By John R. Alston Trotter, EdD, JD

   Jefferson (L) and his co-workers and my friends on the Copacabana Beach (Dougie Fresh in the middle; Leo on the right; and Mikie in the background).  Jefferson speaks flawless English (the King’s English).  I asked him last year where he learned his English, and he replied, “On the sand.”  Haven’t I always asserted that the motivation to learn is a social process?  He told me today that he can make more money by being able to speak English.  He also told me that he travels by bus two hours each way to get to the beach to make money.  These guys are really garcons (pronounced with a soft “c” sound) of the beach.  A garcon is a waiter, and they wait on you hand and fist.  Whateve you need, they get it (chairs, large umbrellas, tables, drinks, food, etc.) for you.  They make their money on tips.  Dougie Fresh also speaks great English and Leo and Mikie speak functional English.  The key to learning a language or math or science or whatever is motivation, but our educrats totally ignore this and treat non-learning like it is a technical breakdown rather than a motivational breakdown.  Assim Eu falo portugues mais ou menos, mas Eu me viro.  Translation:  Even I speak Portuguese more or less, but I get by.

       I am enjoying the Vitamin D down here in Rio de Janeiro.  (I like to come down here to escape a few weeks of the Georgia winter.)  I actually bought a new John Grisham book (at least new to me) this evening, The Confession, and a book by Michael F. Holidk, Ph. D., M. D., and Mary Jenkins, The UV Advantage, in Shopping do Sul (beautiful mall) this evening.  Dr. Holick is the most renowned scholar on Vitamin D and says that a significant chunk of our population is Vitamin D deficient which leads to many, many chronic diseases, including cancer and heart disease.  He has published hundreds of articles in “referee” journals (meaning research articles judged by peers before accepted by journals).  We have swung from one extreme to the other, trying to avoid all sun.  The sun helps heal our bodies! 

     There’s no better source of Vitamin D than the sun.  Nothing else compares – certainly not Vitamin D-fortified milk.  This rather irrational avoidance of the sun reminds me of schools trying to improve performance without the students being exposed to Discipline.  We have a Vitamin D deficiency in our culture and a Discipline deficiency in our schools!  By the way, those folk (like my children and not like their father, a light skin cracka!) who have a significant amount of melanin in their skin and who live outside the Tropics should get even get more sun exposure because the melanin blocks so much of the sun’s rays.  Vitamin D, baby, Vitamin D! 

     Can I write off this trip as a Vitamin D Vacation or just a little Heliotherapy?  Brazilians claim that God is Brazilian!  (I certainly think that God has a great sense of humor!)  They say that God created everything in five days, and on the sixth day, He created Rio de Janeiro.  He then sat back and was satisfied and rested on the seventh day.  The city is just that beautiful.  They call it, “A Cidade Maravilhosa” [Ah See-dah-jee Mada-vil-yosa]!  The Marvelous City!  The Christ Statue, Cristo Redentor [Cree-stew Hey-den-to], is the eighth wonder of the world (and is worth the trip all by itself!).  It was erected in the early1930s and towers over this beautiful city like our Statue of Liberty towers over the New York Harbor. 

     The Vitamin D that our schools need is Discipline.  Without Discipline, all kinds of chronic situations break out in our schools.  This irrational avoidance on the part of educational policy-makers and educrats to even discuss Discipline is irrational and only contributes to the constant illness of our public schools.

Editor’s Note:   The following comments by Dr. Trotter were written recently, and most of them were written on The Atlanta Journal-Constitution‘s Get Schooled blog.

    Dr. Trotter recently in photo with boxing legend Roy Jones, Jr.

      The cheating revealed in the Atlanta and Dougherty school systems here in Georgia are, I am afraid, just two tips of the Systematic Cheating Iceberg. I won’t belabor the fact that at MACE we have been pointedly talking about “systematic cheating” for a while now, even before it hit the popular news. In fact, my speaking out on systematic cheating got me temporarily “banned” from one large school systems. (Of course, “bans” don’t work with me. Another large system tried to “ban” me in 1997. Both superintendents in these two school systems were later forced to step down and fired, with one even being federally indicted.)

     A Nation at Risk report which was published amid great fanfare in 1983 ushered in nearly 30 years school reform disasters. You cannot mandate school reform nationwide, statewide, or system-wide. No far-reaching school reform has ever worked. Never. Dr. John Goodlad’s mega-study of the studies clearly revealed this even in the early 1980s. (Dr. Goodlad’s findings were published under the title, A Place Called School.) Dr. Goodlad was associated with UCLA. All the hype of school reform is just that….hype. Improvements can indeed occur at the individual school level, with a secure and confident leader who does not suffocate the teachers but frees them up to teach…and supports them in disciplinary matters with the students. © GTSO, December 21, 2011.

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      APS. Always Pushing Sh-t, right? Beverly Fraud, you are right on target about the phoniness of the threat to lose accreditation. SACS was NEVER going to take away accreditation. It appears to me that Mark Elgart works in concert with the big shot business leaders. SACS is used as a tool to try to determine who will be the leaders on the various school boards. See Clayton County where SACS and business leaders favored Ericka Davis but were apparently afraid of Norreese Haynes and see Atlanta where SACS and business leaders favored Butler-Burks but were apparently afraid of Khaatim El. Asking too many questions made the business leaders nervous. School systems have become huge money bonanzas for the business community to exploit, and the big mules in the business community need very compliant superintendents and school board members to pull of their “heists” of the public monies. El and Haynes were in their way.

     All of this talk about doing everything “in the best interests of the children” is just blather. What is done is done in the best financial interests of the select few. Check out who owns the properties being sold to APS for the new Buckhead high school and other schools.

     I can assure you that Inman Middle School and Kennedy Middle School are not in any way the same. I am very familiar with both schools. Let’s face it: You have good schools, O. K. schools, and chronically failing schools. Kennedy Middle is a chronically failing school. What parent in his or her right mind wants his or her child to attend a chronically failing school where fighting, bullying, cheating, and drug selling abound? No matter what Brenda Muhammad or Erroll Davis say to try to mollify the parents whose children are going to be shipped to these chronically failing schools will work. Parents will be mad. Pure and simple. Mad. You can’t improve these schools by shipping “good students” to them. Like Beverly Fraud has right stated, the first thing that you have to do with these chronically failing schools is to establish order. Order is the first law of the Universe. Without an orderly and disciplined environment established, no academic achievement will occur. Order and Discipline First. Academic Achievement Second. The order cannot be reversed.

