Does Arne Duncan Realize that Teachers and Students Are Dying?

Two education stories captured my attention this week. One that involved U. S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan seemed stupid.

The other turned my stomach.

We now know the accused killer of Colleen Ritzer, a Massachusetts high school teacher, has been charged with aggravated rape. Ritzer, 24, was murdered in a second floor women’s bathroom at Danvers High in October. Apparently she asked the accused killer to stay after school and prepare for a test. The suspect was a 14-year old freshman in one of her math classes.

“The indictments returned today reveal horrific and unspeakable acts,” a district attorney noted. He’s right. The details are awful. Philip Chism, the accused, is said to have planned the crime in detail and left a note behind.

“I hate you all,” it read.

Why does this story touch me? If for no other reason, because I have two daughters about the same age as Colleen Ritzer. I worked with wonderful young female teachers throughout my career. This could have been any of them.

And what do our “leaders” say about these kinds of incidents? They hardly notice. Duncan travels the country talking blithely about Common Core Standards. He thinks a curriculum can fix what’s wrong with schools. Does he ever wonder?

What would Duncan say to Michael Lansberry? Lansberry survived a tour of duty in Afghanistan but was shot down on the playground at Sparks Middle School the same week Ritzer was raped and killed. This time the assailant was a 12-year-old boy. Lansberry was trying to stop him from shooting his classmates. The boy killed Lansberry. Then he killed himself.

I’m sick of such stories.

Perhaps you’ve noticed. The people who want to fix our schools have settled on the idea that the biggest problem is teachers. Like Ritzer should be the focus of all their fixing. These arrogant fools say teachers are too lazy—too unionized—too dumb. Read a typical editorial in the New York Times if you don’t believe me. It’s titled: “Teachers: Will We Ever Learn?” Listen to Mayor Michael Bloomberg talk about education. Watch Waiting for Superman, a truly stupid film produced by Davis Guggenheim, about five good kids and America’s “failing schools.”

I know kids. I taught 33 years. I know there are way, way more good kids than bad. Still, there are young people like Ritzer’s killer. Will we ever learn? That’s the question the New York Times editorial poses.

“We will never learn,” I want to say to our leaders. “Not so long as we listen to you.”

Ms. Ritzer already had more experience in a classroom when she was murdered than Duncan, Bloomberg and Guggenheim combined. You’d think these insufferable asses might notice and be more humble. Instead, they enjoy kicking teachers in the teeth. Consider Bloomberg and his School Chancellor, Joel Klein. Klein never taught either. They said the way to fix U. S. education was to grade schools.

Well, what “grade” do we give Danvers High? Does the school get an “F” if a young teacher was raped and killed in a bathroom?

Is that our focus?

Duncan talks about how we need more charter schools. Real teachers wonder: Would Chism have been less deeply troubled, less violent if he attended a charter school?

There are others who insist you can “fix education” by handing out vouchers and letting parents decide what schools their children attend. Suppose Chism’s parents had had a voucher. Would the same exclusive private school that was happy to enroll Mr. Guggenheim’s children have allowed Philip through the front door? Of course not.

What in god’s name do our leaders ever do to help teachers? What did they ever do to make the job of Ritzer and Lansberry easier? Not one damn thing. They only required them to complete more paperwork—made them try to prove they were really teaching.

It makes me sick.

Which of our leaders was within a hundred miles of Sandy Hook Elementary on the day of the terrible massacre? Which of them jumped in front of the gunman and tried to shield those poor kids? Bloomberg might be rich enough to build a personal fortress out of giant piles of money. But it was a young teacher, Victoria Soto, 27, who gave her life trying to save a classroom of six and seven-year-old children. Soto put her body in the line of fire and died in the attempt. So, how much did it matter what college she attended before she entered the teaching profession? (See Bloomberg comment linked above.)

Will we ever learn? That’s a critical question.

