|
For Public Comments to the Commission, please click here
160
1 coming into the teaching profession almost as important
2 as going into the military to defend your country, a
3 patriotic duty, trying to also change the mix.
4 At least in Florida the large majority of
5 teachers are women, and we would like to try to get more
6 men also into the profession.
7 Last week I reached out to CBS, ABC, to a
8 Hispanic broadcasting corporation, and asked them if
9 they would work with us pro bono to help design for us
10 for the Miami/Dade area, where the majority of the
11 Hispanics in the state live, a public awareness
12 campaign, motivation recruit campaign to try to bring
13 more Hispanics into the profession, and we're also going
14 to ask the legislation your to let Miami/Dade Community
15 College, which is a two-year program have four-year
16 baccalaureate program because, you know, to address this
17 crisis.
18 But I will provide all that information to
19 you.
20 MR. HANNA: Jose.
21 MR. CANCHOLA: Just the horror stories that I
22 hear, especially back east, teachers are no longer
23 educators, they're basically, oh, I would say people who
24 take care of kids, you know, free service for taking
25 care of kids.
161
1 Some of these classrooms, Robert Clemente
2 School in Chicago, the teachers have to carry a bang and
3 look behind their back. There are real horror stories
4 that go on. They no longer have the ability to teach,
5 but the biggest problem that I hear from the teachers,
6 besides being underpaid, and it's weird. Already they
7 start them like $45,000 here in Nevada, Clark County.
8 In Pima County they start them at 26,000. So there's a
9 big disparity, and they want to get paid for what they
10 do.
11 The majority of teachers, they're young, they
12 get out of school, they're really ambitious and they
13 really want to help kids. After one or two years,
14 there's no support from the parents of these kids.
15 And if you have to discipline them, it
16 becomes a problem where the parents come in and jump on
17 these teachers, because you get paid to babysit my kids
18 from 8 to 3 over there. You're being mean to my kids.
19 You look at a kid cross-eyed, they have all these going
20 to the place or whatever. You're picking on little
21 children.
22 So that's a real problem. And I don't know
23 how we fix that in terms of, you know, we want to
24 recruit. Until we clean up the school system where they
25 get the support of the principals and administrators,
162
1 and a lot of kids do other things, more pay, and the
2 other thing about -- they don't want to be glorified
3 babysitters.
4 MR. GONZALEZ: I want to raise one more
5 thing. We took a very clear position that we needed to
6 look at the nomenclature that is used by this commission
7 in terms of bilingual bicultural students.
8 For the bilingual kids, a lot of the urban
9 areas is not. Literacy is really a main issue. They're
10 monolingual or they're not efficient in either language.
11 And we didn't want to fall into the, quote, bilingual
12 end track, versus maintenance, and we used bilingually
13 biculturally, and it conjures up all the 30-some years
14 in this country and all the issues surrounding that in
15 both cases as well as higher ed.
16 So we purposefully did not want to address
17 that. We were trying to pull up the different
18 nomenclature. How could we say that in a different way?
19 In the report maybe we'll try to circulate that. We're
20 more inclusive, yet decide clearly what the issues are
21 which Jose just brought up for example and what they
22 need in Nebraska or Charlottesville.
23 There are different issues, but it's
24 basically a teacher preparation, what do you do.
25 MR. HANNA: Miguel.
163
1 MR. HERNANDEZ: I guess the clarification we
2 made now to bring light to some of the questions that I
3 had because the -- I do agree that teacher preparation
4 is really important. We don't need a doctorate degree
5 for every classroom. We cannot afford it. So how can
6 we afford the right teacher to teach the right subject
7 at the right level that the district would be able to
8 afford?
9 One thing that I expect to hear from the
10 subcommittee was related to curriculum because, you
11 know, there are kids out there that they know speak --
12 they don't read Spanish. They have a level maybe of
13 first grade and they are 12 years old or 11 years old or
14 10 years old.
15 You can bring in the most prepared teacher,
16 but if you don't put that kid into an environment that
17 he can be directed and he can have the right attention,
18 in some cases even be one on one, you can bring the best
19 teacher and that kid is lost.
20 He's going to eventually -- if we pass him
21 and pass him and pass him, he's going to go to night
22 school and we'll put a checkmark that he doesn't know
23 anything and definitely he can't go to college.
