I, like Keith, usually find myself agreeing with Michael Hohmann's posts. I do have some disagreements about Michael's thing about "white" teachers. There does not seem to be any racial corner on "Bad" teachers. Though I agree with Michael about the number of bad teachers. It would be "many" if 20 or 30 were not good teachers. Unfortunately there are more than that number of just "damn bad" teachers and a whole lot more of just "not good teachers". If teaching has not changed dramatically in Minneapolis Public School from 15 years ago it is many more! After sending three sons through the Minneapolis system I can truthfully say I only remember 6 or 7 really "Good" teachers out of all the teachers those kids had. I remember about the same number of truly bad teachers.
The worst teacher I remember was a minority woman teacher at Anderson School. She sent a note home about my sons reading and his poor performance. The letter was miss-spelled and grammatically a horror. I went in to check and found that other teachers in the same school also agreed with me, but said she was tenured and had to work somewhere. That somewhere ended up being at Anderson School in the Phillips Neighborhood. It took two years and a great teacher to partially remove the damage this woman had done to a child. It took adulthood and college to completely remove that child's utter contempt for public school teachers. At the same time I remember some great teachers, such as one named Rod at the same Anderson school. Unfortunately it takes several really great teachers to overcome the damage caused by even one "Bad" teacher. Cameras in class rooms is not a bad idea. Parents should be able to review the behavior of a child. More importantly they should be able to review the actions and performance of teachers. The idea of tenure keeping a terrible, damaging teacher in classes to harm other children is very repugnant, no matter what the teachers union contracts say. I am not a fan of Minneapolis Public School as a whole . Too bad it is the only option for many poor people in Minneapolis. Jim Graham, Ventura Village TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 2. If you don't like what's being discussed here, don't complain - change the subject (Mpls-specific, of course.) ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
