Bringing out the best for our children

As a classroom teacher, engaged with students over the past 34 years in Alaska, my core teaching values have been adopted from the highest professional standards. First, and foremost, teachers are dedicated to improving the quality of teaching, increasing learning and achievement, and making schools safer for our public school children. We, as educators, accept this profound trust with the responsibility of a vision for great public schools. This is accomplished in partnership with parents, families and our community to ensure student success.

Second, we believe our community public schools, encompassing all its members, are strengthened when we work together for the common good of our children. When we unite and advocate together, we improve the quality of public education. With that said, I take very strong exception, and am personally offended by Mr. Wood’s Spectrum article regarding his claim of a ‘socialist agenda’ that is anti-family, and promoting homosexuality (Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, March 2009) taking place in Alaska classrooms. Our primary focus, as teachers, which is set forth by the Mat-Su Teachers Association, is the welfare of our students, safety first, and the advancement of their education. Mat-Su teachers plan, teach and assess continuous academic growth on a daily basis, and frequently on a lesson-to-lesson measure. In short, teachers are monitoring grade level expectations for each and every student in their charge. Those expectations are based on highest standards of performance to ensure the learning and achievement of all of students in our classrooms.

Let me assure you, Mr. Woods, because, respectfully, you have failed to investigate fully “where the rubber hits the road” and that would be my classroom, you are just simply wrong.

How dare you make such an erroneous claim, that some how I am not teaching literacy, math, science, geography and history? Yet, what is most disturbing is to say I am not educating my students to be responsible, and good citizens. I challenge you, with all due respect, which you did not give me, or my colleagues; and I invite you to visit my classroom any day, any time. However, I cannot afford you the time to sit and watch. I would have to put you to work listening to students read, correcting papers or working with struggling students. I currently teach third grade and have 26 students. And let me say unequivocally, I know just how important reading, writing and math are for success.

We believe, as professional educators, that public education is the keystone to opportunities of potential, independence and character. This belief ensures all students have the human and civil right to a quality education. Quality public education is vital in building respect for worth, dignity and equality for every student in our diverse society. Our republic’s foundation is built on providing students with skills to be involved, informed and engaged in our representative democracy. This mission guides teachers to fulfill the promise to prepare every student for success in a diverse and interdependent world.

I will agree there needs to be a paradigm change in education funding, but I would advocate that funding needs to go directly into hiring more highly qualified teachers in classrooms to reduce the number of students in our classrooms. The research continually points to quality teachers in the classroom as the No. 1 component to learning and achievement. There are many evenings I go home frustrated with my inability to have substantially increased achievement and learning for every single one of my 26 students. There are just too many needs. This is the real “mess,” as I define mess, rather than your definition, that needs our immediate attention and more importantly change.

Next, the lack of responsibility of our national educational organization that you speak to, that some how equates to encouraging out of wedlock pregnancies that fuel the abortion industry is totally absurd. The problems in our society do not stem from our public schools, but from multi-layered, multi-faceted issues. These issues encompass a lack of personal responsibility, a lack of respect and trustworthiness for each other, a lack of fair play, but, greed and corruption, and finally, a lack of citizenship, where some act not to create a better place for every one, and everywhere, but only for themselves, or not at all.

Your article is short-sighted, blaming and does not address any real solutions for educators and their students. You have inflamed the situation with your remarks of a social experiment, within my classroom. The solution lies in attracting, retaining the best teachers, streamlining the workload to allow teachers to teach and giving those professional educators a voice in best practices to ensure educational excellence.

Then, making sure all the stakeholders, teachers, parents and students are at the table (desk), and community members have collective ownership in the solutions we create for the common good of our children. Finally, the new deal has to be comprehensive, inclusive and fundamentally different if there is to be real change. This paradigm change has to be bold, setting a new bar of expectations and using every resource available to meet those expectations to ensure our children succeed in the future. We need to fire the imagination and spirit of our children to bring out their best, to achieve the best for all of us.

Michael Carson is a veteran educator in the Mat-Su Borough School District.