The PD video teachers must watch on Monday

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe this is racist thinking, but I did not expect a white woman to be the keynote speaker for PD an anti-racism. Anyone in DEI knows that the worst thing for anti-racism is a woke white woman

How dare you assume she is white? She is Middle Eastern so she is a POC

[Anonymous]

Can someone post the cliff notes so I can get other work done while “watching” this?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I consider myself to be politically liberal, though definitely on the moderate side, but this is blatant communist political programming masquerading as professional development.

I’m a parent and not a teacher, but if I were a teacher I would feel insulted and disrespected that this is what my school district is trying to pass off as professional development. This is abysmal.

Monifa has no shame.

Please share your definition of the word "communist".

You must have been stuck with a troublemaker disrupting your English and History classes.

If you watched that video and you missed the communist/socialist undertones, then I’m not going to do your critical thinking for you. But it wasn’t even disguised. She literally said education is political work.

Oh dear. Sorry you’re not very bright.

Because stating the obvious is stupid?

Because socialism and communism are in no way the same thing, you abject moron.

Communism and socialism exist on a spectrum, with communism definitely being the more extreme of the two. But they absolutely are both on the left end of the political spectrum, and share many principals.

I didn’t say they were the same, I lumped them together in reference to this presenter’s speech because she was grabbing and borrowing themes and philosophies from both, you abject idiot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I cannot believe I actually took 20 minutes out of my life to watch this train wreck. Holy Molu. Teachers I feel for you.

If I was expected to sit through an hour of perky “Carla” condescending to me like she does in this video, I swear I would get up and walk out of the room.

And no, sweetheart, the definition of “freedom” is not keeping people and their feelings “safe.”

Where in the hell do they find these people?

Here in Montgomery County!

No, she's on the faculty at U of Michigan
"Carla Shalaby's professional and personal commitment is to education as the practice of freedom, and her research centers on cultivating and documenting daily classroom work that protects the dignity of every child and honors young people’s rights to expression, to self-determination, and to full human being. Specifically, she is interested in practices of critical pedagogy and critical literacy at the elementary level; classroom community and "management" as the practice of democracy; and the relationships between the daily work of teachers and the ongoing struggle for justice. Carla previously served as director of the Elementary Master of Arts in Teaching program at Brown University, and as the director of elementary education at Wellesley College. She started her career as a teacher of grades four and five in her New Jersey hometown. Carla holds a B.A in English from Rutgers College, an M.Ed in Elementary Education from the Rutgers Graduate School of Education, and an M.A. and doctoral degree in Culture, Communities, and Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is the author of Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School (New Press, 2017)."

https://marsal.umich.edu/directory/faculty-staff/carla-shalaby

So very, very little actual teaching experience. Got it.

I think this is an interesting think piece for teachers in k-2. It’s not very useful for middle and high school teachers. And also probably not very helpful for teachers who are basically drowning right now. It’s not the time to have an interesting philosophical discussion about development theory. Maybe this would work better targeted to k-2 teachers as a summer session PD, paired with discussion among the grace level team about what they can see working in their classroom. Translating PhD theory to in the ground tools is often challenging. The fact that anyone at McPS thought it was a good piece to mandate for all teachers on their own call PD day is troubling.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I cannot believe I actually took 20 minutes out of my life to watch this train wreck. Holy Molu. Teachers I feel for you.

If I was expected to sit through an hour of perky “Carla” condescending to me like she does in this video, I swear I would get up and walk out of the room.

And no, sweetheart, the definition of “freedom” is not keeping people and their feelings “safe.”

Where in the hell do they find these people?

Here in Montgomery County!

No, she's on the faculty at U of Michigan
"Carla Shalaby's professional and personal commitment is to education as the practice of freedom, and her research centers on cultivating and documenting daily classroom work that protects the dignity of every child and honors young people’s rights to expression, to self-determination, and to full human being. Specifically, she is interested in practices of critical pedagogy and critical literacy at the elementary level; classroom community and "management" as the practice of democracy; and the relationships between the daily work of teachers and the ongoing struggle for justice. Carla previously served as director of the Elementary Master of Arts in Teaching program at Brown University, and as the director of elementary education at Wellesley College. She started her career as a teacher of grades four and five in her New Jersey hometown. Carla holds a B.A in English from Rutgers College, an M.Ed in Elementary Education from the Rutgers Graduate School of Education, and an M.A. and doctoral degree in Culture, Communities, and Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is the author of Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School (New Press, 2017)."

https://marsal.umich.edu/directory/faculty-staff/carla-shalaby

So very, very little actual teaching experience. Got it.

