Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Columns

After 33 years in field, educator sums it all up

By Joe Di Salvo

In 1989 Robert Fulghum published a book titled All I Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. Well, it took me 33 years of public school education as a teacher and principal to learn all I needed to know about public schools. Here is a peek into just some of what I learned, in no particular order:

* The best teachers should make 80 percent of the superintendent's salary. This way we would attract some of those graduates who go into science, engineering, law and medicine into teaching. It would change schools for the good;

* Good teachers work 60-plus-hour weeks to make certain their lesson plans are successful for all their students. The public perception of teachers working a shortened day is wrong;

* Smaller is better. Schools should be no more than 500 students-- including our high schools;

* It's all about relationships;

* Federal intervention into education, such as No Child Left Behind, is not a good thing, although national standards might be. Fill-in-the-bubble tests are not an accurate accounting of what a child can do. Assessment needs to be more authentic and real;

* Vocational education and career technical education should come back in vogue, as it is beginning to, and be a central theme of middle and high school curriculum;

* Relevance, rigor and relationships are the new three Rs, Although there is a very serious place for reading, 'riting, and 'rithmetic, too. In fact, I learned in my first year of teaching at Osborne School at Santa Clara County Juvenile Hall that 80 percent of those children incarcerated read two or more years below grade level. I learned that the dollars should be poured in record numbers into early education and class size should be no more than 15 in each early grade;

* Parents are an important stakeholder and should be consulted and surveyed and always welcome at school and in classrooms, irrespective of the grade;

* Genuine praise for children is a powerful strategy and leads to increased achievement;

* Secretaries and custodians are the teachers' best friends, and the principal's, too;

* Children act out their pain in our classrooms. We need more counselors and nurses in our schools;

* There is considerable energy waste in schools;

* Student teaching is a good thing and should last more than a semester. New teachers should be placed on Step 1 of the salary schedule and work with a true master teacher for one year prior to getting their own classroom of students;

* Grades are inaccurate indicators of student progress in many cases. We need a better feedback system to children and to their parents that is standards-based;

* Student comportment and citizenship should be an area of emphasis on feedback to students and parents;

* Teachers should stay with students more than one year. We do a very poor job in transferring key information about the student learner to the next teacher. Two or more years with the same teacher would mean less down time in learning each student's strengths and weaknesses;

* The school year needs to be longer--perhaps 200 days--and teachers need to work 10 additional days beyond the 200 in order to collaborate with colleagues and do the necessary research and development to get better;

* Collective bargaining was a good thing in the 1970s and 1980s, but today teacher unions in some cases seem to inhibit the growth of their teachers and profession. The compensation schedule needs to be changed dramatically. Most teachers deserve higher salaries, especially in high-risk schools;

* Far too many students attend school hungry.

As Fulghum said in his bestseller, "warm cookies and cold milk are good for you." So was 33 years in public education for me. I thank all the teachers, custodians, secretaries, students, parents and superintendents who taught me all I needed to know.