      Trotter’s First Law of the Public Schooling Process: You cannot have good learning conditions until you first have good teaching conditions. Trotter’s Second Law of the Public Schooling Process: The motivation to learn is a social process or cultural phenomenon. Trotter’s Third Law of the Public Schooling Process: Without student motivation to learn, no academic achievement will take place, despite who is attempting to teach the children. These are basic principles which we have been expounding upon at MACE for nearly 17 years.  (Go to the Archive section of MACE’s website at www.theteachersadvocate.com, and you will see from the very first publication that MACE has been right on target and has never fluctuated or vacillated one scintilla with our message.)  

     Now when some of the more affluent parents’ children may be affected by dumb decisions from the school boards or from educrats, our theories make sense. But, as long as their children are ensconced in affluent neighborhoods and their schools are granted inordinate autonomy, their voices were mute when it came to a lack of discipline, bullying, fighting, and systematic cheating in the schools in the rougher areas of town. Hmm.

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      This tinkering with the evaluative process is a complete joke. It is all based upon the assumption that the problem in the public schooling process is the lack of teacher quality. Ha! The problem? The lack of student quality. Many students come to school with little or no motivation to learn and then these non-learners are allowed to disrupt the learning processes of those students who have a desire to learn.

     Our educrats are unfortunately idiots when it comes to what works in the public schooling process. What works? First, discipline. Without it, you will not have ANY academic achievement. None. The educrats want to ignore the 800 pound gorilla in the parlor knocking over all of the nice marble-topped furniture. It’s the discipline, stupid. It’s not about teacher quality. Sure, there are a few weak teachers, just like there are a few weak lawyers, physicians, dentists, engineers, et al. But, the overwhelming problem is the low quality of today’s students. Don’t blame the dentists when the patients come to the dental office with rotten teeth, especially when the patients refuse to brush their teeth or to engage in any other preventive treatment. This notion of blaming the teacher is like sending the dentists through many more evaluative processes because his or her patients come to his or her office with rotten teeth and refuse to follow his or her instructions. Stupid!

     Our educrats always want to treat a lack of learning as a technical breakdown which can be fixed with more teacher workshops or more stringent evaluative procedures. Oh, how stupid and pitiful is this thinking, but it is self-preserving thinking. It keeps these educrats employed. The best thing that we can do for public education is (1) restore order and discipline in the schools; (2) remove the non-learners from the regular learning environment; and (3) get rid of all of the educrats.

     The motivation to learn is a social process or culture phenomenon. You cannot have good learning conditions until you first have good teaching conditions. If a student is not motivated to learn and refuses to learn, not even Arne Duncan, Nathan Deal, Barack Obama, Michelle Rhee, Beverly Hall, Rod Paige, George W. Bush, Henry Kissinger, Dwight Howard, John Barge, Tim Tebow, Rod Stewart, George Jones, or Herschel Walker can make this student learn. Motivation to learn is the key. It’s not a technical breakdown; it’s a motivational breakdown. Pure and simple. Our educrats don’t want to know this. They enjoy driving their BMWs. If it were as simple as I am saying, then why do we need these useless educrats? Ha! Get rid of the educrats!

     I have written extensively on this for years.

http://www.theteachersadvocate.com

http://www.georgiateachersspeakout.com

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      Right on point. This whole public schooling process quit being about the kids long ago. It’s about the big fat salaries of the educational sl-ts (superintendents) and their pimps (school board attorneys). It’s about money, and the due process procedures get in the way. They want to just heartlessly get rid of anyone who questions anything, despite how good a teacher he or she may be. They want to keep a bunch of non-tenured teachers around and expect them to jump through a zillion hoops and make it look to the naive board members that the superintendent-attorneys are doing something. There has been an unholy alliance established between appointed superintendents and school board attorneys (especially those who also act as “search” firms). A very unholy alliance. The Pimps and their Educational Sl-ts. These Educational Sl-ts jump in and out of school board beds, depending on how much they will be paid. Of course the Pimps get their share of the bounty too.

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      @ April: Are you sure that you don’t work for the educrats — or better yet, for one of the Educational Sl-ts (appointed superintendents) or for one of the Educational Pimps (school board attorneys)? Why such a visceral response? The blog is for anyone who cares to post. It’s just digital space. No waste of paper. Very environmental friendly. Maybe you just can’t handle the “same” people’s arguments. It is plain stupid and non-sensical to blame teachers for students’ lack of effort. Plain stupid…but politically convenient for the politicians, policy-makers, and educrats. I am sorry, April, but I will continue to point out the stupidity and hypocrisy…and I am still open for a public debate on these issues from Mark Elgart, Erroll Davis, Edmond Heatley, Glenn Brock, Beverly Hall, or any other superintendent or school board lawyer or educrat in the State. How can I be more accommodating? Ha!

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     The biggest lawbreakers around? The school systems. They just hire the law firms (pimps) who will, for the right price, apparently tell them that they don’t have to follow certain laws. Superintendents (the Educational Sl-ts) love to hide behind school board attorneys (the Educational Pimps).

       The grievance law (O. C. G. A. 20-2-989.5 et seq.), the ten day rule for holding a hearing for suspended educators (O. C. G. A. 20-2-940[g]), the duty-free lunch law for elementary teachers (O. C. G. A. 20-2-218), the sick leave law (O. C. G. A. 20-2-850), etc. Heck, the Atlanta Public School System violates all of these laws. All of them.

     Other school systems (Cobb, Clayton, DeKalb, Fulton, and others) also routinely violate State Statutes and Federal Laws. Routinely. They are, in my opinion, gangsta school systems. Some are worse than others. We at MACE have to continuously hold their feet to the fire when it comes to protecting the rights of MACE members. These school systems are thugs, bullies, gangstas. I am just telling you the unvarnished truth. And they apparently think that it is O. K. to violate laws because their school board attorneys apparently give their imprimatur to do so.

