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Category Archives: student behavior

Modern-Day Witch Hunts and Vigilantes — the politically-correct Mob’s (sex) War against Teachers – Part 1/6

11 Apr

When the media erupted in its usual ‘Yellow Journalism‘ fashion after James Hooker (age 41) quit his job as a public school teacher, and left his wife and children to shack up with former student Jordan Powers (18), my first thought was that he was going to be the victim of a witch hunt, because there is a double standard when it comes to teachers.

And I was right.

According to the law in California, 18 is the age of consent where one is considered responsible for his or her own decisions and actions in life.

For example, at 18, one may join the military and die for America.

That’s what I did after I graduated from high school, but I didn’t die. After Marine Corps boot camp, at the age of 19, I was sent to South Vietnam, where 58,269 American troops were killed in combat and 153,303 were wounded of the 2.6 million US troops that served there. The average age of a soldier in Vietnam was 19, and more than eleven thousand under the age of 20 were killed.

Why aren’t more mothers protesting this choice by their adult children?

For Powers, when she turned 18, instead of joining the Army or Marines to fight/die in Afghanistan or another foreign country, she chose to live with Hooker, her former teacher from an earlier school year. She dropped out of school and he quit/lost his job, which is what happens to most public school teachers that have an affair with a student that is age 18 or older. If the student is under age 18, the older teacher usually ends up in jail.

However, now a Republican California legislator by the name of Kristin Olsen has introduced Bill 1861 to make it a felony for a teacher to have a romance with a student, even if the student is over 18.

In fact, Mercury News.com reported, “Power’s mother … continues to lobby for a bill introduced by Modesto Assemblywoman Kristin Olsen that would make it a crime for high school teachers to date students of any age.”

In addition, there are currently 23 states that make it a felony for a teacher to date a high school student even if the student is 18 or older.

No wonder America has more people in prison than any other country in the world. If California’s Bill 1861 becomes a law, it will focus only on teachers. This means if Powers moved in with a 41 year-old fireman, policeman, used car salesman, lawyer, doctor or a corporate CEO, while she was still a senior in high school, that would be legal.

If Bill 1861 passes in the state legislature, an eighteen-year-old high school student such as Powers may have a boyfriend age 18 or older, and change them daily as long as the man isn’t a public school teacher.

By focusing on teachers, Bill 1861 is discriminatory. Leaving his wife and children at age 41 and giving up his job to live with an 18 year old might be poor judgment on Hooker’s part, but it is not illegal and never should be no matter the opinions of mothers or others.

In fact, The Economist published a piece on this topic called Rough Justice in America—Too many laws, too many prisoners. Never in the civilized world have so many been locked up for so little.

The Economist reported, “Justice is harsher in America than in any other rich country… America incarcerates five times more people than Britain, nine times more than Germany and 12 times more than Japan… Half the states have laws that lock up habitual offenders for life. In some states this applies only to violent criminals, but in others it applies even to petty ones. Some 3,700 people who committed neither violent nor serious crimes are serving life sentences under California’s ‘three strikes and you’re out’ law.”

Currently in California, a teacher can only be charged with a felony for engaging in a relationship with a student who is under 18 years of age.

Did you know that 60% of public school teachers leave the profession in the first five years and never return?  If California’s Bill 1861 becomes a law, that will be one more reason to stay away from the classroom because too many laws makes it a very risky profession—anger a student or a student’s mother, lose a job and possibly go to jail for a long time—all in the name of love with a consenting adult.

Continued on April 12, 2012 in Part 2 of the Mob’s War against Teachers

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Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).

lloydlofthouse_crazyisnormal_web2_5His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves

Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).

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Posted by on April 11, 2012 in American Public Schools, child abuse, Education, family values, government, media, Parenting, politics, Public School, student behavior, Teaching

 

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Substitute Teaching is not a “Tea Party”

05 Nov

During the 1976-77 school year, I subbed daily in a half-dozen school districts during the first semester.

Substitute teaching is not easy.

Whoever called first at five in the morning — that would be the school district where I taught.

I taught in Arcadia, Monrovia, San Dimas, Rowland and a few other Southern California school districts I’ve forgotten. Most of the time, I worked in Rowland Unified in La Puente, where I interned the previous year.

When some of the teachers in Rowland knew they were going to be out, they requested me in advance and my calendar quickly filled up.