Do our leaders truly believe you can fix schools without fixing society? Most of the worst problems in schools have roots in neighborhoods and homes that surround them. Tell us what education plan you have to address the matter of pregnant mothers who smoke meth. What good is any curriculum if one baby is born in America every hour addicted to opiates? Do you really believe Common Core standards are the key? Well then, read about the father who stuck his newborn in a freezer to stop her from crying. Consider the dad who threatened his daughter with an AK-47 because she got a “B” on an assignment. Or “google” the phrase: “Father kills…”

You may not know, but Duncan rose to fame by “reforming” the Chicago Public School system. One of his brilliant ideas was to close “failing schools” and send students to different buildings. Want to guess what happened? The kids with serious problems brought their serious problems with them to new schools. Nothing was actually fixed. Sure:  I know public schools must do what they can to help every child. But if a young man belongs to a gang, a vexing problem in the Windy City, blaming teachers for low test scores is worse than no solution at all.

You want to “fix the schools?” Explain how all your fixing would have helped Darryl Green. The 16-year-old Chicagoan was gunned down recently because he refused to join a gang.

(Hey, I have a great idea to help him. Why not make it harder for teachers to get tenure?)

Even if our leaders did nothing but shut up it might help. It might help if they tried to be realistic—to stop acting like teachers are the problem. Do that in memory of Colleen Ritzer, Michael Lansberry, and all those slaughtered at Sandy Hook. That would be a start. Then if someone like Mayor Bloomberg still wants to fix everything he can roll up his sleeves and pitch in and help. I suggest he start by working with high-risk kids like Shaaliver Douse. At age 14, Douse was already a member of a violent New York City street gang. He had two gun-related arrests on his record, including one for attempted murder. This past August he was killed by police after he was spotted shooting at another teen and chasing him down the street.

I say let Mr. Duncan step out of his office and march right into a classroom. Let him work one-on-one with the boy who shot up Chardon High School here in Ohio in 2012. There’s a truly terrible story, especially if you consider the shooter’s conduct during his trial. Forget the new Common Core Standards, Secretary Duncan.

This is your chance to make a difference.

Will we ever learn? This can’t be that hard to grasp. Secretary Duncan graduated from Harvard. He can’t be that dumb. But what was the U. S. Secretary of Education talking about this week? He was touting the cure-all powers of a new national curriculum. The dropout rate in America is too high, he told reporters. Is it because of gangs? Does it have anything to do with drug abuse? Crazy parents? Chronic absenteeism? Or endemic violence?

Oh no.

Kids drop out, says Duncan, because school is too easy. Teachers are the problem. They don’t set high enough standards.

That’s like saying it was Colleen Ritzer’s fault. God help me, I wish our leaders would shut up. If they know nothing, let them hold their tongues.

Say a prayer for the teachers and students we've lost.

******

If you liked this post, you might like my book about teaching, Two Legs Suffice, now available on Amazon.

Or contact me at vilejjv@yahoo.com and I can probably send you a copy direct, a little more cheaply. My book is meant to be a defense of all good teachers and a clear explanation of what good teachers can do, and what they cannot do.

Two Legs Suffice is also about what students, parents and others involved in education must do if we want to truly enhance learning. 

Will Bulletproof Whiteboards Be the Answer to School Shootings?

Worried about school safety in blood-drenched America? Well, we now have the answer. 

Bulletproof whiteboards!

You might think this is a joke; but considering the recent murders of teachers Colleen Ritzer and Michael Landsberry, there is little cause for humor. Ritzer was allegedly stabbed at school by an attacker wielding a box cutter. Landsberry was gunned down on the school playground. Ironically, Landsberry, an ex-Marine, once survived a tour of duty in Afghanistan.

Ritzer’s killer was said to be a 14-year-old freshman in one of her math classes.

Landsberry was struck by a bullet from a gun held in the hand of a 12-year-old middle school kid. In that incident the boy may have planned to shoot several classmates. He did wound two. Landsberry tried to stop the carnage and died in the attempt.

The boy then shot himself.