     I am amused that the Cobb County Board of Education is now going to have to undergo “training” on statutes on Open Meetings and/or Open Records. The board is not admitting that it has violated these laws (but it has on many, many occasions), but Sam Olens, fellow Cobb Countian and now Attorney General of Georgia, is telling this rambunctious school board that it needs “training”? What about “training” from the Brock Clay law firm, the firm which has apparently made millions and millions of dollars from this school board?

     I have been telling you folks for years that it is all a game. A sham and a farce. It’s all about the cheddar.

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      @ HS Public Teacher: It is stupid beyond comprehension. These folk always learn dumber. I have been keenly observing this for nearly 35 years. They don’t have a clue but want to impose their clueless mandates on professional educators…simply to realize a few years later that these mandates not only did not improve education but even made it worse.

     The media and the politicians and the educrats don’t want to deal with the reality of what is going on in the public schools.  It is so much easier and convenient to just blame the teachers.  They are lazy.  They are not focused.  They need more training and staff development.  Ugh!  Or, they just need more snoopervision and more scripted curriculum mandates.  I once heard an irate parent at an Atlanta Board of Education meeting blurt out:  “If the students aren’t learning, then it’s the teacher’s fault!”

     This is not too far from what the media, the politicians, and the educrats think, say, and act upon.  I actually saw Bill O’Reilly’s Talking Points  on FOX News this week when he proclaimed that we are wasting the billions of dollars which are pumped into public education if we don’t deal with discipline and order in the classroom.  This is what I have been saying for nearly 35 years and what MACE has posited from its very inception in 1995.  (MACE is the acronym for the Metro Association of Classroom Educators, and MACE was founded as a Georgia teacher’s union or association in 1995.  MACE actually represents teachers all over Georgia, not just in the Metro Atlanta area.  MACE represents only classroom educators, not administrators or supervisors, thus eliminating any conflict-of-interest.) 

     Order is the first law of the Universe, and without an orderly and disciplined environment (which our failing schools fail to have), no significant learning will take place.  Zilch.  You can pour billions of dollars into the mix, but it will result in the same failure if discipline is not your first priority.  Yes, first priority.  The private schools and the successful private schools understand this and will not put up with even a thimble full of the mess that the educrats from the failing public schools see happening all day long.  These educrats look at you as if  you an educational brute or a Vandal or a Viking or Atilla the Hun when you suggest that expecting an orderly and disciplined learning environment is desirable and essential for significant learning to take take.  The educrats among the failing schools (the same schools for which QBE in Georgia and NCLB for the nation were established) have an inexplicably benign attitude toward students defying teachers, cursing teachers, disrupting classes, doing no school work but expecting passing grades, and essentially using the school institution as its social playground to engage in any nefarious enterprise.  What do these educrats do?  Blame the teachers.  Pressure teachers to teach the tests.  Employ not-s0-subtle cues to let the teachers clearly know that they expect systematic cheating on the standardized tests, if the teachers want to keep their jobs.  You don’t think that this happens?  Don’t be naive.  Look at Houston.  Look at Washington, D. C.  Look at Atlanta.  It is the failing school systems which are causing the good school systems to have to endure such indignities and inane and insufferable regulations which come from hopelessly flawed school reform measures like Georgia‘s Quality Basic Education Act (QBE) or the nation’s No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). 

     I like the metaphor about the dentist whose practice is in an area where the patients come in to his or her office with an inordinate number of rotten teeth.  Surely it is the dentist’s fault!  The patients won’t brush their teeth or do any other preventive care, but the rotten teeth are the dentist’s fault. 

     We have some “rotten” kids who are being sent to school by some “rotten” parents. We can’t blame the teachers for this.  Oh, but the media, the politicians, and the educrats do blame the teachers!  This is balderdash and unconscionable and laughable, but sadly it is the case. 

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     School systems are boondoggles for lawyers.  A real treasure trove.  I remember reading a legal bill (I have a copy of it) fromthe Greenberg Trauig (did I spell this correctly?) Law Firm submitted to the Clayton County Board of Education.  Over $400.00 (415.00 or 450.00) per hour billing on researching on how to keep a person named John Trotter from attending the Clayton County Board of Education meetings.  This board was “led” by Ericka Davis.  Well, it didn’t work, and I am still around.  In fact, I have had a few places to try to “ban” me.  Ha!  I am still kickin’ and this is still the United States, the land of the free.  But, freedom isn’t free.  Oh, by the way, Ericka Davis resigned under apparent duress from the school board not long after this episode with me.   Other shameful escapades took place under her so-called “leadership.”  Greenberg Trauig resigned shortly thereafter from doing legal work for the Clayton County Board of Education.  I am a still a free man!  Ha!

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     Atlanta Public Schools (and DeKalb too, by the way):  Gangta School System(s).  MACE  has said this for years…out in the open…in the streets on picket signs, in articles on our website, on blogs, and on television.

     “Gangsta School System!”  On beautiful bright signs.  Some motorists laughed.  Some shook their heads.  Many honked their horns in agreement.  Central office minions of Beverly Hall (and Crawford Lewis) who were sent to the picket lines looked disconcerted and discombobulated.  We knew that we were telling the truth, though we were the part of a very select few who would openly call the school systems “gangsta.”

www.theteachersadvocate.com

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     The Atlanta Public Schools (APS) is trying to let the Professional Standards Commission (PSC) do its work for them.  New superintendent Erroll Davis, if I remember correctly, in as much said that the other day.  He stated that if the teacher no longer holds a certificate, then firing him or her would be a moot point.  Well, Mr. Davis, is following O.C.G.A. 20-2-940(g) a moot point?  The teachers CANNOT be on “administrative leave” (as you called it) without having a hearing within ten (10) days of their removal from the classroom.  Yes, ten days, folks. 