After the Winter Break, I was called to sub at Romier Elementary for a fifth-grade class.


Watch the video and discover what it is like from another substitute teacher more than thirty years later.

The teacher had a heart attack and was in the hospital. Two weeks later, the principal offered me a long-term position for the rest of the year when the regular teacher died.

I consider that fifth-grade class as the one from Dante’s Inferno, and I worried that this would end in me losing my teaching credential while landing in jail for murder and mayhem.

I asked, “Why me?”

After all, there were many substitute teachers with more experience. This was my first year. However, I needed the job.

That’s when I learned that I had been the thirteenth substitute teacher for that class — not a good omen. The other twelve left after the first day and refused to return.

However, I survived two weeks and discovered why the regular teacher probably had his heart attack and died — a rather drastic way to escape those kids.  He should have quit or retired.

In addition, I knew why I had survived — a combat tour in Vietnam as a United States Marine had prepared me for this teaching job.


This video shows a substitute teacher that lost control. With students like these, I cannot blame her. Do you know that half of new teachers quit within three years and never return to education? This is one example that explains why.

That fifth-grade class had thirty students in it. Half the boys were hyperactive, which probably isn’t the politically correct term to call them but too bad since over the years, political correctness has become a language bully.

One boy, James, would attack anyone that stared at him for more than a few seconds. It didn’t matter if the student staring at him was a girl or a boy. He jumped the other students and his fists started flying.

James should have been America’s secret weapon in Vietnam.

Another example why it is so challenging to teach in America’s public schools may be found at Narcissism at its Best.

As a substitute teacher, it would have been nice to have a black belt in judo or karate. I knew one sub that did, and he started every a class with a demonstration of his skills to tame the wild beasts.

Once the class from Dante’s Inferno was mine, I moved the desks around to create a better arrangement for controlling the hyperactive gang.

I moved the teacher’s desk and placed two bookshelves behind it to form a space in a corner large enough to hold one desk so no one could make eye contact with James.


Another recent substitute experience.

The problem was, James wouldn’t sit still, and I had to keep my sonar turned on. When I sensed he was moving, I’d throw my arm up as if it were one of those arms at a railroad crossing to keep James from getting out and causing a train wreck with the other students he attacked.

At times, when it was too quiet in that cubbyhole hemmed in with bookshelves, I’d discover James on top of his desk spinning on his head like a top with his feet in the air.

If I saw any child from that wild bunch lifting a fanny off a chair, I’d fling myself across the room twisting my face into a Marine Corps drill sergeant‘s evil, killer mask.

“Don’t move another inch,” I’d say in a menacing tone that threatened bodily harm. There was never a dull moment. It was in that class that I perfected the killer sociopathic stare that would serve me well until 2005 when I was paroled from the classroom after thirty years.

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

To subscribe to “Crazy Normal”, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

  Note: This revised and edited post first appeared as a three part series on January 31, 2010 in Substitute Teaching is not a “Tea Party” – Part 1

 
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Posted by on November 5, 2011 in American Public Schools, Education, Public School, student behavior, substitute teaching

 

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The Conservative Talk-Show Scapegoat for the Self-Esteem Movement – Part 4/4

19 Oct

“Born out of the Church Growth movement,” Je Gibson says, “the self-esteem movement in the church has been said to be part of an effort to bring more people back to church; the gospel being compromised in an effort to preach to people’s felt needs and to be a positive and relevant force in people’s lives.”

By 1990, the influence of Schuller surely outshines any impact that California Assemblyman John Vasconcellos had on the self-esteem movement when his Task Force report sold 60,000 copies making it a state government bestseller.

Let us not forget that Schuller preached to over 25 million worldwide. So, who had the larger audience and thus more influence?

The results of Pastor Robert Schuller’s influence on the already century old self-esteem movement may be discovered in Self-Esteem: Why? Why Not? from Catholic Culture.org.

In 2011, Msgr. Cormac Burke, writing for Catholic Cutlure.org, said, “Self-esteem or self-worth ideas of a thoroughly secularist nature inspire educational texts in widespread use for Catholic religious instruction in not a few countries. I had the occasion some time ago to go through the books used in one country as a common syllabus for all Christians (including Catholics) for primary religious education. The Grade One book (for six-year-olds) opens not with God but with “Myself.” A tone of unqualified self-acceptance is already set in the same book: “God is happy with us”; “Thank you Lord for making me just as I am.”

