suggestions from 50 meetings in the last six weeks with groups with
various positions, State Board Executive Director Karen Stapf Walters
said.
“We think we’re getting to a better place, but we are not there yet,” she said.
Samantha Tran, senior director of education policy for Children Now, one
of the groups providing recommendations, said she saw the delay as a
good sign. “The staff of the State Board heard the concerns and comments
from the field,” she said. “They’re really listening.”
The half-dozen page regulations will instruct districts on how much
latitude they will have in spending extra dollars that the funding
formula, called LCFF, allocates for low-income students, children
learning English and foster youth, the three groups that are earmarked
for additional dollars. The law creating the LCFF said that a district
must increase services and programs for high-needs students in
proportion to the additional dollars they bring to a district.
But that leaves a lot open to interpretation, and groups advocating for
minority kids, like The Education Trust-West and Public Advocates, and
groups representing school districts and superintendents have very
different opinions on what that should mean.
The advocates want strict accounting for the dollars tied to
identifiable programs for high-needs students. School districts, arguing
that base level funding is far from pre-recession levels, want more
flexibility to spend on district programs and purposes that may benefit
all students, not just targeted kids. The percentage of high-needs
students in a district will likely determine the amount of flexibility a
district will have. But establishing the threshold for tighter
accountability has been one of the sticking points.
In November, draft regulations presented by WestEd, the consultants for
the State Board on LCFF, were widely panned because the proposal gave
districts an option of setting goals for academic and school improvement
not tied to spending more money on high-needs students. That option
won’t be in the next draft.
The spending regulations are key to guiding districts in setting annual
goals, through a Local Control and Accountability Plan, detailing what
actions they will take to improve student achievement, school climate,
parent engagement and other areas among eight priorities in the funding
law. Earlier this month, the State Board released a draft template of
the LCAP. There may be further refinements in the next draft, on Jan. 3.
The State Board will adopt both the regulations and the LCAP template on
Thursday, Jan. 16. The regulations are technically emergency
regulations, adopted to meet a Legislature-imposed Jan. 31 deadline. The
State Board will then open up a nine-month process to adopt permanent
regulations, giving it a second chance, after a year’s trial and error,
to rewrite them.
®EFORM GROUPS PUSH BACK ON CALIFORNIA’S TESTING PLAN
A WHO’S WHO OF GATES/BROAD/WALTON ED ®EFORM: ABC, DEASY’S OWN CORE CA,
ED TRUST/WEST, ED VOICE, PARENT REVOLUTION, MICHELLE RHEE’S STUDENTS
FIRST & TEACH PLUS HAMMER ON CALIFORNIA'S COMMON CORE TEST PLAN
By Alyson Klein - Politics K-12 - Education Week http://bit.ly/18JZYnnon
December 24, 2013 2:00 PM :: So remember how California is planning to
suspend most of its accountability testing for a year in order to help
the state's schools get up to speed on new tests aligned with the Common
Core standards?
U.S. Secretary of Education of Arne Duncan is none-too-happy about that
idea, as my colleague, Catherine Gewertz, reported. And neither are a
number of state and national advocacy organizations, including
StudentsFirst, Teach Plus, The Education Trust-West, and the Alliance
for a Better Community.
Their latest argument: Not explaining to teachers and schools how their
students—particularly subgroup kids, such as English language
learners—perform on assessments is a major missed opportunity for
professional development.
The groups made their case in letter sent to Duncan on Monday. Reading
between the lines of the letter, it sounds like they are hoping that the
Secretary will include some additional reporting requirements for the
state education agency when the department considers California's recent
request for a "double-testing waiver." (Check out the full text
following.
"The teachers, principals, and superintendents with whom we work
have been very clear: they need to know how their students are doing,"
the groups write. "This is not only essential in assessing how schools
are adapting their curriculum and instruction to meet the [common core
standards], but critical to teachers in their own professional
development and continuous improvement to meet the needs of their
students."
Any waiver that the Education Department grants the Golden State from
the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act—the current version of
the Elementary and Secondary Education Act—should, at a minimum, call
for the state to "provide useful data on student progress back to the
districts," the letter says.
Some background: More than 40 states and the District of Columbia have
waivers from the NCLB law, but California isn't one of them. However,
the Golden State was one of 15 that applied for the department's
so-called "double-testing" waiver. That waiver allows states to get rid
of some or all of their current testing programs in math and language
arts to focus on the field tests being given this spring by PARCC and
Smarter Balanced, the two common-assessment consortia. So far,
California hasn't heard back on its request.
Clearly, the groups are hoping that Duncan will call for some additional
data reporting to districts before green-lighting California's request.
STUDENTS ONLY KNOW A FRACTION OF MATH TEACHER’S GOOD DEEDS
JIM O'CONNOR IS A STRICT DISCIPLINARIAN AT ST.
