<p>My S’s 1/2 grade teacher couldn’t spell. She was not tenured when S was in her class, and I had real reservations about her suitability as a teacher. It turned out that she could really nurture students’s interests in math. Eventually, several parents supported her in her bid for tenure. Now, about twelve years later, she is still teaching, and I hear, doing a great job.</p>
<p>"scuse me, I was looking for some compassion. None here. </p>
<p>…(Ooops, cross posted with Marite. Thanks for that compassion, M.)…</p>
<p>continuing my post:</p>
<p>Obviously this was not the man’s finest hour. But how well can you express yourself moments after a car accident? </p>
<p>As for the NY Daily News jumping up and down over grammar, well, “talk about the coal calling the kettle black!”</p>
<p>Nuts to the principal for not supporting her staff, although probably anything mitigating she might have said wouldn’t have been reported by the News. They just get a kick out of impaling people.</p>
<p>If you’ve ever made a mistake or bad judgment call as a parent, and it embarassed you, would you want people calling you an unfit parent? It’s just blown out of proportion here.</p>
<p>Honestly, if he wrote normally as that terrible letter was, he wouldn’t BE a Dean. It’s just a breakdown of literary skill-sets, under stress and time-pressure. Typical of a learning disability. Who can’t relate to that? I’d bet if you read his week’s correspondence, it looks NOTHING like that one letter he unfortunately sent home that day.</p>
<p>If he normally spoke smoothly, but following putting down a schoolwide brawl regressed to stuttering, would we still think him an unfit educator?</p>
<p>A teacher good at teaching math is fine. A tacher good at teaching math that has acceptable written skills is better and I wouldn’t think would be that difficult to find. Why not hire the teacher who can perform all of their job at an acceptable level rather than just part of it? I think our kids should be exposed to decent written skills by all of their teachers - not just the English teachers.</p>
<p>UCSD<em>UCLA</em>Dad wrote: “A tacher good at teaching math that has acceptable written skills is better and I wouldn’t think would be that difficult to find.”</p>
<p>Any math teacher at all is hard to find in some areas. We’ve had local situations where one certified math teacher interviewed for two openings and the principals fought for the teacher. Note that they can’t offer more to the math teacher than for the PE or elementary teacher… but that those with great math skills–regardless of their ability to write clearly–often have far more options than those whose skills are limited to elementary school teaching.</p>
<p>(I also noticed that none of us is immune to the occasional typo.)</p>
<p>In most public school districts, there are critical shortages in these subject areas: Math, Science, Special Education. Those teachers are in high demand, relative to supply. I believe that’s because of the opportunity for those with Math and Science training to take much higher paying jobs in the private sector, rather than slug through a year of graduate classes post-B.A. for their Masters of Teaching degree with State Certification.</p>
<p>Special Education requires an additional year of coursework, and IMO more patience, than teaching in regular education classes.</p>
<p>Other than that, you don’t have to have “great math skills” to get hired. You just need a Math major and the year at education college for secondary certification. Teachers in Math or Science are required to take the exact same number of hours of training and practice teaching as those who teach English or History. </p>
<p>You must have a pulse.
That’s all. </p>
<p>And a little reaction here: Math teachers aren’t smarter than the “PE or elementary teacher” (did you choose those as the dumbest or what?). They just teach the hot subject: Math.</p>
<p>You have to be very smart to teach a room full of 8-year-olds. Trust me. It’s not babysitting. Don’t judge it by the difficulty of the content; it’s the pedagogy and psychological motivation, the room management, the multi-tasking. Even if it’s just the multiplication tables. </p>
<p>Still, I wish we could improve the supply of Math teachers up for hire, and then entice them to stay by treating them with dignity. That’d be good.</p>
<p>Part of the issue is that these people with very poor written skills (I’m not talking about typos) managed to graduate HS, get accepted to a college, graduate college, and obtain a teaching degree while having such poor written skills regardless of which subject(s) they end up teaching. </p>
<p>How did they manage to get that far with such poor basic written skills?</p>
<p>Aren’t we forgetting the real issue at hand? These kids started a food fight!</p>
<p>Paying–I am not trying to be uncompassionate. I’m sorry you read it that way.</p>
<p>What would you tell my students, the ones flunked for not knowing basic grammar, who are told that it’s necessary to learn in order to be a successful college graduate and professional? (and dmd, I think we all can agree we’re not talking about typos.)</p>
<p>Why is it okay for a college professor to demonstrate misuse of verb tenses, articles, spelling, etc. in handouts he gives his students?</p>
<p>Or for a principal to likewise demonstrate a lack of knowledge in these? What lesson are students getting from that? You argue for compassion, I argue it leads to cynicism–nah, we don’t really need to learn this garbage–even the principal, teacher, professor doesn’t think it’s important.</p>
<p>Lots of compassion for the principal, none for the educational values students are having demonstrated to them. that’s what I don’t understand.</p>
<p>If I were that Dean, I’d have a school assembly about learning disabilities, discuss his, put it up on a big whiteboard to show the difference between how he writes when he has a moment to correct his work, and what it looks like when he’s in a hurry.