I think this is an interesting think piece for teachers in k-2. It’s not very useful for middle and high school teachers. And also probably not very helpful for teachers who are basically drowning right now. It’s not the time to have an interesting philosophical discussion about development theory. Maybe this would work better targeted to k-2 teachers as a summer session PD, paired with discussion among the grace level team about what they can see working in their classroom. Translating PhD theory to in the ground tools is often challenging. The fact that anyone at McPS thought it was a good piece to mandate for all teachers on their own call PD day is troubling.

I agree, but MCPS admin has been pretty clear and consistent that they blame many of the current problems in schools on teachers.

1) Kids are misbehaving in class because teachers are racist and not culturally aware enough

2) Kids are failing state, district and national exams because teachers are racist and withholding advanced course material from black and brown kids

3) The answer to classroom behaviors and poor student performance is more training for teachers, because the teachers are the ones who need to change. Not the students or the leadership.

They have consistently been beating this drum since the pandemic. I don’t know why MCEA allows this rhetoric to continue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I cannot believe I actually took 20 minutes out of my life to watch this train wreck. Holy Molu. Teachers I feel for you.

If I was expected to sit through an hour of perky “Carla” condescending to me like she does in this video, I swear I would get up and walk out of the room.

And no, sweetheart, the definition of “freedom” is not keeping people and their feelings “safe.”

Where in the hell do they find these people?

Here in Montgomery County!

No, she's on the faculty at U of Michigan
"Carla Shalaby's professional and personal commitment is to education as the practice of freedom, and her research centers on cultivating and documenting daily classroom work that protects the dignity of every child and honors young people’s rights to expression, to self-determination, and to full human being. Specifically, she is interested in practices of critical pedagogy and critical literacy at the elementary level; classroom community and "management" as the practice of democracy; and the relationships between the daily work of teachers and the ongoing struggle for justice. Carla previously served as director of the Elementary Master of Arts in Teaching program at Brown University, and as the director of elementary education at Wellesley College. She started her career as a teacher of grades four and five in her New Jersey hometown. Carla holds a B.A in English from Rutgers College, an M.Ed in Elementary Education from the Rutgers Graduate School of Education, and an M.A. and doctoral degree in Culture, Communities, and Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is the author of Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School (New Press, 2017)."

https://marsal.umich.edu/directory/faculty-staff/carla-shalaby

So very, very little actual teaching experience. Got it.

I think this is an interesting think piece for teachers in k-2. It’s not very useful for middle and high school teachers. And also probably not very helpful for teachers who are basically drowning right now. It’s not the time to have an interesting philosophical discussion about development theory. Maybe this would work better targeted to k-2 teachers as a summer session PD, paired with discussion among the grace level team about what they can see working in their classroom. Translating PhD theory to in the ground tools is often challenging. The fact that anyone at McPS thought it was a good piece to mandate for all teachers on their own call PD day is troubling.

I once had an education professor tell me he had a better grasp of K-12 education than I did, even though I had 15 years of full-time teaching experience and he had none. None. Zero.

He told me I was too clouded by the classroom to see the real problems within education, something that he was apparently able to see quite clearly from behind a desk at a university.

That professor and the woman from page 1 of this thread have something in common: they aren’t teachers. They get to comfortably speak in theory, but those of us in practice have already moved beyond cute theories to actually having to do the work.

It’s insulting, really, when people who have little to no experience tell US what we should be doing. Trust me: teachers see right through this crap.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I cannot believe I actually took 20 minutes out of my life to watch this train wreck. Holy Molu. Teachers I feel for you.

If I was expected to sit through an hour of perky “Carla” condescending to me like she does in this video, I swear I would get up and walk out of the room.

And no, sweetheart, the definition of “freedom” is not keeping people and their feelings “safe.”

Where in the hell do they find these people?

Here in Montgomery County!

No, she's on the faculty at U of Michigan
"Carla Shalaby's professional and personal commitment is to education as the practice of freedom, and her research centers on cultivating and documenting daily classroom work that protects the dignity of every child and honors young people’s rights to expression, to self-determination, and to full human being. Specifically, she is interested in practices of critical pedagogy and critical literacy at the elementary level; classroom community and "management" as the practice of democracy; and the relationships between the daily work of teachers and the ongoing struggle for justice. Carla previously served as director of the Elementary Master of Arts in Teaching program at Brown University, and as the director of elementary education at Wellesley College. She started her career as a teacher of grades four and five in her New Jersey hometown. Carla holds a B.A in English from Rutgers College, an M.Ed in Elementary Education from the Rutgers Graduate School of Education, and an M.A. and doctoral degree in Culture, Communities, and Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is the author of Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School (New Press, 2017)."

https://marsal.umich.edu/directory/faculty-staff/carla-shalaby

So very, very little actual teaching experience. Got it.

