Letters

Not Her Experience

The sentiments expressed by Katherine Boles, Ed.D.’91, on page seven of your latest magazine (“Full Team Ahead,” spring 2007) are totally erroneous. I taught biological sciences for 36 years and I now substitute every day at my local high school. In every school in which I have taught, there have been teachers of all ages. The young teachers do not stay for short periods of time. They love teaching and are dedicated to it. They do not go into teaching in order to climb the corporate ladder. They go into teaching because they care about students and want to make contributions to society.

Like Boles, my own daughter did not choose to be a teacher. She is a highpowered business executive. However, my son, who went to West Point, does want to become a teacher eventually. Why? Because he would love to teach.

Those of us who love teaching have no desire to go into administration. I loved being a department chair because I could mentor young teachers and still be in the classroom. One knows when he/she is doing a good job from the appreciation of the parents, children, and administration. I am talking about all parents, not just the affluent ones.

Teaching is a “vibrant” profession and the changes suggested by Boles are not necessary. When I achieved my M.A.T. at Harvard, I was in the internship program. Others were in the apprenticeship program where they did practice teaching supervised by expert teachers. I, myself, have mentored practice teachers and new teachers in my department. The first year of my permanent teaching job, I was mentored by an older, experienced teacher. He was not paid for this, but did it in order to be helpful to a new, young teacher. The training of “intern” and “assistant” teachers is accomplished during one’s education. After that, one is eager to begin teaching in earnest. It is outrageous to say, “I guarantee you that these young people won’t stay teaching if we don’t change the job.” I repeat that young people go into teaching because they love teaching, not because they want to climb the corporate ladder of success.

Judy Pierce Livingstone, M.A.T.’61
East Dennis, Mass.

Play School

Thank you for your recent article on the importance of play (“Einstein May Never Have Used Flashcards, but He Probably Built Forts,” spring 2007). Kids absolutely need more unscheduled time and better designed spaces where they can play. But schools have an opportunity to help as well. Too many children come to school not knowing how to engage in healthy play. They have not grown up learning games and don’t know how to resolve the small disputes that arise when playing with others during recess. That can lead to conflict and even fighting for some. The result is that children only feel safe on the sidelines, staying out of harm’s way. Our recent experience at schools in places like Baltimore, Boston, and Oakland is that it doesn’t have to be that way. In each of these schools, we have been coordinating schoolyard games like kickball and foursquare, running afterschool sports programs, while getting students to have fun and develop social and leadership skills. Now instead of recess being a time of chaos, it’s a time of active learning and positive social interaction. It’s a reminder to us adults just how much safe and healthy play can enhance the overall education experience for students and teachers alike.

Jill Vialet
founder and executive director, Sports4Kids
Oakland, Calif.

Up Front

Mary Tamer’s “Up Front” comments (spring 2007) seem to me to be more about teacher tenure than about improving instruction in classrooms. As a retired teacher who spent more than 30 years in classrooms “up front” with serious and nonserious students, I am very sensitive about people questioning tenure.

In New York City, the chancellor of the school system is a man who was trained to be a prosecutor, not an educator. When he was hired, with a special pass from the state legislature, there was a pool of at least 32 experienced community superintendents from which Mayor Michael Bloomberg could have picked his school chief. Bloomberg chose to experiment.

Tenure is more about protecting teachers from these kinds of political decisions than it is about weeding out poor performing teachers. The vast majority of teachers who cannot perform well in classrooms are chased out of the profession by students, not school administrators.

Tenure gives teachers the opportunity of enjoying “due process” when they are being challenged by administrators. When administrators have to follow specific rules when trying to fire teachers, they are less likely to be arbitrary with their charges. Tenure brings fairness to the firing process.

Without tenure and teachers unions to support teachers, teaching jobs will again become political positions, handed out to local politicians. Tenure, even at the university level, is the protection that allows teachers and professors to speak their minds. Without tenure, I would not have been able to speak out during my more than 30 years in public schools.

When you work “at the pleasure of the mayor,” as we have seen with many who worked “at the pleasure of the president,” you bite your tongue or leave. It is easy for me to leave now, when my sons are 42 and 45. It would not have been easy when they were 10 and 13. Tenure saved me from a great deal of stress and frustration.

Louis DeFreitas Sr., Ed.M.’71
Silver Spring, Md.

Thanks to Professor Tom Kane for verifying with credible research what many teachers have known for years, that most of the courses offered by state teacher training schools do little to improve their teaching. The most apparent benefit of these courses appears to be providing FTEs to support the existence of the faculty. If there is no need for a year or two of pedagogy for classroom teachers, what will the professors do?

Gordon, Kane, and Staiger’s proposed five-point plan to identify effective teachers (Brookings paper) meets a clear need. In my opinion, their fourth recommendation calling for the establishment of systems to measure teachers’ job performance relies too much on state and local education agencies. I think it is unlikely to get quality, objective, thorough, and credible behavioral research from these agencies. More likely, we would find a tendency to maintain the status quo.

We need good, hard research that will help us improve our school systems and our children’s lives. Let’s give Professor Kane our support.

Jim Friet, C.A.S.’60, Ed.D.’62
San Diego, Calif.

Brains, Blocks, and Better Training

Your story “Science Says” (spring 2007) tells us how the developing brain of a young child thrives and grows through interaction with adults (and, I would add, with children). What a shame to illustrate it with a baby alone with several wooden blocks. Both your cover and the two-page illustration on pages 16 and 17 are quite misleading. Young babies don’t need blocks to help their brains grow. They need people.

Deborah Baldwin, Ed.M.’87, Ed.D.’92
Dover, Mass.

I’ve often wondered why we don’t take the time and make the effort to prepare parents for their most important job before they become parents. Why not teach child development, parent responsibility, positive discipline techniques, emotional and communication skills, nutrition, and human development to all students in high schools and middle schools? Certainly this is very important knowledge, as the article points out, not just for the children who will be born, but to our country as a whole.

Carol Lewke
Prepare Tomorrow’s Parents organization
Boca Raton, Fla.

We Should Have Known Better

As a June doctoral graduate of the Ed School, I was extremely disappointed to read in the first paragraph of “Around the World in Three Projects” (winter 2006–2007) that the Ed School has a “Ph.D. student body.” This is incorrect. No graduate school at Harvard grants students Ph.D.s except for the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. At the Ed School we are doctoral students, but we receive Ed.D.s. This is a major distinction. It is terrible to think that the magazine of the Ed School would make such a huge error. Not to mention, it is galling to the entire past and present doctoral student body.

Simone Sangster, Ed.M.’02, Ed.D.’07
Boston, Mass.