Burke writes that one section heading was “Working for God: Developing Self-esteem in Ourselves and Others”.

In conclusion, it is easy to see that conservative talk show host Dennis Prager’s claim and biased opinion that the self-esteem movement started with California Democratic Assemblyman John Vasconcellos in 1986 is a fraud, since the movement had its start in 1886 — more than a century before Vasconcellos and his California Task Force issued the report on self-esteem and eight years after Pastor Robert Schuller promoted “IT” in Self Esteem: The New Reformation.

The history of the self-esteem movement spans 125 years and Vasconcellos joined the movement 104 years after its launch at the top of that mountain. By the time he entered the self-esteem arena, the movement had already gained momentum and there was no way to stop it.

In fact, Vasconcellos may have been influenced by Pastor Robert Schuller, as it is obvious millions of others were.

Vasconcellos, at best, was just another misguided individual that joined the self-esteem mob and influenced the thinking of maybe a few thousand people.

Dennis Prager and his Parrots (used as a metaphor for his fans) may believe what they want, but the facts tell a different reality. Prager is either a fraud or ignorant of the history behind the self-esteem movement, and he is misleading millions—again.

Return to The Conservative Talk-Show Scapegoat for the Self-Esteem Movement – Part 3 or start with Part 1

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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Posted by on October 19, 2011 in child abuse, media, Parenting, politics, self-esteem, self-esteem movement, student behavior

 

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The Conservative Talk-Show Scapegoat for the Self-Esteem Movement – Part 3/4

18 Oct

For Dennis Prager and his Parrots to discover the beginning of the self-esteem movement, they would have to travel back to the later nineteenth century when John Dewey discussed the importance of the self in his 1886 work, Psychology.

However, Prager’s Parrots would also learn that William James first used the term “self-esteem” with an explicit scientific definition in 1892.

A key task in socializing children, in James’s view, involved helping them gain the capacity to develop “self”.

The popularization of psychology and the growing notion that children often needed expert help brought concerns about self-esteem to greater attention during the 1920s and 1930s, and during the 1950s and 1960s the connection between self-esteem and supportive school program was fully forged.

Then in 1967, Stanley Coopersmith identified what he believed was a link between self-esteem and frailty, noting the “indications that in children domination, rejection, and severe punishment result in lowered self-esteem.”  Source: Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood in History and Society on Self-Esteem

In addition, years before Vasconcellos chaired the Self-Esteem Task Force in California, there was Pastor Robert Schuller of the Crystal Cathedral.

In 1982, Schuller published his 177-page hardcover Self Esteem: The New Reformation (four years before the California Task Force and eight years before Vasconcellos report was released).

From 1995 to 2000, Schuller also hosted a one-hour live coast-to-coast radio show, which gained popularity, and from 1976 to 2008, he was seen regularly on the Hour of Power and from 2006 through 2008 the Hour of Power had over 25 million viewers worldwide making it the number one watched religious show and him the most listened to orator in the world.”

The Impact of Church Growth on Self Esteem Movement by Je Gibson says, “Pastor Robert Schuller, founder of Crystal Cathedral, is often given credit as the pioneer of what has commonly been referred to as the Church Growth Movement.”

Continued on October 19, 2011 in The Conservative Talk-Show Scapegoat for the Self-Esteem Movement – Part 4 or return to Part 2

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

To subscribe to “Crazy Normal”, look for the “E-mail Subscription” link in the top-right column, click it and then follow directions.

 
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Posted by on October 18, 2011 in child abuse, family values, media, Parenting, politics, self-esteem, self-esteem movement, student behavior

 

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The Conservative Talk-Show Scapegoat for the Self-Esteem Movement – Part 2/4

17 Oct

If you read Dennis Prager’s often biased, one-sided essays or listen to his radio show, you will discover that Democrats are elite, leftist, liberal, progressive individuals that often get hysterical and emotional about their beliefs, and fear death more than conservatives do.

By the way, John Vasconcellos was born in 1932 and served in the California State Legislature representing Silicon Valley—and yes, he is an advocate of the self-esteem movement, but he is not responsible for starting the movement in 1986.