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     I see that educrats want to talk about anything but the lack of discipline in our failing public schools.   I have been saying for years that the largest problem in these schools is the lack of classroom discipline largely brought about by the  woeful lack of support from the spineless administrators for the classroom educators when they attempt to establish classroom discipline.  Classroom discipline cannot be established in these schools if the students perceive that the administrators refuse to support the teachers.  Without establishing discipline in these schools, things will not and cannot change.  I will go back to the MACE mantra which has never been successfully disputed (only ignored):  You cannot have good learning conditions until your first have good teaching conditions.

In this photo, young lawyers (I am the exception) are celebrating at the wedding of Michael Bender (with white flower).  We were all touched by  Professor Reynold Kosek, that demanding of all professors!

A Tribute To Reynold Kosek

By John R. Alston Trotter, EdD, JD

       I suppose that most of you are like me…busier than a one-arm paper-hanger.   But, when the call goes forth about paying a tribute to the venerable Reynold Kosek, how can any of us find ourselves too busy to pay tribute to this great professor and gentleman?  A scholar and a gentleman indeed, though after the first session in our 1L Contracts class, many of us neophytes (and I was a crusty 47 years old at the time) may have doubted the latter appellation.  From the first chicken-scratched, staccato pronouncement on the green chalkboard that “[t]here are three theories of legal obligation…agreement with consideration, promissory estoppel, and unjust enrichment” to the last day of class when we had a party and actually witnessed his West Virginia grin, we still entered the classroom each day (four days for Contracts, remember?) with “fear and trembling” (to borrow one of Kierkegaard’s phrases).  (I can only imagine how the 22 year olds felt.  I actually was smelling like smoke when I entered Mercer Law because I had been through a few fires already.)  He was our Professor Kingsfield, and if you youngsters have ever watched The Paper Chase (with John Houseman earning an Oscar playing the role of the feared Professor of Contracts), then you will know what I am talking about.  (Kingsfield’s famous quote:  “You teach yourselves the law.  I train your minds.  You come in here with a skull full of mush, and if you survive, you will leave thinking like a lawyer.”  Isn’t this what Professor Kosek does?)  Professor Kosek intimidates and inspires at the same time, preparing young students of the law to think clearly, to write cogently, and to not quake before the inquiries from a judge or a jury.  Although I have never sat for the Bar myself, I have witnessed several of my classmates in that infamous “Section Five” of the Class of 2004 (yes, the class of The Malum Law Review) mature into confident and aggressive barristers.  In fact, just the other day, Preston Lee Haliburton himself (the young soul who was wont to waffle a time or two) bowed up to an elected Superior Court judge here in the Metro Atlanta area who was apparently violating the civil rights of his client.  The judge made an idle threat to jail Haliburton himself, but the boxing barrister stood his ground, and the judge caved in.  J. Anderson Ramay, Jr., has indeed become an Aggressive Attorney who fights like hell for his clients.  I have retained both of these gentlemen on many occasions.  Jason Tarokh is barred in both South Carolina and Florida and is kicking butt on a regular basis.  Without the “Kosek Experience,” these rather cherubic and congenial souls would have probably wilted under their first conflict in the courtroom.  But, compared to Marine sergeant-type drilling from Professor Kosek, the rest is just a chunk of Claxton Fruitcake.

       I got a real kick out of Professor Kosek’s fondness for Justice Benjamin Cardozo.  To Professor Kosek, Cardozo was like Herschel Walker to Georgia Bulldog fans and Tim Tebow to Florida Gator fans.  So, not unlike “young Hart” (played by Timothy Bottoms) in his fascination with Professor Kingsfield, I adopted Justice Cardozo as my patron Justice as well.  How can you blame me?  He spun phrases like “mere venality” when rendering his substantive decision on substantial performance in Jacob & Youngs v. Kent (1921) while serving on the Court of Appeals of New York (New York’s highest court; y’all remember that, eh?).  For the record, one of Cardozo’s tutors when he was young was Horatio Alger.  Also for the record, the Cardozo appointment to the U. S. Supreme Court was one of President Hoover’s best moves.  

       Professor Kosek divided our small section Contracts class into groups of three.  But, poor Timmy Thompson and I were put together in a group composed of just the two of us.  Therefore, we had more times to be called upon.  Plus, our seats were at a little table in the middle of the little room.  As I mentioned before, Contracts class met four days each week, and this was a steady pace, especially for a person like me who had a family and had to keep constant tabs on a business.  But, some of my comrades and I noted that Lil Rooster (aka Preston Dawkins) was right on target with his answers and was making the rest of us look a little lackluster in our response to Professor Kosek’s Socratic inquiries.  About this time, I began to hear about “outlines” (of which I obviously did not have the time nor inclination to do).  But, being the enterprising 1L that I was, I secured a bundle of old outlines from The Kidd (aka Trummie Lee Patrick), a 3L who was serving as President of the Student Bar Association.  My comrades and I made a trek to Kinko’s on Tom Hill Boulevard and made several copies of my catch, and then we returned to the law school that evening carrying several large boxes of outlines.   We headed to the Furman Smith Library, and they asked:  “Why are going through the library?”  I replied:  “We’re going to troll through the library.”  I wanted to catch bigger fish.  When trolling through the library, Lil Rooster happened to be in there and standing by one of the copiers.  He came up and ask, “Trotter, what you got there?”  I said, “Oh, just some outlines.”  “Can I see?” he further inquired.  My response:  “Lil Rooster, you’ve got something in Contracts that we ain’t got.  Now give it up right now, and you can have whatever I’ve got.”  The first big exchange was made.  I was now in the clandestine outline business.  We got a copy of the Big, Blue Marlin (“the Ed Love Outline,” as we piously referred to it).  Yes, Preston Dawkins and Ed Love were from the same hometown in South Carolina, and Ed had taken care of his Homie.  Now the Boys of Malum were set for Contracts.  Ed Love’s resplendent outline for Professor Kosek’s class had the “Wikipedia” answer for each “Kosek inquiry.”  We had secured the Holy Grail for Contracts.  This, by the way, is how Haliburton was able to answer with such inordinate confidence:  “Because beauty is in the eye of the beholder!”  Our professor responded:   “Right, Mr. Haliburton!  You are exactly right!”  Mr. Haliburton, in his excitement, sheepishly retorted that he had “Shephardized” the case.  But, it was a case from the Exchequer in England!  We just rolled our eyes.  I think that Professor Kosek intoned:  “Mr. Haliburton, you’re going to be a great lawyer…ever confident but always wrong!”  This is just one of the many poignant episodes which happened in that 1L Contracts class.  Had I not had the initial “misfortune” of drawing Professor Kosek for Contracts, I think that I would now feel cheated.  It is the war stories which make grist for the law school mill.  And, we were so happy that we had caught the Big, Blue Marlin!  It made the last half of the semester more bearable.  I went on to become the Outline Pimp of the Law School and Editor-in-Chief of The Malum Law Review.