Then I’d pick up a pair of crutches and demonstrate the difference between walking down steps slowly and deliberately, versus being rushed. And how sometimes the rush causes a terrible fall.
I think the kids would get it.
Then I’d talk to them about the food fight.
(OF course, that’s why I was in teaching, not administration.)</p>
<p>this is assuming everyone who writes poorly has a learning disability. That’s quite a stretch. What makes you think that is so often the case? I didn’t see anywhere in the articles posted that he claims a disability. </p>
<p>Actually, I think it does a disservice to people with disabilities to automatically assume that’s the case here. there are lots of other reasons for someone to write poorly.</p>
<p>My D has had a couple teachers that have had disabilities- however- she has also had teachers who sent home spelling lists that had misspelled words!</p>
<p>Wow, that letter is atrocious.
Food fights every day? Id be pulling my kid out too.
( they have a prom in middle school?)</p>
<p>garland, I was actually trying to connect the dots of this peculiar situation. It just didn’t make common sense to me that anybody in my profession could EVER get as high as a Dean… and write such a letter! It was too ridiculous.</p>
<p>So I put that together with the backstory, that the letter followed his quelling a big food-fight in the cafeteria near the end of the day, and even so he sent home a letter same-day to all the parents.</p>
<p>The letter was so bad that I assume he has a disability, but under normal circumstances COMPENSATES for it, so he can function in his profession. There are many ways to compensate, if one has the extra 2 minutes…run it on a spell-check of the computer, have a colleague glance at it, or even just have the extra 2 minutes to REREAD and SELF-Correct spelling. </p>
<p>The other reality is the actual stress causes REGRESSION in anyone who has a learning disability. (That was my comparison to someone who can mask a stutter on a normal workday, but if somebody just assaults his building, he’d be SO upset the stutter could return.)</p>
<p>So that was the only way I could imagine a man rising to that level, yet producing that letter. As I wrote earlier, I think if you’d look at his regular correspondence, he MUST have it under better control than that letter indicated, or he’d have been fired many years ago. That particular letter was beyond the pale. Nobody disputes that.</p>
<p>It was so bad that there had to be another explanation. </p>
<p>I do not mind if someone has a disability and compensates for it enough to work and look acceptable within his profession, day to day, year-in and year-out. </p>
<p>But the kind of stress induced in any administrator (disability or not) when a whole cafeteria is having a food-fight…it would unhinge any educator, really.
It’s serious and disgusting.</p>
<p>Honestly I think whatever he uses normally to make his writing look good wasn’t available to him in that moment. Another 2 minutes, and he might have run it through the spell-check of the computer.</p>
<p>Having atrocious spelling (it was atrocious) is not the same as poor grammar. Missing lots of commas also indicates a letter written in haste.</p>
<p>I think what people aren’t getting on this thread is what it means to be standing in
front of a school full of middle schoolers, throwing food, with the busses gunning to go, and required to issue a letter home, same-day. You can’t even hold the busses.</p>
<p>So the only explanation that makes any sense to me for that letter is he has a learning disability. </p>
<p>(A different option is that an underling typed out the letter as he dictated it orally…while holding kids at bay with a hairy eyeball. Here’s the way schools look:
he’s in front of the cafeteria, glaring at everyone and settling down a few hundred
kids, while holding his cellphone to his mouth dictating the words to his secretary, who runs in with it to sign, the bells are about to ring, he signs it just in time to xerox 500 copies and stuff them into the bookbags of 500 kids as the file onto the busses…That’s the pace by which schools run. Nobody sits at a desk and writes things. Stuff is always, always happening. Watch “ER” on TV, that’s the pace.) </p>
<p>And he’s not saying if he has a disability because, as evidenced here, nobody thinks that’s okay for an educator. I happen to think it’s okay, as long as he has normal compensation systems for it. </p>
<p>That doesn’t mean he represents poor consideration of grammar or spelling rules (garland’s concern, re: cynicism) to undermine the value of it for students. The fact that I’m a clumsy athlete doesn’t mean I denigrate the value of physical education to my students. If I were overweight, I’d tell them all the more to try to eat healthy, since it’s obviously my achilles heel. </p>
<p>I thought people had more undersanding of learning disabilities, and I’m kind of surprised I have to keep huffing and puffing about this and what it means.</p>
<p>I’m just telling you,and you can take this much to the bank, that NOBODY could stay a week at his job if he wrote normally like that. It was the food fight that undid him, obviously.</p>
<p>oh no- I don’t have a problem with a teacher with a disability
thats what 504s are for.
