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Re: More Power to the Teachers
Posted:
Jun 27, 2001 3:26 PM
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At 11:15 AM 6/27/01 -0400, Guy Brandenburg wrote in response to me:
> > You have just used your prejudice to deprecate thousands of some of
> > the most effective teachers in country. <snip>
>No, it's YOUR prejudice that is showing here, Wayne. To repeat again,
>the only teachers that I know that love Saxon are ones who are lazy and
>don't want to do any work.
Well I'll be specific; I invite you to do the same. Liz Staff was my
daughter's teacher in second grade and she had just left 20 years of
teaching second grade in public schools and had heard all the criticism of
Saxon Math that you reflect. She was very wary of what she had gotten her
self into. At the end of the year she said that she'd never had any
experience with anything close to being as successful. Enthusiastic is an
appropriate word for her reaction.
This year her sixth grade teacher was Norma Richman, all year long she's
been a teacher's teacher in my estimation, as good as I've ever seen. Last
Saturday, I got to know her better as we sat together at a classmate's bat
mitzvah and I found out that she is working on her master's degree in
education at Cal Poly, Pomona, home of the defunct AMTE website, Jack
Price, etc. She says that she is the lone Saxon voice in her classes,
extolling its effectiveness and rationality of approach in the face of the
situation described in the preceding paragraph, lot's of criticism from
people who have no idea what they are talking about, who often have never
even *seen* any of the books, let alone seeing them in action in the hands
of a good teacher.
I could go on, Deborah Ho, the fifth grade teacher at Noyes
Elementary. Sheryl Orange, the principal at Burbank Elementary, who
inherited a Saxon Math program and was prepared to kill it (because of the
prejudice described above) until she met with the teachers who had won the
district Math Field Day and wanted to do it again. The school's former
principal, Rick Boccia, who had brought it in and then went to Wilson
Middle School. It took him a couple years to get Saxon up and running
there but it now is and Wilson won the Math Field Day at that level this year.
Even spot you that it's easier. So what? What's the matter with easier if
it associated with a higher level of success? Does that have to mean *lazy*?!?
Wayne.
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