        In my last semester of law school, I signed up for Professor Kosek’s Remedies class.  I had to get one more experience of Professor Kosek before exiting my sabbatical years and returning to the real world!  I still use concepts like “She relied upon your promise to her detriment” or “You have a duty to mitigate” to this day, even though I am not a lawyer.

       Professor Reynold Kosek made a lasting impression on me, and I feel fortunate to have benefitted from his tutelage.  We had our own Horatio Alger tutoring us.  Live on, Cardozo, live on!

The MACE Team returning from a meeting at Hart County, Georgia this past week (left to right:  Norreese Haynes, Benjamin Barnes, Dr. John Trotter, David Cochran).

I just saw U. S. Secretary of State Arne Duncan being interviewed on CNN about why our public schools are behind (if they actually are, once the failing urban schools are removed from any equation), and this man doesn’t have a clue.  He still thinks it’s about longer days and doing away with summer vacations.  Ha!  Our problems (as demonstrated by many indicators) are in the failing urban schools.  In these schools, the discipline is almost unheard of.  The teachers are blamed for the abject failure of the parents and their children.  The children bring very little if any motivation to learn to school.  The parents want to blame everyone but themselves for their failure and their children’s failure.  The school administrators at these schools goose step to this tune, blaming the teachers.  The teacher can only teach the children, not learn them…just like an attorney can only defend a client, not acquit the client…or a physician can only treat a patient, not heal the patient.

          Ignorance is something else, and it appears that our U. S. Secretary of Education is embarrassingly ignorant about how public schools operate and about the importance of motivation to learn.  Motivation to learn is a social process or cultural phenomenon.  Many of our public schools and most of our private schools are doing quite well in this country because the students are highly motivated to learn and because the administrators at these schools would not think of tolerating defiant and disruptive students and allowing them to remain in the classes or in the schools and would not entertain the notion that irate and irresponsible parents would be permitted to berate and humiliate the teachers with impunity as they impassively watch these crazed parents pummel the hardworking and dedicated teachers.

           What’s wrong with a certain sector of our public schools, Arne Duncan?  I will tell you, and allow me to be quite blunt and specific:  (1) Defiant and disruptive students who bring little or no motivation to learn to school; (2) Irate and irresponsible parents who neither model exemplary behavior nor hold their children accountable for proper conduct and hard work at school; (3) Angry and abusive administrators who are weasels and booger-eaters when it comes to standing up to the defiant and disruptive students and their irate and irresponsible parents but who instead blame the teachers for the students’ refusal to learn; and (4) Systematic cheating on standardized tests, teaching the tests, and narrowing the curriculum by making the tests themselves the curriculum (or, curricula).  In this crazed desire to “close the achievement gap,” the schools have become testing factories, and the educrats have tried to turn the teachers into automatons.   The scripted curriculum and cookie-cutter teaching methods have made once exciting times excruciatingly boring.  This, Mr. Duncan, is why the dropout rate is so high (in addition to the inexplicable removal of vocational education in our schools). 

          The problem with our failing schools really doesn’t have a thing to do with longer school days or eliminating summer vacations.  The curriculum has become super boring.  The teachers are forced to teach while wearing pedagogical straight-jackets (especially at these failing schools), the students are not motivated, classroom discipline has almost become an oxymoron, and the parents and administrators have an inordinate penchant for blaming the teachers in order to salve their own consciences and to protect their own hides.

www.theteachersadvocate.com

Heroes Are Really Teachers!

     [Note:  The Hart County teachers have encouraged MACE Staffers to attend a meeting of the Hart County (GA) Board of Education.  MACE will oblige.  Making the trek up Interstate 85 tomorrow afternoon.  Dr. Trotter provided the attached notes that are now being published here on GTSO to indicate the crux of his remarks.  Once Dr. Trotter gets wound up, he never speaks from notes, but he likes to leave the audience with the indelible written word.]

     Most people do not go into the teaching profession to get rich.  They go into the teaching profession because they want to make a difference in the lives of the children whom they interact with each day.  They love seeing the spark go off when a student finally learns a concept, a skill, or develops an understanding of the world.  The teachers’ rewards are often intrinsic, but these intrinsic rewards cannot be exchange at the grocery store, the gas pump, or for their own children’s college tuition.  They need to be rewarded both intrinsically and extrinsically.  The way that we can show a teacher respect and appreciation is not only in being free and plentiful with compliments, recognitions, and praise, but in making sure that the school system’s resources are spread around equitably and fairly.  With these thoughts in mind, let’s look at the word R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

Recognize and respect those who actively teach the children each day…

Empower the teachers to do their jobs rather than undermine them…

Support the teachers in disciplinary matters…

Pay the teachers as professionals, not as afterthoughts…

Effuse the school system with praise…

Cease the carping and snoopervision…

Think before you criticize the teacher…

     Classroom educators are in the trenches every day.  They are doing battle with ignorance, apathy, defiance, disruptive behaviors, disturbances (and not just from the children but from adults in the office), and bureaucratic red-tape each day.  They know what the real issues are.  They know that the motivation to learn is a social/familial/cultural phenomenon but that educrats always want to deal with the lack of learning as a technical breakdown or a lack of training for teachers rather than a student just refusing to learn.  The teachers don’t need the endless and mercurial staff development trainings ad infinitum; what the teachers need is support from the administration.