In the wake of all too many similar incidents schools are hoping to play defense. According to an article in the New York Times, the University of Maryland Eastern Shore is doing something about the threat of violence. At a cost of $59,800 the school purchased bulletproof whiteboards for professors. One will hang in every room. According to the campus chief of police the decision was easy. School leaders wanted “one more tool to help us ensure the safety of the campus community.” Even better: “the whiteboards are user-friendly and noninvasive.”

I’m sorry. Here a dose of bitter sarcasm seems the only reaction. One might posit such questions: Does the professor tell students about this possibly live-saving whiteboard? If an attacker enters the room, might not a struggle—with students—for possession of the shield ensue? For god sake, what parts of the body does one protect? The boards are only 18 x 20 inches. Hold the shield low and one’s head is exposed. Hold it high and…well. Let us say only that other delicate areas might be targeted.

Hardwire, the company that makes the shields, is seeing a business boom. In a YouTube video a company spokesmen explains that this innovative new product was “inspired by the Sandy Hook [Elementary School] tragedy.” Public school districts in Minnesota, Maryland and North Dakota have already purchased these special whiteboards. And why not! According to one expert, bulletproof whiteboards are fantastic. “It’s something that a teacher could actually walk around with, teach with it, place a book on it, it’s very lightweight.”

You can write on them too!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm0vjVvaEwc

Well, I guess you can’t mess with the Second Amendment. So you can’t ban any kinds of weapons or limit the size of ammo clips. You can’t have more background checks or register all guns. You can’t require gun owners to lock up weapons or be held liable for misuse. After all, a “well-armed militia” is the only question to consider in 2013.

You know what the Founding Fathers would say if they were alive today? “Buy some bulletproof whiteboards!”

Besides, you know the N.R.A. argument. Banning guns won’t stop all the killings. “If you ban guns, then criminals will use box cutters.” Hell, what about knitting needles! At this point, who knows how far the N.R.A. will go to win this argument?

I will leave the constitutional argument to others—noting only that all rights are subject to carefully drawn, sensible limits.

And really, who says we have a problem? (Okay, probably Michael Lansberry’s wife and two children.) Others would argue, I suppose, that we already live in the safest nation in the world. Because the more guns we have the safer we are. Ann Coulter said so, days after the Sandy Hook massacre. “I’m on the Hannity show right now,” she tweeted. “More guns,” she added, “less mass shootings.” So, let’s buy more guns! According to FBI figures, 2012 was a great year for gun manufacturers. At least 16.8 million FBI background checks were run during the year.

Today, we must be getting safer by the minute. There were 11.4 million background checks ordered in the first six months of this year.

Do you feel safer?

I just don’t. In America today you can be killed in all kinds of places—or if lucky—maybe just wounded. You can be gunned down by a heavily-armed assailant in a theater in Aurora, Colorado. So what do we need? Bulletproof popcorn containers? You can be killed while screening passengers at the Los Angeles airport as happened just last week. So: Kevlar luggage! You can be killed while at work in the Washington, D. C. Navy Yard. Therefore: we need bulletproof office cubicles. You can be shot by mistake by your husband in Ohio. And you have to worry about incidents of road rage, too. If you missed it, two Michigan drivers (both with concealed-carry permits) recently shot and killed each other. Both men had pulled into a parking lot to argue about one driver’s tailgating the other. Your 5-year-old can accidently kill his 2-year-old sister. Or, one of your children can kill another in an argument over a video game. Or, moms, your son can gun you down, and also his sister, after watching the movie “Halloween.”

You can even pick up a gun and kill yourself, which, on average, 53 Americans do every single day of the year.

Another 32 Americans are murdered with guns every day.

And every day more than 200 are wounded.

Compared to all other advance nations, we lead by far when it comes to gun-related slaughter. So, what do we do? (Double click on chart below to expand it for easy reading.)

We know Congress isn’t doing anything.

Maybe at this point we cast logic aside. We need bulletproof whiteboards, not just in colleges. We need them in all the classrooms all the way down to the kindergarten level. Our kids could also use bulletproof notebooks.

