Speakout Columns
Learning variables — and why you should be at the rally
Feb 19, 2009 10:57 AM
As a teacher I recognize that many things are beyond my control. There are variables that impact the learning that takes place in my classroom, but I have little or no influence over them.
Some can seem silly, like what a child had for breakfast that morning. If the milk was off, little Tommy will not be sitting in my classroom concentrating on the lesson, no matter how exciting I make it, or how many brightly colored markers I use. His mind will be elsewhere, most likely on the rumbling tumbling feeling going on in his stomach.
But the thing of it is, not all learning variables are as small or as isolated. Some are big and, if you are educationally minded, and someone who is a political leader, the expectation should be that you would want to address them and make some changes.
Class size, for example, is just such a learning variable, as is the home environment of the student. There are others, too, but these are two biggies.
All of us heard the threat that there could have been upward of 21,000 citywide layoffs this coming September, with 15,000 of those coming from DOE payrolls, had there not been a federal stimulus package.
That our mayor has said public school teachers would have absorbed the bulk of these losses says a lot about how and what he thinks.
If he had followed through on that threat, there would have been fewer teachers, and class size would have skyrocketed throughout the city. Little Tommy would have suffered, and not because of the milk he bought on the way to school, but because there would have been too many students in his class.
What goes on in a child’s home can also be critical to how he or she performs. If, for example, there is a death or long illness of a loved one in the home, this will negatively impact on that child’s performance in class.
Young Tommy’s head will be clouded by the goings-on at home and he will be distracted. Although demography and prior performance are accounted for, factors such as this are not taken into account in the new, very expensive Teacher Data Initiative that the city recently rolled out.
While there is no real way of measuring just how much of an effect things have on a child, there is also no denying that the mood in the student’s home can negatively affect how that child learns when he or she is in school.
Many of our public school children are already seeing the tentacles of this recession reach into their homes, robbing their mom or dad of a job. Money is scarce, fears are real and tensions are heightened as phone bills, gas bills and others begin to pile up.
Poverty has a way of tearing apart families and of ripping apart the fabric of what is good in our society in small but very damaging ways.
If our mayor, a supposed financial wizard, would have paused for a moment and reflected on the consequences teacher layoffs would have had on our young children, maybe he wouldn’t have been so quick to make his threat.
A child coming out of a home filled with worries over money, where stress fills the air, is already a few steps behind in school. Imagine now that same child going to a school that has been gutted by these budget cuts.
This is what will happen if we stay silent and invisible and leave these variables to collide. The federal stimulus alone will not solve all of our problems.
That’s why on March 5 we need to make our voices heard and remind our elected officials that public school children matter, that teachers matter, and that what we do matters.
Let’s make sure we are all outside City Hall on March 5, so that the mayor can hear us loud and clear. Let’s see what we can accomplish when we join together in numbers too large to ignore. And let us remember that we are the advocates and the voices for all the children in this city.
Dermot Smyth teaches social studies and is the chapter leader at IS 5 in Queens.