     Hart County Teachers know what teachers all over Georgia and this country know and what the Metro Association of Classroom Educators (MACE) has been harping on from its inception in 1995, and it is this simple but undisputed statement:  You cannot have good learning conditions until you first have good teaching conditions.  Mr. Bell, it is just that simple.  Anything else is chasing windmills or urinating in a hurricane.  It is just pipe dreaming and trying to convince the Hart County Community and School Board that you are making a valiant effort to improve education in Hart County.  Mr. Bell, you and the Hart County Board of Education need to get behind the teachers, show them respect, and pay them accordingly. 

     Here is the kind of genuine school reform which I think nearly all Hart County teachers can agree on…

Four Horsemen of Real School “Reform”

By John R. Alston Trotter, EdD, JD and Norreese L. Haynes, BSBM

   Reform # 1:  Restore classroom discipline.  Make sure that teachers are supported when it comes to classroom discipline.   Order is the first law of the Universe.

   Reform # 2:  Realize that you cannot have good learning conditions until you first have good teaching conditions.  Top-down, heavy-handed snoopervision is counter-productive to establishing good teaching conditions.

   Reform # 3:  Put the onus for learning on the students and their parents.  This is the modus operandus of the private schools, and it works.  Pampering the spoiled students and indulging their irresponsible parents do not work.

   Reform # 4:  Realize that the motivation to learn is a social/cultural phenomenon.  Teachers teach the students, not learn the students.  If a student refuses to learn, then U. S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan himself cannot make this student learn and therefore should not be held accountable for the student’s refusal to learn.  (c) MACE, September 9, 2010.

            Dr. John Trotter (c) conferring with Jeff Cox (l) and Norreese Haynes (r) at the MACE Office.

John R. Alston Trotter, EdD, JD

           I want to commend Harvard’s Richard Elmore in his conclusion that school reforms are often more damaging than helpful.  I gather that this is the nickel version of his erudite studies.  In my many years of observation (and I have been around public school from the day I was born, nearly 58 years ago), this is the  conclusion that I drew decades ago, and nothing has come close to dissuade me from this conclusion.  Public schooling cannot afford any more Cromwellian reforms.  The dedicated and good-hearted teachers cannot afford to be put on the educational wrack any more.  We prefer to have King Charles I than Arne Duncan Cromwell, et al.

          Whenever I hear a holier-than-thou superintendent, school board member, associate superintendent, or principal intone, “Everything that we do is for the kids,” I want to throw up.  Well, hell, why wouldn’t it be “for the kids”?   Me thinks that thou protesteth too much!

          You have heard me say (like a drum beating through the night) that the so-called reforms need to be chunked.  In fact, in our first issue of The Teacher’s Advocate! Magazine in 1995 (paper version which can be found in the Archive section of MACE‘s website), our maiden article was entitled, “For Kids’ Sake, Let Teachers Teach!”  This “kids’ sake” phrase was a play or words.  In other words, if you really want to help the kids, then leave the teachers alone; just let them teach.  The so-called educational reforms have had terrible unintended consequences.  Terrible.  Good teachers have left the profession because they refuse to put up with the bull sh-t.  Good teachers have been run off because they refused to go along to get along.  Good teachers tell their children:  “You NEVER should go into teaching.  It used to be a great profession, but not anymore.  Morons are running education today.”

          Warriors are trained to fight.  But, today’s educational system has way too many assistant chiefs, associate chiefs, deputy chiefs, et al., who try to tell the warriors how to fight, when to fight, and specify the weapons with which to fight.  Hell, it has taken all of the fun out of fighting [teaching].  If I am going to be told how to fight ignorance each day — with insane and inane scripted fighting plans and activities — then all of the joy of fighting evaporates.  If I know how to fight and have killed ignorance for years, then why do I need some moronic assistant chief (who was a terrible warrior in his or her time but who kissed enough chieftan asses to get promoted) telling me when, where, and how to fight?

          In Georgia, Quality Basic Education (QBE) and No Child Left Behind (NCLB) did more damage to public education than you can ever imagine.  Our schools are much worse off now than they ever were before all of these so-called “reforms” were implemented and before the many “chiefs” were installed. 

          I also have said many times (again, go to the maiden issue of The Teacher’s Advocate! in 1995) that we needed to return to elected superintendents.  The appointed superintendents are educational sl$ts.  They jump in and out of different school board beds throughout the country, depending on how much money is offered to them.  They are rehashed and recycled (often by the Broad Foundation and “discovered” by “head-hunters” like Glenn Brock at the Broad Foundation).  Quite frankly, they are jokes, and the teachers know that they are jokes.

          If I am blessed to grow old, it looks like the entire educational thinking will come full circle back into the thinking of “crazy” John Trotter.  Ha!

          Due Process protects good teachers from angry, abusive, insecure, incompetent, and vindictive administrators.  There is a movement under foot to do away with due process for teachers.  You will see more systematic cheating if this occurs.  I suspect that the series about “Teacher Quality” by The Atlanta Journal Constitution is part of a cabal to set up the scene for eliminating due process rights for teachers in the Georgia General Assembly next year, the same rights that teachers have enjoyed since the early 1970s. 

          If a school system is thinking about terminating a teacher (and ruining his or her life forever), then there needs to be a rather stiff premium for doing this.  There should be a hurdle in place.  The truth of the matter is this:  Most teachers resign before a hearing takes place.  The move to do away with due process rights is just another Republican move to attempt to make public education like private enterprise.  It is NOT private enterprise; it is PUBLIC education, and in PUBLIC education, the classroom educators have to attempt to educate each child sent to his or her classroom.  Often times, this gargantuan undertaking has to occur within the direst of circumstances.  Some children are intent on disrupting the class and causing all kinds disturbances for those children who are motivated to learn.  Also, a significant number of the parents in PUBLIC education are the causes for the dysfunctionality of the children; they themselves are dysfunctional, irate, and irresponsible.  On top of this, so many of the administrators these days prefer to inflict torment on the teachers instead of dealing with the structural deficiencies within the school setting and the lack of motivation of the children to learn.

          To add insult to injury, a good number (I am not exaggerating) of the egotistical and abusive administrators seem to feel that their positions as administrators entitle them to have sex with whomever they want on their faculties.  Shocking?  Well, get over it.  It happens.  And, if a teacher rebuffs an administrator (and it is not always a male administrator), then her (or his) life will be a living hell from then on.  Bad evaluations will ensue immediately and the mental torment and emotional toil will even be reflected in physical ailments (and sometimes premature deaths) for the innocent teachers.