I think this is an interesting think piece for teachers in k-2. It’s not very useful for middle and high school teachers. And also probably not very helpful for teachers who are basically drowning right now. It’s not the time to have an interesting philosophical discussion about development theory. Maybe this would work better targeted to k-2 teachers as a summer session PD, paired with discussion among the grace level team about what they can see working in their classroom. Translating PhD theory to in the ground tools is often challenging. The fact that anyone at McPS thought it was a good piece to mandate for all teachers on their own call PD day is troubling.

I once had an education professor tell me he had a better grasp of K-12 education than I did, even though I had 15 years of full-time teaching experience and he had none. None. Zero.

He told me I was too clouded by the classroom to see the real problems within education, something that he was apparently able to see quite clearly from behind a desk at a university.

That professor and the woman from page 1 of this thread have something in common: they aren’t teachers. They get to comfortably speak in theory, but those of us in practice have already moved beyond cute theories to actually having to do the work.

It’s insulting, really, when people who have little to no experience tell US what we should be doing. Trust me: teachers see right through this crap.

Did you keep an open mind, that your 15 years of experience might not be the be all and end all of education? Or were you as dismissive as you seem to be in your post?

I try to keep and open mind and learn new things that make me better in the classroom.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I cannot believe I actually took 20 minutes out of my life to watch this train wreck. Holy Molu. Teachers I feel for you.

If I was expected to sit through an hour of perky “Carla” condescending to me like she does in this video, I swear I would get up and walk out of the room.

And no, sweetheart, the definition of “freedom” is not keeping people and their feelings “safe.”

Where in the hell do they find these people?

Here in Montgomery County!

No, she's on the faculty at U of Michigan
"Carla Shalaby's professional and personal commitment is to education as the practice of freedom, and her research centers on cultivating and documenting daily classroom work that protects the dignity of every child and honors young people’s rights to expression, to self-determination, and to full human being. Specifically, she is interested in practices of critical pedagogy and critical literacy at the elementary level; classroom community and "management" as the practice of democracy; and the relationships between the daily work of teachers and the ongoing struggle for justice. Carla previously served as director of the Elementary Master of Arts in Teaching program at Brown University, and as the director of elementary education at Wellesley College. She started her career as a teacher of grades four and five in her New Jersey hometown. Carla holds a B.A in English from Rutgers College, an M.Ed in Elementary Education from the Rutgers Graduate School of Education, and an M.A. and doctoral degree in Culture, Communities, and Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is the author of Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School (New Press, 2017)."

https://marsal.umich.edu/directory/faculty-staff/carla-shalaby

So very, very little actual teaching experience. Got it.

I think this is an interesting think piece for teachers in k-2. It’s not very useful for middle and high school teachers. And also probably not very helpful for teachers who are basically drowning right now. It’s not the time to have an interesting philosophical discussion about development theory. Maybe this would work better targeted to k-2 teachers as a summer session PD, paired with discussion among the grace level team about what they can see working in their classroom. Translating PhD theory to in the ground tools is often challenging. The fact that anyone at McPS thought it was a good piece to mandate for all teachers on their own call PD day is troubling.

I once had an education professor tell me he had a better grasp of K-12 education than I did, even though I had 15 years of full-time teaching experience and he had none. None. Zero.

He told me I was too clouded by the classroom to see the real problems within education, something that he was apparently able to see quite clearly from behind a desk at a university.

That professor and the woman from page 1 of this thread have something in common: they aren’t teachers. They get to comfortably speak in theory, but those of us in practice have already moved beyond cute theories to actually having to do the work.

It’s insulting, really, when people who have little to no experience tell US what we should be doing. Trust me: teachers see right through this crap.

Did you keep an open mind, that your 15 years of experience might not be the be all and end all of education? Or were you as dismissive as you seem to be in your post?

I try to keep and open mind and learn new things that make me better in the classroom.

Now mind your spot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I cannot believe I actually took 20 minutes out of my life to watch this train wreck. Holy Molu. Teachers I feel for you.

If I was expected to sit through an hour of perky “Carla” condescending to me like she does in this video, I swear I would get up and walk out of the room.