FRANCIS HIGH, SO IT WASN'T UNTIL STUDENTS VOLUNTEERED TO HELP WITH A
BLOOD DRIVE THAT THEY DISCOVERED HE HAD A GENTLER SIDE.
By Nita Lelyveld | LA Times City Beat | http://lat.ms/1d72t2r
December 23, 2013, 6:21 p.m. :: No one saw the superhero in mild-mannered Clark Kent.
Jim O'Connor keeps his students fooled too.
In his algebra and calculus classes at St. Francis High School, he is
stern — no excuses, no coddling. "If you look at the clock," said senior
Michael Tinglof, who had O'Connor in his freshman year, "you're on his
bad list for the rest of the class."
The 70-year-old teacher's look also is all business: spine straight,
close-cropped silver hair. When he cracks a joke, he's so deadpan that
the boys often miss it, senior Pat McGoldrick said.
"Like in our class, he'll put a problem up on the board and then someone
will say, 'Oh, can you do it this way?' And then he'll respond, 'Oh
yeah, I'll just do this and I'll just change that and I'll do all this
extra work and I'll get the same answer. It's totally worth it.' "
Until they get accustomed, Pat said, "everybody thinks he's being really mean."
For the record, O'Connor embraces the reputation. "You want to teach a class with 30 boys, you've got to be strict," he said.
Michael and Pat might never have found out how little they really knew
about their teacher if they hadn't signed on this year to recruit donors
for a school blood drive.
One afternoon, the boys took a field trip to see where the donated blood
would go. In the hallways of Children's Hospital Los Angeles, they were
greeted like VIPs because they were associated with one.
"He was like a celebrity there. Everybody knew his name," Pat said of O'Connor.
They discovered one reason when they went to the hospital's Blood Donor
Center, which has a plaque ranking the top donors. O'Connor's name is
engraved in the top spot, 50 gallons — though that total is way out of
date.
Since he first gave blood at Children's Hospital in 1989, at the urging
of a friend's wife who was a nurse there, O'Connor has donated more than
72 gallons of blood and platelets.
That enormous gift — worth well over half a million dollars had it been
purchased — has been especially valuable because he is a universal
donor. His O-negative blood can be given to people of all blood types.
It can be used for newborns and, in an emergency, before a victim's
blood is typed.
Once a month without fail, O'Connor arrives at the hospital's donor
center to give platelets, which are vital for cancer patients undergoing
chemotherapy, and for those who have had open-heart surgery or
bone-marrow or organ transplants. It can take about two hours for a
machine to draw his blood, separate out the platelets by centrifuge and
then return the remaining components to him.
O'Connor also gives blood every other month, which is as often as
regulations allow. He's been the hospital's top donor for years — by a
long shot.
::
O'Connor grew up in New York. He served in the Navy during the Vietnam
War, doing electrical work on an aircraft carrier. Before becoming a
teacher, he worked deep in the Holland and Lincoln tunnels as an
electrician for New York's Port Authority.
College came late for him — and took a while to complete. He started
with night school, graduated at 30 and came to California in 1973 to be
an engineer at Hughes Aircraft. He coached youth sports on the side and
enjoyed it so much that he decided teaching was what he should do with
his life.
He spent a decade at St. Francis in La Cañada Flintridge, starting in
1976, before a 20-year stint at Harvard-Westlake. Rather than retire, he
arranged to return to St. Francis part time. His schedule alternates
from Monday, Wednesday and Friday to Tuesday and Thursday.
When he's not at school, he's usually at the hospital.
Before O'Connor ever set foot in Children's, he had given blood
regularly at Red Cross drives, never knowing where his donations would
go. But when he took a tour of the hospital wards, what had been an
abstraction turned personal.
He saw newborns who had had major surgery, toddlers undergoing
chemotherapy, parents under strain as their children's hospital stays
stretched from days to weeks to months.
It didn't take long for him to ask what more he could do to help.
Soon he was rocking babies in his arms. Babies whose parents were
working or at home taking care of other children. Babies whose parents
could not visit because abuse was suspected.
O'Connor has never married. He doesn't have children. He was nervous at
first, he said, especially about infants with tubes and wires attached,
unhappy and sore after major surgeries or trauma.
But that faded.
Now, the nurses say, he is the one they turn to in the toughest moments.
They have called him in to sit with babies who are dying and whose
parents are too traumatized to be present.
"No matter how sick they are, no matter how devastated, he's just so
caring, he brings such a warmth and peace," said Jeri Fonacier, a nurse
in a general medical surgery unit on the fifth floor.
"We see him and we say, 'Oh Jim, oh thank God you're here,'" nurse Rebecca Day said.