          And you think that I am concerned that this wicked attempt to fire an innocent teacher will cost the school system a few bucks?  Get real.  The school system already pays for the Hearing Officer and Tribunal Members (the same members hear cases constantly).  To whom do you think that these people are loyal?  Good grief.  The deck is already stacked against the teachers.  But, when the actions of the administrator are so obviously flagrant and egregious, then this gives the superintendent pause about allowing such dastardly actions to see the light of day.  This is what protects good teachers against evil and wicked administrators.  (c) GTSO, October 9, 2011.

Educrats Continue To Ignore At Students’ Peril Trotter’s Two Immutable Laws of Relational Learning!

By John R. Alston Trotter, EdD, JD

          This past Sunday, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution bemoaned yet again the failure to improve the “teacher quality” here in Georgia.  I just saw the headlines of this newspaper in the store on Saturday night (early Sunday edition).  It made me not want to buy the paper.  People just keep learning dumber.  It’s not about the “quality” of the teachers; it’s about the quality of the parents and the students whom they send to our public schools, especially the urban schools.  (Teachers today are the most prepared and trained than in any other time in the history of public education in the United States.  If perchance any “quality” has gone down, it is not because of a lack of training; it is because very smart and adept people will not put up with the inane and insulting bureaucratic red-tape, “training,” paperwork, lack of support for teacher discipline, and the total lack of respect shown to the classroom educators these days.) Most of the achievement problems are coming from the schools in urban areas, and I think that I am almost the only person who apparently has the guts to say this.  I just try to write so as to not be misunderstood. 

         Dr. Trotter with Dr. John Barge, Georgia State Superindendent of Schools.

           I will again repeat the mantras at MACE that so far no one has even tried to dispute, though most of the educrats, policymakers, and journalists simply ignore.  But ignoring these laws is like ignoring the Law of Gravity or the Second Law of Thermodynamics or the Law of Biogenesis.  The First Law of Relational Learning is this:  The motivation to learn is a social process and/or cultural phenomenon, and if a student is not motivated to learn, then no pedagogical efforts by the teacher will make the student learn.  Trotter’s Second Law is this:  You cannot have good learning conditions until you first have good teaching conditions.  These two laws of learning are immutable.  They have to be recognized and dealt with.  Otherwise, everything else tried in public education will fail.  Hasn’t the general public, or, most specifically, the policymakers, learned anything?  Are they that stupid and naïve?  Nothing has worked in these urban areas.  NOTHING.  Why?  Because these two immutable laws which I have spelled out have been ignored.  The grinding cycle of non-learning takes place…because discipline is out-of-control, and the defiant and disruptive so-called students are allowed to reign supreme in these centers of chaos, thereby materially and substantially preventing significant learning from taking place even among those students who do bring some motivation to learn to school.  In addition, the negative peer pressure perceptions relative to academic achievement is simply enormous.  Until these schools are examined sociologically as social institutions and the negative cultural influences are countered and eradicated (yes, eradicated!) within the walls of the institution, then these pressures will dominate and abort any embryonic motivation which may emerge among the student class.

          These sheltered (and may I say “white bread”?) bureaucrats at the State Departments of Edupoop and the professors of edupoop in the Ivory Towers of Academe don’t have a clue about these children in the urban areas.  Then comes along a Ron Clark who figures out a few things about motivation and culture and does a heck of a job at turning around a situation (before he finally leaves for the more sane pastures of private schooling), and the clueless educrats think that they can simply bring in Ron Clark to speak and then, by osmosis, the teachers can learn what he captured through arduous and difficult trials and errors.  Just trying to mimic a few of Ron Clark’s techniques will not work; in fact, these techniques will probably get these teachers in a heap of trouble with their mindless and clueless but angry, petty, incompetent, and abusive administrators.  I would like to see what happens to a teacher who actually jumps around the room and hoots and hollers like Ron Clark may do periodically each day.  These teachers would be summarily written up (with a plethora of Needs Improvements) on their evaluations! 

          The classroom educators these days have been taught both explicitly and implicitly to behave in a safe and unnoticed and non-threatening manner.  You are not supposed to rock the boat and stand out in any way.  And, Heaven’s to Betsy No!, you are not supposed to have the parents rallying behind you!  This will really get teachers in trouble…when the students and parents like them too much!  This is so real!  I tell the befuddled teachers who come to see us what their problem is:  You are too popular!  This makes the small-minded and insecure administrators nervous.  I have observed this phenomenon so often.  It happened a couple times with me, both as a teacher and an administrator.  © JRAT, September 19, 2011.

          Don’t expect the people in DeKalb‘s so-called Office of Internal Resolutions (OIR) to even-handedly try to “resolve” matters.  OIR is a tool of management to keep the teachers and other employees in line.  OIR is one of the big problems in DeKalb County School System.  That department needs to be razed, and I don’t think that teachers will believe that the Cheryl Atkinson Administration is serious about changing anything as long as the same folks are in control at OIR.  It is a complete joke.  It is headed up by State Senator Ronald B. Ramsey.  I have always wondered how he can serve two masters.  He is an elected official, but he is expected to put in a full day’s work, isn’t he?  How does this happen?  In his absence, he has folks running the OIR Office who don’t seem to know their butts from deep centerfield.

         Well…maybe not the whole school board…but those members who show little or no respect for their dissenting colleagues.

           I have told you guys on many occasions how Ronald Ramsey shut down a grievance BEFORE it even got started.  No official explanation was given…except that he ridiculously claimed that the complainant had not offered “probative evidence.”  Heck, Ronnie ole chap, the hearing had not even been started.  The teacher had not even been heard.  But, the Georgia Code states that “the complainant shall be entitled to an opportunity to be heard, to present relevant evidence, and to examine witnesses at each level” (O.C.G.A. 20-2-989.8[4]).           

          Tom Bowen, Eugene (Gene) Walker, and Jay Cunningham…Committed To Mediocrity?  Hmm.