Vasconcellos served in the California State Assembly from 1966 to 1996 and as a state senator from 1996 to 2004 (when he retired).

In 1986, Vasconcellos created the California Task Force to Promote Self Esteem and in January 1990 issued “Toward a State of Esteem”, which sold 60,000 copies becoming a best seller in California State government publishing history and California was not alone in this political movement. Washington and Maryland had self-esteem legislation being considered too.


John Rosemond does not like the Self Esteem Movement – This video is highly recommended!

The California Task Force had 25 members and not all agreed with the final report. Task-force member David Shannahoff-Khalsa of Del Mar, a yoga teacher and researcher in neuroscience, denied that self-esteem could simply be given to anyone, and due to disagreements between the task force members, no generally accepted definition of self-esteem emerged.

Vasconcellos authored AB3659, which “According to this legislation, self-esteem was the key to problems such as violence, crime, alcohol and drug abuse, welfare dependency, teenage pregnancy, academic failure, recidivism, child and spousal abuse, and the failure of responsible citizenship. Making California “a state of esteem” would solve all that, and more.”  Source: Cal Watchdog.com

However, nothing ever came of the self-esteem legislation, so what was the real reason for all of this interest by Dennis Prager?

Continued on October 18, 2011 in The Conservative Talk-Show Scapegoat for the Self-Esteem Movement – Part 3 or return to Part 1

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

To subscribe to “Crazy Normal”, look for the “E-mail Subscription” link in the top-right column, click it and then follow directions.

 
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Posted by on October 17, 2011 in child abuse, family values, media, Parenting, politics, self-esteem, self-esteem movement, student behavior

 

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The Conservative Talk-Show Scapegoat for the Self-Esteem Movement – Part 1/4

16 Oct

Now, I am no fan of the self-esteem parenting movement in America. If you read this Blog on a regular basis, you would know that I feel strongly that “IT” is the main culprit for the state of our public schools.

All one need do is read The Self-Esteem Train Wreck,  Recognizing Good Parenting,  Graffiti Nation,  Avoid the Mainstream Parent Trap,  What, Me Worry about Debt – I’ve got Self-Esteem on my side, and The Finland-Singapore Solution to Public Education in the US to discover my opinion on this issue.

However, if you were standing at the base of a snow-covered mountain in a growing blizzard and a snowball was rolling downhill toward you collecting snow, growing in mass and speed and you cheered and waved it on encouraging it to grow stronger and move faster, would you be responsible for the forces that started that snowball rolling from the top of that mountain more than a hundred years earlier?

I don’t think so, but this is exactly what conservative talk-show host Dennis Prager has done with the self-esteem movement. He has blamed “IT” all on former California Assemblyman John Vasconcellos.

While I agree with Prager in principal that the self-esteem movement is a travesty to our American culture, I cannot condone Prager turning this cultural cancer into a political issue by blaming a so-called leftist, liberal, progressive Democrat for something that he did not start.

Without telling his adoring fans (Prager’s Parrots) the history of the movement, in November 2010, Dennis wrote, “The movement was begun (he is talking about the self-esteem movement) by California Assemblyman John Vasconcellos. As The New York Times reported, “Mr. Vasconcellos, a 53-year-old Democrat, is described by an aide as ‘the most radical humanist in the Legislature.'”

In an interview at the time (1986), Vasconcellos told Prager he had personally benefited from therapy. It enabled him to improve the poor self-esteem he had inherited from his childhood. He therefore concluded that improving other people’s self-esteem would greatly help society.

And this was all it took for Prager to claim the self-esteem movement in America started with John Vasconcellos, whose only crime was being a Democrat as you will discover.

Continued on October 17, 2011 in The Conservative Talk-Show Scapegoat for the Self-Esteem Movement – Part 2

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

To subscribe to “Crazy Normal”, look for the “E-mail Subscription” link in the top-right column, click it and then follow directions.

 
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Posted by on October 16, 2011 in child abuse, family values, Parenting, self-esteem movement, student behavior

 

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The importance of Diet, Vitamin D and a Child Ready to Learn – Part 3/3

13 Oct

What I discovered about Vitamin D deficiency may explain one of the reasons why so many school children age 6 to 18 in the US perform poorly in school and on standardized tests.

In November 2009, Scientific American asked an important question and then provided the answer.

