Gary-

You hit the nail on the head.  My wife is the "Parent Involvement
Coordinator" in our school district, a position they created about 10 years
ago when they realized that parent involvement was the key to a child's
school success.  It has evolved into a full time job, as parent involvement
has declined.  If any of you ever want to contact her about parent
involvement, and I mean this seriously, contact me and I'll forward your
message to her.  It is the key to education.

John Lee



At 07:35 AM 11/22/02 -0800, Gary Jackson wrote:
>Time for my $.02.
>
>My children have been mostly in public schools, with a little home schooling
>thrown in at times.  My wife is an elementary school teacher.  My brother
>and his wife home schools their children.  Throwing that all together here
>is my take on it all:
>
>1.  Parents need to be involved in their children's education.  If the child
>is out of the home for their education (public or private) they need to know
>what is going on in the classroom.  They need to be ready to speak up for
>their children and not be afraid of being a pest to the administration.  We
>learned this one the hard way.
>
>2.  If a child is home schooled, there are good things, i.e. low
>teacher/pupil ratios, etc., and bad things like lack of interaction with a
>variety of children.  A good home school teacher can mitigate this somewhat.
>
>3.  From the husband of teacher aspect, it seems that one of the biggest
>problems with education is the parents.  They drop the kids off and pick
>them up (if they are lucky).  They need to read to them and listen to them.
>They need to take them to the museums, the zoo, and to church with them.
>
>4.  Technical people tend to make the worst communicators.  Look at
>significant portion of  listserv postings or technical papers and you will
>see pour spelling and grammer.
>
>There, I feel better ;>)
>
>Gary
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: rosenblatt, joseph [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>Sent: Friday, November 22, 2002 6:37 AM
>To: 3000-L (E-mail)
>Subject: Re: OT: Don't Know Much About Geography
>
>
>
>Mark Wonsil presented a very comprehensive article about the failings of
>educators. As a teacher, the child of teachers and the parent of teachers I
>can tell you horror stories about teachers that will make you take your
>babies, rap them up in cotton wadding and hide them away until they are
>twenty-six. It still misses the point.
>
>If being trained to do a job is no guarantee that you will do it right where
>does that leave the untrained? There was an ad campaign for nursing schools
>that used the hook, "If caring were all it took ..." That is the point.
>
>Do we train teachers properly? No, with a capital N! Does that mean we
>shouldn't train them? NO, with a capital N and O. Will we change our
>methods? Not until we change our emphasis from producing cookie-cutter
>cubicle-dwelling know nothing care less up my bottom line dweebs to
>producing self actuated fully functioning human beings.
>
>I also do not believe that the score of a SAT will indicate the person's
>ability to teach. Though Einstein was supposed to have said that a scientist
>that can explain his science to a child is a charlatan, I don't know that
>Einstein would be my first choice for a high school physics teacher. I once
>went to attend classes from a recognized genius and master of the field of
>study. I had read everything he wrote and was looking forward to gleaning
>the bounty from his intellectual table. Unfortunately, he was one of the
>poorest lecturers that I ever heard.
>
>Teaching is a skill. Like any skill, it is a series of techniques, which can
>be learned. Practice makes, if not perfect at least proficient. Knowing the
>subject matter is a given, there is no technique to teach what you don't
>know.
>
>Teaching is an art. Like any art, it takes inspiration. It goes beyond just
>knowing the techniques. Van Gogh loaded up his canvas with paint, Louis
>Armstrong fingered his valves incorrectly and Dylan Thomas used a thesaurus
>to write poetry. None of these techniques are taught in the textbooks but
>can we deny that they were inspired artists.
>
>Teachers need to be artists. Teaching, according to Piaget, is facilitating
>the innate desire to learn. Teaching is not about imparting facts it is
>about teaching how to find the facts and what to do with them once we find
>them. The teacher/artist helps the student see the world anew each time they
>look. The teacher/artist is first and foremost his own primary student.
>
>No metric yet known to man can quantify inspiration.
>
>Work for Peace
>
>The opinions expressed herein are my own and not necessarily those of my
>employer.
>Yosef Rosenblatt
>
>
>..
>
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>

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