          No, what Ramsey apparently was afraid of was the fact that the teacher from Clarkston High whom I was representing was intent on testifying about systematic cheating and was requesting that OIR bring in the many witnesses whose names he provided.  What other explanation can I draw?  Yes, this happened.  Mr. Norreese Haynes and I were sitting at the table.  This unconscionable action back-fired, however.  A few weeks later, the cheating scandal in the DeKalb County School System erupted in the media.  Very embarrassing.  Atherton Elementary and King High were all over the news.  Quite embarrassing.  Perhaps this was why the school system was digging in and didn’t allow the teacher to have his grievance hearing as he is “entitled” to (O.C.G.A. 20-2-989.8[4]).  I made my protest about this illegal activity very clear right there in the meeting room.  And you know what?  I presume that ole Josie Alexander, one of the school board attorneys,  in her laughable letter to me, thought that she could shut us up and keep us off the streets.  Ha!  Nah.  It didn’t work.  Not at all.  I am still talking about it, right?  And we continued to picket about the bullying and the systematic cheating, right?  In fact, we engaged in three high-profile (covered on television) pickets three days in a row at the old DeKalb Central Office.  We had “Systematic Cheating” and “Bullying” all over those signs.

          Respite after a long picket but effective picket…Tom (Thug) Berry (sitting) almost passed out.  The orange juice and Snicker Bar seemed to bring him back to full force!

          Well, we saw who came out on top…in this illegal grievance shut-down, didn’t we?  Just a short time later, the County and State raided Crawford Lewis‘s office.  Ironically, we had had another picket lined up for Crawford on that very same day…but we had an emergency that came up in the Atlanta Public Schools.  We had already purchased a clown suit at Party City, and Mr. Barnes was looking forward to donning this suit…to symbolically represent Crawford Lewis…that Clown of a Superintendent.  Well…now that would have been just too funny!  But, we still have the suit.  If Cheryl Atkinson acts is some clownish ways as superintendent, perhaps we will dust off this clown suit and illustrate our point.  Or, what about “Tommy (Bowen) the Clown“?  Oh, how I do love engaging in legal protests.  This is what our Founding Fathers envisioned.  A country based on legal dissent.  Not like the old U. S. S. R. under Stalin.  Not like South Korea.  Not like Kaddafi’s Libya.  Just good ole dissent.  But, I am telling my fellow bloggers who are disgusted with the ways of Eugene (Gene) Walker, Tom Bowen, Jay Cunningham, et al., that sometimes you have to move away from the keyboards and start  organizing. 

          OIR or OIA or whatever it is called…Ronald Ramsey needs to properly do his job.  He needs to process the grievances!

          I learned a lot from the Rev. Hosea Williams.  He actually used to participate with MACE in dissent.  “Six feet apart!”  Ha!  I remember a good juicy picket in front of 210 Pryor Street (the old Atlanta Central Office location).  We had all four local news stations (Channels 2, 5, 11, and 46) there.  That was a good picket!  I remember when we met with Rev. Williams on a couple of occasions while dealing with some foolishness in Clayton County.  I remember him speaking at the Clayton County Board of Education meeting.  The school board and audience were so tense.  You could have cut the tension with a knife.   Then Rev. Williams told a joke on himself that immediately brought the entire house down with laughter!  Even the superintendent was lined up after the meeting, requesting his autograph!  I remember when Rev. Williams invited my MACE colleague, Dennis Yarbrough, and me to be with him on the Alley Pat Show.  What a hoot!  We could hardly believe how blunt Rev. Williams was when talking about the situation down in Clayton County.  He was indeed a character, and I miss him!  He hailed from East Lake, the same land owned by my Alston ancestors.  Dr. King said that Hosea Williams had more raw courage than any man he knew.  Enough said.

          Yes, we focused on DeKalb today.  Christened the new DeKalb County superintendent, Cheryl Atkinson (who reminds me of a young Beverly Hall), with a good ole MACE picket and baptized board members Tom Bowen, Eugene (Gene) Walker, and Jay Cunningham too.  Also sprinkled Ronald B. Ramsey, the head of DeKalb’s Office of Internal Resolutions. He just needs to process the grievances, according to Georgia Law.  He is, after all, a Georgia State Senator.  Had a great time on the picket line, and the people seemed to enjoy it!  This monstrosity of a headquarters out on Mountain Industrial Boulevard makes APS’s Taj Mahal on Trinity Avenue in Atlanta look like a little club house. 

         Cheryl Atkinson was the “best” to choose from?  You’ve got to be kidding!  Give us a break!  You have Dr. Sam King right next door in Rockdale County…Georgia’s Superintendent of the Year!

            Security personnel and others were apparently sent out to the picket line, taking pictures and so forth.  (Do they not have pickets in Little Lorain, Ohio.  Ha!)  Hardly anything is better for the civic soul than a good picket!  Some of the signs:  “DeKalb School Board SUX!”  “Tom, Gene, & Jay Must Go!”  “Bowen, Walker, & Cunningham…Committed To Mediocrity!”  “Send Supt. Atkinson Back To OHIO!”  “Low Achievement in Little Lorain.  Why Bring Atkinson to DeKalb?” and “The Problem…OIR’s Ronald Ramsey!”

           Enough said.  Tom Bowen, Eugene Walker, and Jay Cunningham…Committed To Mediocrity!  They Must Go!

          Hey Brother Erroll Davis, it looks to me that you are just keeping house at APS.  The discipline in the schools is still near non-existent.  In fact, we dealt with a teacher tonight from Douglass High, the scene of many MACE pickets, grievances, and PSC Complaints in the past.  Two recent principals resigned rather abruptly at this school.  The teacher said that the retired principal who served as an interim principal was pretty good in discipline.  But, the principal from DeKalb’s Columbia High is the current principal at Douglass.  His name is Glanton.  I remember us picketing him twice at Columbia.  I suppose that we need to go to Hamilton Holmes Drive and get out the florescent-colored signs.  Last time we picketed there was in the pouring down rain.  It’s a good sidewalk.  A nice Category One Free Speech Forum.  Justice Thurgood Marshall:  “What better place to picket than in front of a school?”  I agree.  I do love the U. S. Constitution! (c) MACE, September 7, 2011.