The question was, “Does Vitamin D. Improve Brain Function?”

The answer, “The first study, led by neuroscientist David Llewellyn of the University of Cambridge, assessed vitamin D levels in more than 1,700 men and women from England, aged 65 or older…

“The scientists found that the lower the subjects’ vitamin D levels, the more negatively impacted was their perform­ance on a battery of mental tests. Compared with people with optimum vitamin D levels, those in the lowest quartile were more than twice as likely to be cognitively impaired.”

“A second study,” Scientific American reported, “led by scientists at the University of Manchester in England and published online this past May, looked at vitamin D levels and cognitive performance in more than 3,100 men aged 40 to 79 in eight different countries across Europe. The data show that those people with lower vitamin D levels exhibited slower information-processing speed.

In addition, Science Daily says, “Doctors McCann & Ames point out that evidence for vitamin D’s involvement in brain function includes the wide distribution of vitamin D receptors throughout the brain. They also discuss vitamin D’s ability to affect proteins in the brain known to be directly involved in learning and memory, motor control, and possibly even maternal and social behavior.”

But how much sun should be absorbed to create adequate levels of Vitamin D?

U. S. News.com says, “If you’re fair skinned, experts say going outside for 10 minutes in the midday sun—in shorts and a tank top with no sunscreen—will produce about 10,000 international units of the vitamin.

“If you’re already tan or of Hispanic (Latino) origin, you need maybe 15 to 20 minutes, and black skin may require six times the sun exposure to make the same vitamin D levels as a very fair-skinned person…”

So, next time you hear someone criticize teachers when children are not learning, say there’s more to educating a child than a teacher teaching. A vital aspect of education has to do with what parents feed their children and how much time a child spends outdoors absorbing sunlight.

In fact, Shine.com offers 7 Ways to Increase Your Child’s Success in School and says, “A recent study by Columbia University showed that kids whose families eat regular, relaxed meals together are not only less likely to abuse drugs and alcohol and develop eating disorders-they are also more likely to achieve higher grades.”

Return to The importance of Diet, Vitamin D and a Child Ready to Learn – Part 2 or start with Part 1

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

To subscribe to “Crazy Normal”, look for the “E-mail Subscription” link in the top-right column, click it and then follow directions.

 
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Posted by on October 13, 2011 in child abuse, Education, family values, Parenting, Public School, student behavior, Teaching

 

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The importance of Diet, Vitamin D and a Child Ready to Learn – Part 2/3

12 Oct

As discovered in Part 1, the diets of most American children are horrible and this has a BIG impact on a child’s ability to function as a student.

In addition, most children do not spend enough time outside to absorb adequate Vitamin D from sunlight—no eating required and it is FREE!

Although the development of young minds and bodies requires more than one nutrient, knowing what the lack of one nutrient, such as Vitamin D, does to a child’s cognitive ability and mood is a dramatic way to discover how important a balanced diet is from breakfast to dinner.

If the lack of one vitamin from sunlight has a dramatic impact on a child’s ability to learn, imagine what happens when most of the important nutrients for cognitive and mental function are missing.

If you are a parent and you are reading this, what does your child eat, and does he or she spend about a half hour a day between 10 AM and 3 PM outside in the sunlight soaking up vitamin D with the sun’s help?

The odds are that you don’t know the answer.

A recent study published in Environmental Health Perspectives found that many American children are not getting enough vitamin D from sun exposure alone…

In fact, Essentials of Health reported about a new study in the journal of Pediatrics in August 2009, that “Over 60 percent of the children studied had vitamin D levels defined as insufficient. Outright deficiency occurred in nine percent of the subjects. If applied to the U.S. population, these percentages would be equivalent to nearly 51 million children with insufficient vitamin D levels, and 7.6 million children with vitamin D deficiency.

Curious, I wanted to know if vitamin D deficiency affected mental function.

Continued on October 13, 2011 in The importance of Diet, Vitamin D and a Child Ready to Learn – Part 3 or return to Part 1

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

To subscribe to “Crazy Normal”, look for the “E-mail Subscription” link in the top-right column, click it and then follow directions.

 
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Posted by on October 12, 2011 in child abuse, family values, Parenting, Public School, student behavior, Teaching

 

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Dumping Teachers due to Standardized Test Results and Student Performance – Part 7/7

10 Sep

This post is the conclusion to a topic motivated by the August 2011, Costco Connection‘s debate between two education experts about teacher seniority.