I suppose we will never be safe, if Ann Coulter is right, until every American owns a gun and we finally put an end to the gun-related carnage. In fact, I suppose you could argue that this Christmas, pistols would be perfect stocking stuffers. You can’t have any limits on guns, right, because that would be the end of all freedom? Well, then, it is the duty of every freedom-loving citizen to buy at least one pistol, rifle or shotgun for every family member. Two or three per person, naturally, would be better. Yes, it will take time to reach this state of heavily-armed perfection. But while we wait, let’s not take chances. Clearly, we need some bold company to come out with bulletproof underwear for children. Also: bulletproof Huggies for infants.

Colleen Ritzer: Find Something Good in Every Day

Colleen Ritzer, in the classroom, of course.

Colleen Ritzer, a 24-year-old math teacher at Danvers High School died Tuesday, almost certainly killed by one of her students. A freshman at the school has been arrested and charged as an adult in her murder. A box-cutter is said to be the weapon.

It may be this tragedy will spark discussion about “the failure of modern America society” to raise healthy children. Or we might veer from the story in Danvers, to look at gun violence, generally, since a Nevada teacher, Michael Landsberry, 45, was gunned down the day before.

Or we may link these incidents to the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary last December. The killers, or suspects, this week were in ages: 12 and 14.

Instead, we should remember Ms. Ritzer.

Who was this dedicated young teacher? She grew up in Andover, Massachusetts, one of three children, with one younger brother and one younger sister. In 2007, she graduated from Andover High, knowing she wanted to go into education. Four years later she graduated magna cum laude from Assumption College where she majored in math. Her minor was psychology and her understanding of human nature seems deep and clear from what we hear.

Ritzer was an avid baker. She was a fan of the New England Patriots, the Boston Bruins and the Red Sox. (She’d probably be celebrating their win last night had her life not been cut short.) She liked country music and the color pink.

Jennifer Berger, her long-time friend spent most of last Saturday shopping with Ritzer, as she searched for Halloween greeting cards. That night they baked treats together. “She was telling me that she was having a good year,” Berger said. “She loved all her classes.” She was “an aspiring mom searching for the right guy,” Berger added.

A search now ended.

Colleen was a positive, caring person. In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing last April, Ms. Ritzer posted a quote from Mr. Rogers on her Facebook page, by way of her mother. The words have even greater poignancy now. “I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”

“This world is a crazy place. Love who you love and live every day.”

Ritzer was one of the helpers.

On Sept. 11, she posted again, noting that she was “always thinking of the innocent victims…and the loved ones left behind who live in their light every day.”

Like most 20-somethings, Ritzer left a broad electronic footprint behind. She put up a Facebook page for her classes (overwhelmed by traffic today). She started a blog once but like many didn’t keep it going.
Still, her warm tribute to her grandfather (see below) is telling both about subject and author. Colleen was also active on Twitter. In one telling tweet she identified herself as a “math teacher often too excited about the topics I’m teaching.”

Other times she contacted students to wish them “happy birthday,” or posted assignments for her geometry and algebra classes, or commented on life in general. Her enthusiasm is palpable, making her loss seem doubly tragic.

As a retired teacher, this tweet resonated forcefully with me: “Now that the school year is in full swing, so are my weekly Target visits. #obsessed.”

You know that this young lady was out there—willing to spend extra to buy supplies and prizes and materials for her class.

On October 5, she tweeted: “Find something good in every day.”

According to the Boston Globe, students had come to know the second-year teacher “as smart, gracious, and persistent, as diligent about grading their geometry problem sets as helping to ground them amid the turbulence of adolescence.”

Sophomore McKenzie Plaza described the raven-haired teacher as “lighthearted, kind, and genuinely nice.”

“She was always smiling, and she really loved what she did and loved working with us,” said Plaza, who had Ritzer as a homeroom teacher.

“She gave off the impression that you could talk to her about anything. You just enjoyed her presence.”

What a loss.

Riley Doyle, a freshman in one of Ritzer’s classes, told a reporter for CBS that her teacher “was always really upbeat and positive and excited about math.”

“She made every lesson like you wanted to learn it,” Riley added. “For the first time, math became one of my favorite classes.”