24 So teachers need to be prepared, but at the
25 same time teachers need an infrastructure to support
164
1 that. I see teachers being nurses, social workers,
2 policemen, everything under the sky because they don't
3 have the right structure to support it.
4 Now, that kind of problem is not a problem
5 necessarily to the Hispanic. That's a common problem
6 for everyone. But related to Hispanics, I see another
7 situation, saying they're not teachers that they come
8 from Hispanics and do not speak both languages, but as I
9 understand here, they can reach them.
10 (Inaudible) does not allow in some areas to
11 teach Hispanics for that matter for the first grade. So
12 what happened is the kids that might grow up being able
13 to speak both languages, they are deprived from learning
14 Spanish and becoming later on maybe teachers that can
15 speak and teach both languages.
16 You know, I think that those are the kind of
17 things in the term of curriculum that I would have
18 expected the subcommittee of education to address
19 somehow in those areas because we're telling them, well,
20 we're not going to teach you, for example, Spanish until
21 you are in high school. Well, by that time they have
22 lost a lot of ground.
23 The other thing you were talking about is the
24 need for teachers. I think that one area that we are
25 looking at and we are as a corporation point of view
165
1 putting a lot of emphasis, our retirees, people that
2 retire with scientific degrees.
3 We're living a lot longer nowadays, and if we
4 retire at 60, 65 years old, we have a few years left
5 that a lot of those guys can be excellent teachers.
6 They are not required the amount of money paid that
7 people that are starting their families would require.
8 They can give some to the community. Being good
9 teachers because they had a tremendous background, you
10 know, in science, mathematics and all kinds of areas.
11 So I think that that would be an area that we
12 need to guide ourselves. The same way talking about
13 science and mathematics, we're talking about any other
14 area of businesses that -- I mean it is -- we need
15 teachers. Not only good teachers are the ones that are
16 growing up and going to college. They're the ones that
17 have been through there, went to work, that would be
18 welcomed back, and I think that mind-set is important to
19 create out there.
20 MS. MAZZUCA: I just want to comment on, No.
21 1, you talked about -- I call it differentiating
22 instruction, and under the curriculum issue and the very
23 real challenge of trying to work with the child the way
24 you say is 12 years old and really not reading in either
25 language.
166
1 Under teacher preparation I think one of the
2 things we need to look at is aside from the five or six
3 or seven specific qualities that make up what an
4 effective teacher could be, an effective teacher also
5 could man the resources within either the classroom, the
6 school, and be able to assess the needed for that one to
7 four or one to five, whatever it takes to properly work
8 with that child to have that child be accelerated, and
9 it's an excellent point that you made.
10 When you're looking at teacher preparation
11 programs, the teachers are this is the one size fits all
12 method. I'm speaking for myself. That's one of the
13 things we want to be very careful of avoiding, okay, and
14 really focusing that the teacher has to know assessment
15 and all those types of things that make up being
16 effective with the child.
17 MR. HERNANDEZ: Is it occasions when the
18 teachers have their hands tied in the back they might
19 assess, they don't have the resources, they don't have
20 the authority, they don't have the whereabouts to
21 actually provide that individual the kind of attention
22 that they need?
23 You know, I think that the teachers in some
24 cases they do need to have that kind of support around
25 them to -- they need teacher aides helping them. Then
167
1 there are teacher aides there.
2 What I'm saying is we need teachers that are
3 prepared. When the teachers are prepared to teach,
4 they're going to teach, and not all of them need to be
5 Ph.D.s.
6 MS. MAZZUCA: No. I agree.
7 The other thing I wanted to comment on was
8 the idea about language. And I know that our working
9 group particularly did not want to come out and make a
10 statement about education and what that means is we're
11 going to spend a year trying to define that and say that
12 this is the only type of curriculum or type of education
13 that needs to be made available.
14 You're absolutely correct about certain
15 states saying that this is not the way we're going to go
16 and yet there are just as many other states that allow a
17 local decision-making process to take place when it
18 comes to how to educate a child and which is going to be
19 the dominate language for the primary years so we can
20 again home grow folks who will be bicultural/bilingual
21 and become teachers and other professionals.
22 So again we're not going to come out and say,
23 that's my passion. That's not the only way to go and
24 the only magic but for closing the achievement gap.