The hours spent in the classroom with students are only the tip of the iceberg. Most teachers are in the classroom with students five or six hours each school day but the total hours worked may average much more.

For me, I averaged between 60 to 100 hours a week (with no overtime pay) for most of the thirty years I taught, which did not leave much time for other activities.

In addition, “Waiting for Superman” insinuated that most public school teachers are not highly educated. This is a ridiculous claim.

For example, when I became a teacher I already had six years of college with a BA in journalism, which included another year of training and classes to earn my teaching credential. Then, over the years, I was required to earn more than 20 quarter units thanks to state legislation increasing teacher requirements in addition to earning a MFA in writing.  Then there were endless workshops—some after school for a few hours and some lasting an entire workday.

By the time I retired, I had more than nine years of college and this does not count the seven years I attended writing workshops out of UCLA’s writing extension program. It is easy to claim that most teachers are lifelong learners.  Too bad we can’t say that of most students.

When I was teaching journalism in addition to several sections of English [for seven years of the thirty], I often arrived at 6 AM and left at 11:00 PM (that is a seventeen-hour day at school/work) when the night custodians turned on the alarms and locked the gates to the parking lot.  The student editors of the high school paper would have stayed longer (along with me) if the alarm had been left off.

In fact, the US was never a pioneer in public education as “Waiting for Superman” claims (find the truth in the March/April 2011 Foreign Policy magazine), and most factors that cause a child/teen to drop out of school has little if nothing to do with teachers. What influences children to drop out of school has more to do with street gangs, poverty, hunger, child abuse, parents [or lack of parenting, which is an epidemic in America today], being a latch key kid, the environment a child grows up in, and the lifestyle his or her parents provide

Sydney Morris, instead of stabbing dedicated teachers in the back by getting rid of the seniority system, why not use that youthful energy to fight for something worthy, such as demanding a public education system more like the one in Finland where teachers are supported and trusted to make the decisions.

Return to Dumping Teachers due to Standardized Test Results and Student Performance – Part 6 or start with Part 1

____________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

To subscribe to “Crazy Normal”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

 
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Posted by on September 10, 2011 in American Public Schools, Education, family values, government, NCLB, Parenting, politics, Public School, Standardized Testing, student behavior

 

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Dumping Teachers due to Standardized Test Results and Student Performance – Part 6/7

09 Sep

I have a few more things to say to the Sydney Morrises of the world and those that blame teachers for the so-called failure of public education in America. [The real Sydney Morris spoke against seniority as a base for teacher layoffs in the August 2011 Costco Connection.]

It is a proven fact that teachers have PTSD because of the stress that comes with the job. In addition, there is a situation known as teacher burnout, which is probably caused by the same stress that causes PTSD.

This Australian Website on Teacher Burnout goes into detail and is a resource for teachers with any of the following nine symptoms.

1. insomnia

2. extreme tiredness

3. distancing yourself from colleagues and/or students

4. no longer caring what happens as a result of your efforts

5. an attitude shift to the cynical

6. hostility

7. taking more time to get less done

8. depression

9. drug/alcohol abuse

What’s interesting is the ratio of teachers found to have PTSD and/or Burnout is about the same. A study into stress in Western Australian schools in 1987 found that 10–20% of teachers suffered from psychological distress, with a further 9% suffering severe psychological distress (Howard and Johnson).

For more information on teacher burnout, see this report on several studies on the topic.

It is a fact that half of new teachers in America quit within the first few years and never return to education due the stress and the dysfunctional nature of an education system run mostly by elected officials and not teachers.

In addition, if you read the piece in the March/April 2011 Foreign Policy magazine, you discovered the quality of American students has always been poor and it it wasn’t because of the teachers.  Most of America’s public school teachers are highly educated, very dedicated and work extremely hard.

Continued on September 10, 2011 in Dumping Teachers due to Standardized Test Results and Student Performance – Part 7 or return to Part 5

____________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

To subscribe to “Crazy Normal”, look for the “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar, click on it then follow directions.

 
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Posted by on September 9, 2011 in American Public Schools, Education, family values, government, NCLB, Parenting, politics, Public School, Standardized Testing, student behavior

 

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