Both my kids have had teachers and profs with disabilties-in fact some of their best ones
The teacher who sent home the spelling list with errors didn’t have a disability, she just didn’t proofread.</p>
<p>I guess I am just cynical because I have seen writing by teachers but especially administrators- which is not to this extent perhaps- but still really bad.</p>
<p>I do however feel- that while I don’t have a problem with an educator with disabilties, as long as they are able to make accommodations for them, but when you are contacting your parents and students in an emergency situation,you should have it together enough to perform professionally.</p>
<p>From the letter:
It seems that the Principal would have known if the Dean had a learning disability.</p>
<p>The letter had more than typos, it had spelling errors, grammar errors, and sentence structure errors. He may have typed it quickly but knowing that it was going to be sent to homes and read by parents he should have spent an extra minute to proofread it.</p>
<p>“And he’s not saying if he has a disability because, as evidenced here, nobody thinks that’s okay for an educator.”</p>
<p>What’s not OK for an educator is to be unable to perform the required tasks of the job. If he usually is, but he wasn’t on this occasion because of his disability, then he needs to say so, because otherwise we’re all quite justified in concluding that he’s an ignoramus.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>You would be wrong, ucsd dad. Good math teachers are hard to find. First of all, teachers who know math are hard to find. Teachers who can teach math are even harder to find. And teachers who can instill a love of math rarer still. This is what convinced me to support my S’s teacher’s bid for tenure. Later on, my S had teachers who were great at teaching English but did not know how to cope with a math-advanced kid. It’s not a great feeling to find out that your 5th grader knows more math than his teacher, believe me. But that same teacher was/is terrific in ELA and social studies and parents did not seem to mind her limited abilities as a math teacher.</p>
<p>I am amazed at the level of speculation and the conclusions that have been drawn. There seems to be a consensus that this is a math or science teacher who probably has a learning disability and became stressed out due to a food fight by some eight grade kids.</p>
<p>As long as we seem to have no bounds on our speculation, I will take my turn. Actually, I think every school district has at least one person just like this individual. This is the former high school jock who drifted through the State U, got a phys ed degree, and later on completed the requirements for teacher certification and began a career teaching phys ed. He married his high school sweetheart and they had two kids. The muscle turned into 40 pounds of flab when he quit playing sports himself. He is a solid citizen with an active interest in Monday night football and mowing his lawn. After 10 years or so of teaching, he was promoted to Assistant Principal, later on that title was upgraded to Dean. Some teachers believe his promotion represented unfair sexist attitudes, but as a rule everyone is content to let him deal with issues of discipline. He also oversees the building maintenance staff. He fills in for the Principal in her absence, but even then he doesn’t need to do much because the office staff keeps the school running. He has been doing the job for about ten years. He is basically a nice guy with an easy job and, by the way, he makes a six figure income.</p>
<p>I don’t know if either edad’s or paying3’s scenario is correct, but I agree that each is plausible. However, edad’s fits most of the administration in our school system.</p>
<p>Paying-I don’t know where you teach, but I see that kind of stuff from teachers/administrators all the time. I am a little surprised that you think that he couldn’t stay in the job writing like that.</p>
<p>"Honestly, if he wrote normally as that terrible letter was, he wouldn’t BE a Dean. It’s just a breakdown of literary skill-sets, under stress and time-pressure. Typical of a learning disability. "</p>
<p>This is quite a stretch from wondering if there might be a learning disability but having no information to support that. I’ve known many people who write that badly with no learning disability. Personally, I think he was just in a flaming rage. There were also no real time restrictions – the letter could and should have gone out the next day after principal review, which is what should have happened. Perhaps he does have a learning disability, but the memo was also problematic in the factual/logical sense. That particular school is completely representative of why we call middle schools “the weakest link” in NYC. You would not believe the stuff that happens. I personally witnessed (through the bus window) a gang of kids beating the heck out of another kid in front of the school. The students terrorize the neighbors (it’s a very upscale neighborhood) and the drivers of motor vehicles in the area, and the principal never, ever comes outside. Scary situation.</p>
<p>“How did they manage to get that far with such poor basic written skills?”</p>
<p>He graduated from school here in a specific timeframe when the requirements for obtaining a high school diploma were very undemanding (as opposed to now), he was an athlete and pushed along (same thing with my husband who writes equally poorly), and he went to the College of Staten Island during the period of open enrollment.</p>