And no, sweetheart, the definition of “freedom” is not keeping people and their feelings “safe.”

Where in the hell do they find these people?

Here in Montgomery County!

No, she's on the faculty at U of Michigan
"Carla Shalaby's professional and personal commitment is to education as the practice of freedom, and her research centers on cultivating and documenting daily classroom work that protects the dignity of every child and honors young people’s rights to expression, to self-determination, and to full human being. Specifically, she is interested in practices of critical pedagogy and critical literacy at the elementary level; classroom community and "management" as the practice of democracy; and the relationships between the daily work of teachers and the ongoing struggle for justice. Carla previously served as director of the Elementary Master of Arts in Teaching program at Brown University, and as the director of elementary education at Wellesley College. She started her career as a teacher of grades four and five in her New Jersey hometown. Carla holds a B.A in English from Rutgers College, an M.Ed in Elementary Education from the Rutgers Graduate School of Education, and an M.A. and doctoral degree in Culture, Communities, and Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is the author of Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School (New Press, 2017)."

https://marsal.umich.edu/directory/faculty-staff/carla-shalaby

So very, very little actual teaching experience. Got it.

I think this is an interesting think piece for teachers in k-2. It’s not very useful for middle and high school teachers. And also probably not very helpful for teachers who are basically drowning right now. It’s not the time to have an interesting philosophical discussion about development theory. Maybe this would work better targeted to k-2 teachers as a summer session PD, paired with discussion among the grace level team about what they can see working in their classroom. Translating PhD theory to in the ground tools is often challenging. The fact that anyone at McPS thought it was a good piece to mandate for all teachers on their own call PD day is troubling.

I once had an education professor tell me he had a better grasp of K-12 education than I did, even though I had 15 years of full-time teaching experience and he had none. None. Zero.

He told me I was too clouded by the classroom to see the real problems within education, something that he was apparently able to see quite clearly from behind a desk at a university.

That professor and the woman from page 1 of this thread have something in common: they aren’t teachers. They get to comfortably speak in theory, but those of us in practice have already moved beyond cute theories to actually having to do the work.

It’s insulting, really, when people who have little to no experience tell US what we should be doing. Trust me: teachers see right through this crap.

Did you keep an open mind, that your 15 years of experience might not be the be all and end all of education? Or were you as dismissive as you seem to be in your post?

I try to keep and open mind and learn new things that make me better in the classroom.

Now mind your spot.

Yeah, that's what I thought. Stuck in your ways.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Where in the hell do they find these people?

This reminds me of the Special Ed parent workshop MCPS ran a couple years ago. The keynote speaker was:

-a former DCPS principal but according to DCUM she was fired (?!)
-working at Leslie University, home of Fountas & Pinnell, who did untold damage to US reading instruction by leading the "balanced literacy" movement

I skipped that one.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I cannot believe I actually took 20 minutes out of my life to watch this train wreck. Holy Molu. Teachers I feel for you.

If I was expected to sit through an hour of perky “Carla” condescending to me like she does in this video, I swear I would get up and walk out of the room.

And no, sweetheart, the definition of “freedom” is not keeping people and their feelings “safe.”

Where in the hell do they find these people?

Here in Montgomery County!

No, she's on the faculty at U of Michigan
"Carla Shalaby's professional and personal commitment is to education as the practice of freedom, and her research centers on cultivating and documenting daily classroom work that protects the dignity of every child and honors young people’s rights to expression, to self-determination, and to full human being. Specifically, she is interested in practices of critical pedagogy and critical literacy at the elementary level; classroom community and "management" as the practice of democracy; and the relationships between the daily work of teachers and the ongoing struggle for justice. Carla previously served as director of the Elementary Master of Arts in Teaching program at Brown University, and as the director of elementary education at Wellesley College. She started her career as a teacher of grades four and five in her New Jersey hometown. Carla holds a B.A in English from Rutgers College, an M.Ed in Elementary Education from the Rutgers Graduate School of Education, and an M.A. and doctoral degree in Culture, Communities, and Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is the author of Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School (New Press, 2017)."

https://marsal.umich.edu/directory/faculty-staff/carla-shalaby

So very, very little actual teaching experience. Got it.

I think this is an interesting think piece for teachers in k-2. It’s not very useful for middle and high school teachers. And also probably not very helpful for teachers who are basically drowning right now. It’s not the time to have an interesting philosophical discussion about development theory. Maybe this would work better targeted to k-2 teachers as a summer session PD, paired with discussion among the grace level team about what they can see working in their classroom. Translating PhD theory to in the ground tools is often challenging. The fact that anyone at McPS thought it was a good piece to mandate for all teachers on their own call PD day is troubling.