25 MS. GARZA: I have a question for Leslie.
168
1 In the two reports that have been done today,
2 is there anything different that has come out, potential
3 recommendations that haven't already been covered in
4 that binder of reports that we got from the commission?
5 I mean is there, you know, something new?
6 MS. SANCHEZ: Not something new. The easiest
7 way to answer that question is to look at the matrix
8 that we tried to develop for you. It's that long legal
9 sized document that has the colors and blues. We tried
10 to go through and read them and synthesize what were the
11 most common recommendations for quality teaching, hiring
12 more teachers, lot of federal, bilingual.
13 There's so many different issues and we have
14 a short time for them. I think the working group
15 recognized that. But I don't know if that answers your
16 question.
17 What's different about the approach with this
18 executive order, it says okay, look at those
19 recommendations. Now, how do you make it into an action
20 plan, rather than just stating the obvious, and such a
21 small portion of that is federal. What leadership
22 capacity does the federal government has? Since it is
23 the president and the executive branch that is looking
24 at it, should there be an orchestrated integrated
25 campaign that kind of ties all these together?
169
1 The advantage you have with the president, it
2 elevates the level of importance as with the case with
3 Mrs. Bush pushing a teacher preparedness, and it is one
4 of the main goals along with early childhood the White
5 House is pushing. These are very common themes. When
6 the action plan that this commission can offer is
7 actually doable, at least we get implementation in this
8 administration.
9 MR. HOYOS: I'm going to ask this question to
10 Enedelia and Pat. Are you happy with the salary that
11 you receive as an educator?
12 MS. SCHOFIELD: I never started for the pay.
13 I actually thought I wanted to be an attorney and I'm a
14 member of the Oregon State Bar. So I think what you
15 said about that is you do it because you love what you
16 do and you want to make a difference in the world.
17 I'm not there for money. I don't think they
18 could pay me enough, but don't let the budget officer at
19 my school know that because there are budget cuts. So I
20 think the hardest thing is that for the amount of time
21 that we put in, the kind of accountability we have, we
22 don't make the same pay of CEO of Nike or Microsoft and
23 yet the accountability is so high and we do have action
24 plans and we have over a hundred people staff that we
25 need to manage and so forth.
170
1 So my answer is it's not about pay.
2 MS. MAZZUCA: I would have to ditto, and yet
3 at the same time having a daughter who is making $31,000
4 after four years and I'm paying her tuition for her
5 second master's degree because she can't possible afford
6 it on that, 13, $1400, I get more angry she can't be
7 self-reporting at the age of 27 because she's chosen to
8 be a teacher, and yet her sister can pull down $60,000
9 because she's in a different position, a psychologist, a
10 profession equally as noble, those of us that stay
11 committed.
12 I make enough to basically take care of
13 myself and stay in debt and pay the bills. So for me
14 that's what feeds my soul.
15 And yet, you're right. Maybe I won't feel
16 that way five years down the road or ten years down the
17 road and I will sell out for four years for a hundred
18 thousand dollars to go into a corporate role, because
19 there is no parity, absolutely no parity.
20 MS. SCHOFIELD: I think the teachers -- I was
21 just going to say that teachers I think run into this
22 that we have a lot of excellent educators that are going
23 into other fields because other fields are now realizing
24 the skills that educators have and they can see those
25 skills working in businesses, whether it's needs
171
1 assessments, whether it's public relations. So we have
2 a lot of administrators and educators that are leaving
3 the field and going to business because those are still
4 skills that are real -- that are being sought out in
5 business right now.
6 MS. MAZZUCA: I just want to make one
7 comment. Jose talked about again having children that
8 are educators. And when I talked to my teachers on
9 Monday afternoon before I left, I think about -- I have
10 145 staff members. About 50 or 60 of them made a
11 comment and said we're here, we're here because we have
12 the tools to do the job. Change the working environment
13 and take away our tools and we're not going to be silly
14 to stay there.
15 They are also not there for the money. What
16 make them leave and has made them leave is the lack of
17 family support, administrator support, school district
18 support. When you do have these 10 or 15 violent
19 disruptive kids that don't let them do what they're
20 there to do and work with kids no matter what kind of
21 bags of tricks to try and to bring kids on board.
22 You also look at validating the kind of world
23 that we're working in right now.
24 MR. ESCALANTE: We spoke yesterday about what
25 makes you a good teacher and we said we're looking for
Back | Transcripts Home | Continue
|
