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 In my years as a teacher and administrator, staff development meetings were unavoidable.  They were often held in the afternoons or on Saturdays, and in too many cases were held for the purpose of meeting some arcane requirement or to put a check mark on some district to-do list.  Agendas were rare, purpose was often vague, content was delivered by lecture or interminable powerpoint, questions were not encouraged and the primary purpose seemed to be for someone to make sure we put in our time.  Most of the content in sessions like these could have been more effectively and far less painfully delivered in the form of an email, but I suppose that would have meant the end of a job for whatever “expert” was making the presentation and somebody somewhere would not have been able to document the hours teachers had spent in professional development.  I remember a colleague that once noted “I hope my death comes during a professional development meeting, because the ...

Things My Mother Taught Me     Mom passed away September 2014 after living almost 84 years and going through a thankfully short illness.  All four of her sons were there with her when she took her last breath, and she waited until her two sisters arrived before she decided to give up the struggle.  Momma was an amazing woman in many ways, and the lessons she taught us go far beyond the normal table manners and polite forms of address and behaviors she expected but didn’t always get.  Raising our Dad and four boys at the same time gave her an inner core of steel hidden by a soft spoken demeanor that could be deceiving to those that didn’t know her well.       She graduated at the top of her class at good ole Ruleville HS, was responsible for raising her sisters and her brother, played French Horn and Bass Drum in the band, played girls basketball, was Class President and went to Delta State before she married Dad and I c...

A version of this article was published in the AJC by Maureen Downey.   Proposal or Proposition? This article was written just before the vote in Mississippi on Initiative 42 and 42a.  Official election results show both amendments failed the first hurdle needed to pass: for a majority of people to vote to change the state constitution. About 54 percent voted against changing the state constitution. Forty-six percent voted to change the constitution.  News reports cite enormous confusion on the part of voters as a result of a two step process required to vote for either initiative.  Voters had to first vote to change the state Constitution and only an affirmative vote allowed them to proceed onward to vote for one of the two initiatives.  The confusing procedure and the inclusion of 42a on the same ballot was an intentional political ploy.   Rep. Greg Snowden, the primary author of 42A, acknowledged the alternative initiative was created as a r...

Propositional Situations     I am a native of Mississippi, and credit Mrs. Moore from Raines ES in Jackson with instilling an interest in learning and reading that continues to this day.  I was fortunate enough to attend Raines ES, Hardy Jr. High School, Provine HS, and Ole Miss.  Mrs. Moore was my 6th grade teacher, and believed in me to the point that meeting her expectations became one of the driving forces in my life.  Mr. Bickley at HJHS and Mr. Kenney at Provine taught me about music and about life, and Mrs. McBride at Provine told me I would never be a mathematician but she was pretty sure I had learned enough Algebra II not to hurt myself.  My brothers and I all attended public schools in Mississippi, my nephews and niece are graduates of Mississippi public schools and there are more relatives than I can count that can all attribute at least part of what they have achieved in life to public education in the Magnolia state.  All o...

RttT, Common Core and the Flying Spaghetti Monster     Remember back in 2009 when the economy tanked and state governments and schools were desperate for cash? Governor Perdue and later Governor Deal decided that it would be a good idea to balance the state budget on the backs of public school teachers and students by ignoring the Georgia Constitution and dramatically increasing austerity cuts to education.  Even though it meant pay cuts for teachers and a shorter school year for students and layoffs and increased class sizes and tough financial times for local boards that was OK  because the President and Arne Duncan were having a contest where the prize was millions of dollars, and all we had to do was to say we would go along with a few educational, “reforms” and suggestions and $400 million dollars would be ours and the kids would be saved and education would improve exponentially and, like a Shirley Temple movie, everything would Turn Out OK...

Are we in the beginning stages of a nationwide teacher shortage?  It would really be no surprise, would it?  Is it any wonder that many teachers have finally reached the point where they are fed up with scripted teaching requirements and phony evaluations that include junk science VAM and furlough days and increased testing that reduces valuable teaching time and no pay raises and constant curriculum changes and repeated attacks on their profession from people that have no teaching experience and the constant attempts to legislate excellence and cut teacher salaries and reduce teacher benefits and monkey with teacher retirement and SLO’s for non-tested subjects and state and federal policies that require more and more paperwork and less and less teaching and tighter and tighter budgets that mean doing more and more with less and less and longer school days and larger classes with higher and higher expectations and a political agenda that actively encourages blaming teachers f...