“She was always very courteous to her students, and she would never talk down to them,” Riley continued. “She treated them like people.”

I suspect that Ritzer was not really so different from tens of thousands of young teachers toiling away today. Really, Colleen Ritzer reminds us there’s plenty good about this coming generation and nothing wrong that wasn’t wrong with all the generations that came before. It's the human condition. Certainly, she was always ready to come in early and stay late to help students who needed math instruction or needed advice on how to survive adolescence.

If we listen in days to come we will surely hear more about her. And we should. Colleen Ritzer was a dedicated teacher, a kind-hearted human being, and would surely have told you that the world is full of good people.

Mary Duffy, a neighbor who watched her grow up over the last twenty-four years, was overcome by sobbing when she heard the news. She described Ritzer for a reporter from the Andover Townsmen:

“She was a quiet, unassuming girl with a beautiful smile. She was a lovely child.”

“I love the family and they have a beautiful family. If every family throughout America was like that, there would be no trouble. It would be utopia.”

It’s not a utopia, though. That’s the tragedy of life, most tragically for the Ritzer family now. Still, from what I gather, Colleen would probably have a hard time mustering up any hate even for the young man who killed her.

If she had lived she’d probably be ready to help him.

Colleen Ritzer, 24, was by all accounts a wonderful young woman.

What a loss.

Thank you, grandpa.

Over the past few weeks, our family has experienced the tragedy of watching the strongest man we know lose his battle with cancer. I will not say that we watched him give up strength, because along this heartbreaking journey, he never gave up one bit of it.

My courageous, hard-working, devoted 89-year-old grandfather exemplified the meaning of strength. Experiencing several health complications throughout the course of his lifetime, he fought through each and every one of them. He was not ready to go, and he was determined to let the world know that. He wanted to be here, to live a little longer, and it was that desire and strength that allowed him to live a prosperous 89 years. So, for that,thank you grandpa, for showing us all what it means to be strong in the most difficult of times.

Thank you for showing us what it means to love. To love life. To love your family. To love all that you have. Your sense of pride was magnificent. In the countless stories you shared with us, you never shared any stories of regret. You lived your life to the fullest. You made your dreams come true. You did not believe for one second that life was something you should look back on with regrets, but rather look back on and realize what you want to do differently in the future. Realize which dreams you really want to follow. Most importantly, you taught us to never let a setback cause us to give up on our dreams.

In the last few weeks of your journey of life, I will never forget the way you woke from your sleep and said to my mom, “I’m hanging in there”. Hanging in there; that’s what you did your entire life, right up until the very end.

So, we will hang in there for you. We will live our lives with no regrets, so that we can tell our grandchildren stories the way that you told us stories.

Thank you for the stories, for sharing your life with all of us.

And above all, thank you for hanging in there.

May you finally receive the rest that you so very much deserve. We love you and will miss you every day.

Ritzer had a sense of humor, too.

Tribute from students.

Another Teacher Killed in Danvers, Massachusetts

THE PICTURE AT THE END OF THE POST IS RELATED TO A SEPARATE INCIDENT, A SCHOOL SHOOTING IN CHARDON, OHIO


Monday, I picked up the New York Times and read again about how dumb America’s teachers supposedly are.

I’m a retired teacher myself, and a liberal, too, and love to read the Times. So, maybe that does make me dumb.

More on that in a moment; but a few hours later I turned on the TV and heard about the school shooting in Sparks, Nevada.

Depending on how you count such incidents the shooting at Sparks Middle School was the fifteenth in or near a school this year. (That includes a number of episodes involving gunfire on college campuses.) In Sparks, the shooter, 12, wounded two classmates, killed Michael Lansberry, a teacher and ex-Marine who served in Afghanistan, then took his own life.

Today we have terrible news again.

The body of Colleen Ritzer, 24-year-old math teacher at Danvers High School in Danvers, Massachusetts, has been discovered behind her school. Blood was found in a second-floor school bathroom and a 14-year-old has been charged with murder.