I once had an education professor tell me he had a better grasp of K-12 education than I did, even though I had 15 years of full-time teaching experience and he had none. None. Zero.

He told me I was too clouded by the classroom to see the real problems within education, something that he was apparently able to see quite clearly from behind a desk at a university.

That professor and the woman from page 1 of this thread have something in common: they aren’t teachers. They get to comfortably speak in theory, but those of us in practice have already moved beyond cute theories to actually having to do the work.

It’s insulting, really, when people who have little to no experience tell US what we should be doing. Trust me: teachers see right through this crap.

Did you keep an open mind, that your 15 years of experience might not be the be all and end all of education? Or were you as dismissive as you seem to be in your post?

I try to keep and open mind and learn new things that make me better in the classroom.

Now mind your spot.

Yeah, that's what I thought. Stuck in your ways.

Thats what the video says. Maybe you should expand your learning and be more open to new things.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I cannot believe I actually took 20 minutes out of my life to watch this train wreck. Holy Molu. Teachers I feel for you.

If I was expected to sit through an hour of perky “Carla” condescending to me like she does in this video, I swear I would get up and walk out of the room.

And no, sweetheart, the definition of “freedom” is not keeping people and their feelings “safe.”

Where in the hell do they find these people?

Here in Montgomery County!

No, she's on the faculty at U of Michigan
"Carla Shalaby's professional and personal commitment is to education as the practice of freedom, and her research centers on cultivating and documenting daily classroom work that protects the dignity of every child and honors young people’s rights to expression, to self-determination, and to full human being. Specifically, she is interested in practices of critical pedagogy and critical literacy at the elementary level; classroom community and "management" as the practice of democracy; and the relationships between the daily work of teachers and the ongoing struggle for justice. Carla previously served as director of the Elementary Master of Arts in Teaching program at Brown University, and as the director of elementary education at Wellesley College. She started her career as a teacher of grades four and five in her New Jersey hometown. Carla holds a B.A in English from Rutgers College, an M.Ed in Elementary Education from the Rutgers Graduate School of Education, and an M.A. and doctoral degree in Culture, Communities, and Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is the author of Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School (New Press, 2017)."

https://marsal.umich.edu/directory/faculty-staff/carla-shalaby

So very, very little actual teaching experience. Got it.

I think this is an interesting think piece for teachers in k-2. It’s not very useful for middle and high school teachers. And also probably not very helpful for teachers who are basically drowning right now. It’s not the time to have an interesting philosophical discussion about development theory. Maybe this would work better targeted to k-2 teachers as a summer session PD, paired with discussion among the grace level team about what they can see working in their classroom. Translating PhD theory to in the ground tools is often challenging. The fact that anyone at McPS thought it was a good piece to mandate for all teachers on their own call PD day is troubling.

I once had an education professor tell me he had a better grasp of K-12 education than I did, even though I had 15 years of full-time teaching experience and he had none. None. Zero.

He told me I was too clouded by the classroom to see the real problems within education, something that he was apparently able to see quite clearly from behind a desk at a university.

That professor and the woman from page 1 of this thread have something in common: they aren’t teachers. They get to comfortably speak in theory, but those of us in practice have already moved beyond cute theories to actually having to do the work.

It’s insulting, really, when people who have little to no experience tell US what we should be doing. Trust me: teachers see right through this crap.

Did you keep an open mind, that your 15 years of experience might not be the be all and end all of education? Or were you as dismissive as you seem to be in your post?

I try to keep and open mind and learn new things that make me better in the classroom.

Now mind your spot.

Yeah, that's what I thought. Stuck in your ways.

I’m the PP with the obnoxious professor. I’m not the one who wrote “now mind your spot.”

Of course I kept an open mind, and then he spent the next month spewing nonsense about how easy teaching is and how teachers are just too lazy to do things correctly.

I wonder… did HE keep an open mind? Did HE consider that there was something a person with actual k-12 experience could teach him? No, he did not. He went so far as to tell me that. Mr. PhD had all the solutions and all the theory, but none of the practice. He dismissed those with the practice as unqualified, ironically.