::
The St. Francis boys heard that and much more when they visited the floor.
Before seeing this side of their teacher, Michael said, "we heard
rumors. 'Mr. O'Connor holds babies.' I'm like, 'What? I don't see that.
No, I don't think so.' "
Now it's different.
"I mean, if you really think about it, his whole life is service," Pat
said. "Half the week he's teaching, giving knowledge to his students,
and the other half, he's donating blood and giving his time to children
who need it most. It's pretty amazing."
So will news of O'Connor's alter ego be kryptonite to his classroom control?
Ask him at the right moment, and he could not care less.
"When I hold a baby, my blood pressure goes down. I have to concentrate.
Nothing else matters," he said on a recent afternoon as he stood
holding a 4-week-old boy, who was twitching in a fuzzy blue onesie
decorated with polar bears.
Moments earlier, the baby had been wailing. But then O'Connor lifted him into his arms and started to sway.
Eyes shut. The tiny body stilled. The hospital room was silent but for
the strict math teacher who cooed, "Oh my goodness, what a face, what a
face."
HIGHLIGHTS, LOWLIGHTS & THE NEWS THAT DOESN'T
FIT: The Rest (but not necessarily the best) of the Stories from Other
Sources
PEARSON + PARENT INVOLVEMENT - They have an App for that they'd like to sell you ...from 2008! | http://bit.ly/1h6XbaO
STATE’S SCHOOLS FAIL TO CLOSE LATINO TEST-SCORE GAP + smf’s 2¢: By MARTHA MENDOZA, - The Orange County Registe... http://bit.ly/1cnK7Kt
STUDENTS ONLY KNOW A FRACTION OF MATH TEACHER’S GOOD DEEDS: Jim O'Connor is a strict disciplinarian at St. Fra... http://bit.ly/1fZHmQj
GO FIGURE: ‘Duck Dynasty’s’ Phil Robertson is a former teacher with a Masters Degree in Education |http://wapo.st/19cGvGV
®EFORM GROUPS PUSH BACK ON CALIFORNIA’S TESTING PLAN: A Who’s Who of Gates/Broad/Walton Ed ®eform: ABC, Deasy’... http://bit.ly/1jFNsKl
The groundswell of support from the Astroturf grassroots had its desired
effect: John Deasy - a mediocre headliner who was going to do an encore
anyway - was encouraged to stay! http://bit.ly/auDNT3
A tale of broken romance - L.A. TEACHERS & ED ®EFORM COALITION: IRRECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES? + smf’s 2¢ | http://bit.ly/1ldyAys
TWEETED: Revising the #LAUSD EarlyStart Calendar to Make Room for Common
Core Testing: CHRISTMAS HAS BEEN CANCELLED; GO DIRECTLY TO DYEING EGGS!
HO-HO-HO HUMBUG! Scrooge wasn't a tightwad skinflint, he was quoted out of context! | http://bit.ly/1boBo6m
EVENTS: Coming up next week...
*Dates and times subject to change. ________________________________________
• SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION BOND OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE:
http://www.laschools.org/bond/
Phone: 213-241-5183
____________________________________________________
• LAUSD FACILITIES COMMUNITY OUTREACH CALENDAR:
http://www.laschools.org/happenings/
Phone: 213-241.8700
What can YOU do?
• E-mail, call or write your school board member:
Tamar.Galatzan@lausd.net • 213-241-6386
Monica.Garcia@lausd.net • 213-241-6180
Bennett.Kayser@lausd.net • 213-241-5555
Marguerite.LaMotte@lausd.net • 213-241-6382
Monica.Ratliff@lausd.net • 213-241-6388
Richard.Vladovic@lausd.net • 213-241-6385
Steve.Zimmer@lausd.net • 213-241-6387
...or your city councilperson, mayor, the governor, member of congress,
senator - or the president. Tell them what you really think! • Find
your state legislator based on your home address. Just go to: http://bit.ly/dqFdq2 • There are 26 mayors and five county supervisors representing jurisdictions within LAUSD, the mayor of LA can be reached at mayor@lacity.org • 213.978.0600
• Call or e-mail Governor Brown: 213-897-0322 e-mail: http://www.govmail.ca.gov/
• Open the dialogue. Write a letter to the editor. Circulate these
thoughts. Talk to the principal and teachers at your local school.
• Speak with your friends, neighbors and coworkers. Stay on top of education issues. Don't take my word for it!
• Get involved at your neighborhood school. Join your PTA. Serve on a School Site Council. Be there for a child.
• If you are eligible to become a citizen, BECOME ONE.
• If you a a citizen, REGISTER TO VOTE.
• If you are registered, VOTE LIKE THE FUTURE DEPENDS ON IT. THEY DO!.
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