It’s bad enough, then, that American students and teachers are killed with such sanguine regularity. The Sandy Hook Elementary massacre briefly focused attention on the problem. But the deaths of one or two or three individuals, here and there, are no less horrifying. Here in Ohio, last April, a La Salle High School student shot himself in the head and ended up in critical condition. In February 2012, gunfire erupted at Chardon High, not far from Cleveland. That incident left three teens dead, a fourth paralyzed, and one “slightly” wounded.

(Imagine that you are the parent and find that your son or daughter was “slightly” wounded at school that day.)

Worse yet—if there can be a “worse” when it comes to such matters—the Chardon shooter showed no remorse in court. At his sentencing, T. J. Lane, 18, wore a plain white tee shirt on which the word “KILLER” was scrawled in magic marker. “This hand that pulled the trigger that killed your sons,” he told stunned families in court, “now masturbates to the memory. F--- all of you.”

With that he flipped everyone the bird.

So here I sit in my safe retirement. I read these stories of mayhem in the schools and find myself sickened. I read of the father who stuck his infant daughter in a freezer to stop her from crying. I read—in the Times, of all places—that 10% of babies born in Scioto County (again, here in Ohio) are addicted to drugs. I read in the Times, again, that 15% of parents let their sons and daughters stay home from school twenty times or more every year.

Then I read the editorial on Monday: “An Industry of Mediocrity.” I know my disgust is as nothing in the face of very real tragedy in Sparks or Danvers. A stupid article is nothing compared to the loss of a loved one. Still, this article is all too typical in its lame attempt to come to grips with “what’s wrong with America’s schools.”

I think to myself: “Maybe part of the trouble involves ‘gunfire.’”

Well, what industry is producing all this “mediocrity?” Colleges of education, naturally! What is the mediocre product? Why, it’s you and me, a nation’s public school teachers.

Here’s the gist of the article:

• America’s teachers aren’t all that bright. According to “one respected study” only 23% come from the top third of college graduates. That sounds bad, till you stop to realize, statistically speaking, that only 33% should come from the top third—the same as bankers, bakers, butchers and editorial writers.

• Worse yet, only 14% of teachers in high-poverty schools come from the top third of their college classes. 

• People who run charter schools are quoted, insisting that, yes, it’s true! Charter schools are way better than regular public schools. That’s because they have freedom to pick teachers and don’t pick dimwits. (I admit I’m paraphrasing.)

• The article quotes individuals who run various foundations interested in reforming education (but much too smart to go into the high-poverty schools and do any teaching). These theorists promise that, sure, they know exactly how to fix education.

• Some college professor who did a study grumbles about how we train teachers. There are a few good training programs. Sadly, most don’t require middle school math teachers to study calculus before entering the classroom. Therefore, “Some of our education programs are putting out math teachers at the level of Botswana.” (Damn! Botswana!) Worse, yet, according to Bill Keller, who penned the column, “the Botswana-level teacher programs produce about 60% of America’s future middle school math teachers.”

• Finland has better teachers—all chosen from the top third of their classes. We need to copy this system. Keller quotes Amanda Ripley (who also did not choose to go into a high-povertry school), who wrote an entire book about Finland’s smarter teachers. (I admit I liked a large part of what Ripley had to say in The Smartest Kids in the World, but I’m not buying this happy myth about how we could solve all our problems if only we had smarter teachers.)

Finally, Keller notes that there are already 3.3 million public school teachers in America today. They can’t all be trained (retrained?) by new methods or start-up programs. So, hell, we’re temporarily screwed, at best, and there’s still a lot of “widespread mediocrity.”

What I notice, very sadly, is that there’s a lot of gunfire. And I don’t think you have to graduate in the top third of any class, not even kindergarten, to realize most of the problems “in” our schools have deep roots in a society outside their walls.

I don’t think the main problems in education have anything to do with where Michael Landsberry or Colleen Ritzer or any of the rest of us finished in the college rankings.

I’m surprised editorial writers continue to miss the point. 

Say a prayer for all the students and teachers.

T. J. Lane gunned down several classmates.