So before you assume I’m just one more close-minded teacher, ask yourself why his opinion immediately seemed more valuable to you than mine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe this is racist thinking, but I did not expect a white woman to be the keynote speaker for PD an anti-racism. Anyone in DEI knows that the worst thing for anti-racism is a woke white woman

How dare you assume she is white? She is Middle Eastern so she is a POC

Middle Eastern people don’t consider themselves POC. They usually categorise themselves as white

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe this is racist thinking, but I did not expect a white woman to be the keynote speaker for PD an anti-racism. Anyone in DEI knows that the worst thing for anti-racism is a woke white woman

Did you watch it? It wasn't "anti racism".

I am being forced to watch this video as part of the MCPS Anti-racism component 2 classroom environment requirement

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I cannot believe I actually took 20 minutes out of my life to watch this train wreck. Holy Molu. Teachers I feel for you.

If I was expected to sit through an hour of perky “Carla” condescending to me like she does in this video, I swear I would get up and walk out of the room.

And no, sweetheart, the definition of “freedom” is not keeping people and their feelings “safe.”

Where in the hell do they find these people?

Here in Montgomery County!

No, she's on the faculty at U of Michigan
"Carla Shalaby's professional and personal commitment is to education as the practice of freedom, and her research centers on cultivating and documenting daily classroom work that protects the dignity of every child and honors young people’s rights to expression, to self-determination, and to full human being. Specifically, she is interested in practices of critical pedagogy and critical literacy at the elementary level; classroom community and "management" as the practice of democracy; and the relationships between the daily work of teachers and the ongoing struggle for justice. Carla previously served as director of the Elementary Master of Arts in Teaching program at Brown University, and as the director of elementary education at Wellesley College. She started her career as a teacher of grades four and five in her New Jersey hometown. Carla holds a B.A in English from Rutgers College, an M.Ed in Elementary Education from the Rutgers Graduate School of Education, and an M.A. and doctoral degree in Culture, Communities, and Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is the author of Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School (New Press, 2017)."

https://marsal.umich.edu/directory/faculty-staff/carla-shalaby

So very, very little actual teaching experience. Got it.

I think this is an interesting think piece for teachers in k-2. It’s not very useful for middle and high school teachers. And also probably not very helpful for teachers who are basically drowning right now. It’s not the time to have an interesting philosophical discussion about development theory. Maybe this would work better targeted to k-2 teachers as a summer session PD, paired with discussion among the grace level team about what they can see working in their classroom. Translating PhD theory to in the ground tools is often challenging. The fact that anyone at McPS thought it was a good piece to mandate for all teachers on their own call PD day is troubling.

I once had an education professor tell me he had a better grasp of K-12 education than I did, even though I had 15 years of full-time teaching experience and he had none. None. Zero.

He told me I was too clouded by the classroom to see the real problems within education, something that he was apparently able to see quite clearly from behind a desk at a university.

That professor and the woman from page 1 of this thread have something in common: they aren’t teachers. They get to comfortably speak in theory, but those of us in practice have already moved beyond cute theories to actually having to do the work.

It’s insulting, really, when people who have little to no experience tell US what we should be doing. Trust me: teachers see right through this crap.

Did you keep an open mind, that your 15 years of experience might not be the be all and end all of education? Or were you as dismissive as you seem to be in your post?

I try to keep and open mind and learn new things that make me better in the classroom.

Now mind your spot.

Yeah, that's what I thought. Stuck in your ways.

I’m the PP with the obnoxious professor. I’m not the one who wrote “now mind your spot.”

Of course I kept an open mind, and then he spent the next month spewing nonsense about how easy teaching is and how teachers are just too lazy to do things correctly.

I wonder… did HE keep an open mind? Did HE consider that there was something a person with actual k-12 experience could teach him? No, he did not. He went so far as to tell me that. Mr. PhD had all the solutions and all the theory, but none of the practice. He dismissed those with the practice as unqualified, ironically.

So before you assume I’m just one more close-minded teacher, ask yourself why his opinion immediately seemed more valuable to you than mine.

YESSS +100! What an abusive response to your post. I have worked with so many PhDs that are so disconnected with reality. There is a difference between book smart and 'street smart'. We are in the trenches. Would you tell a soldier what to do in the middle of battle as an outsider sitting in a cushy office? How INSULTING. I'm so sick of the narrative that everything is OUR FAULT. GTFO. I have the absolute worst kids I have ever had this year - I transferred into a new school (to me). Apparently, this group of kids has been really tough to work with for the past two years. But apparently "I" - being new to the school and having to build brand new relationships - need to do better so the kids listen. I was going to quit last year but I really wanted to keep my benefits because my child was in treatment. I hate this profession right now. I took off tomorrow. My time is too valuable to be told I'm doing things wrong constantly.