Category: Uncategorized

Be Consistent!

by JC Bowman, posted in Uncategorized

Be Consistent! A frustrated teacher in Tennessee sends her thoughts on TNReady….

ProEdTN's avatarProEdTN Blog

Be consistent! From my earliest days in undergraduate education studies, these two words were embedded into my classes. Professors were always talking about consistency. Students need you to be consistent. They need you to be consistent with your discipline policies, they need you to be consistent with your routines, they need you to be consistent with your grading system, and they need you to be consistent with your attitudes and personality.

I was taught that many students come from very inconsistent and unstable lives and it was my job to give them some consistency and stability. Students need to know that they can count on what I say and that if it’s due on Monday that means Monday. Student’s need to know that my grading system will be fair and that Susie’s paper will be graded exactly like Johnny’s. So for the last twenty-four years, that is what I have…

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Champions for Children

by JC Bowman, posted in Educators, JC Bowman, Leadership, Professional Development, Professional Educators of Tennessee, Professional Learning, Tennessee Education, Uncategorized

Respected teacher leaders and presenters from across the state of Tennessee lead professional development  at Professional Educators of Tennessee.  Register here:  http://www.proedtn.org/page/LeaderU2018 

JC's Twitter Post 5

 

Rethinking Driver’s Education

by JC Bowman, posted in Drivers Ed, JC Bowman, Leadership, Legislation, Parents, Professional Educators of Tennessee, Resources, Uncategorized

textingteendriving

Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines! 

With that little phrase, we are off to the races to get to our morning destination—work, school or other location.  I have been driving since I was 13 years old, and legally since I was 16.  I have never seen worse drivers in my lifetime, all across the state and nation.  Every time I get behind the wheel I say a silent prayer, “Dear Lord, please don’t let me be run-over by the idiots today and keep me and others safe out there.”

I remember when driving a vehicle was a privilege, first granted to me by my parents and then recognized by those who issued a license.  In fact, driving a car is not a right promised to every person, but rather a privilege granted to people who complete certain requirements. In the legal arena, even the US Supreme Court says that citizens do not have a fundamental “right to drive.” In Dixon v. Love, 431 U.S. 105, 112-16, 97 S.Ct. 1723, 52 L.Ed.2d 172 (1977), the Supreme Court held that a state could summarily suspend or revoke the license of a motorist who had been repeatedly convicted of traffic offenses with due process satisfied by a full administrative hearing available only after the suspension or revocation had taken place. The Court conspicuously did not afford the possession of a driver’s license the weight of a fundamental right.  (See also Mackey v. Montrym, 443 U.S. 1, 10, 99 S.Ct. 2612, 61 L.Ed.2d 321 (1979); Bell v. Burson, 402 U.S. 535, 539, 542-43, 91 S.Ct. 1586, 29 L.Ed.2d 90 (1971).)

Tennessee does mandate that in order to get an Intermediate Driver’s License, a minor must have certified 50 hours of supervised behind-the-wheel experience, including 10 hours at night.  The Tennessee Department of Safety only requires students to complete a driver’s education course if they have been convicted of multiple moving violations while they are operating on their intermediate restricted license.  It is time to re-think that policy.  It is currently not a requirement in order for a minor child to obtain a permit or license to successfully complete a driver’s education course.  Nobody disputes that it is an important resource that can help students become responsible and safe drivers.  Should we restrict student access on our school campuses until they can prove to be responsible and safe drivers?   Should driver’s education course be required?  How can we prove or truly verify the supervised behind the behind-the-wheel or night experience?  

From a school safety perspective, school district policy should require a student pass a driver’s education course before being allowed to drive to/from school or park their vehicle on school grounds. This class could also be offered during the summer or through any of the legitimate driving schools across the state. The objective should not be to save parents a few dollars on auto insurance, it must be to improve driving, reduce accidents and injuries and ultimately save lives.  We all benefit by learning defensive driving techniques and other safe driving skills that will last a lifetime.

distracted

The  rules of the road are also shifting. We all face obstacles in an increasingly challenging driving environment, especially with more inexperienced drivers on the roads.  Texting in driving, is one of the most distracting items a driver can do.  Phone use – particularly calling and texting – while driving is one of the most common distractions. New technologies bring even greater challenges with distracted drivers.  New technology in vehicles is not always to our benefit, “infotainment” dashboards GPS maps and other hands-free technology may actually impede smart driving and safety.  Multitasking technology is about convenience, not safety.  Good driving habits require training and repetition.

A driver’s education course is a beneficial choice for drivers of any age and experience levels.  However, it should be required for all minors navigating our roads.  It is time to re-think our policies before the next generation starts their engines.  Lives most certainly will depend on it.

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JC Bowman is the Executive Director of Professional Educators of Tennessee, a non-partisan teacher association headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided that the author and the association are properly cited. For more information on this subject or any education issue please contact Professional Educators of Tennessee.

 

Just Follow the Law

by JC Bowman, posted in Bullying, Educators, JC Bowman, Leadership, Legislation, Professional Educators of Tennessee, Uncategorized

Uncertain judge

I know that taxpayers see the best and worst of educators. The truth is that the vast majority of educators are incredibly dedicated public servants who deserve our praise. In surveys we conduct, it reveals that working conditions are a bigger issue to teachers than salary.

Let me share one example: We have discovered that several school districts are now using the term “Leaves of Absences” while investigating any allegations against teachers. During the “tell your side” conference, the teacher is informed of the supposed allegations to which he/she is supposed to respond. Soon thereafter, a “Written Reprimand” is issued and at times, the teacher is found responsible of violations of school policy and penalized certain days of pay. This occurs without sufficient notice of the charges or due process rights afforded within an impartial hearing. We believe this is improper and may in fact be actionable. We are very concerned about these methods which in essence dilute, and at times, abuse the due process rights of a tenured educator. The right to be heard before an impartial hearing officer, along with the appeal rights to the Board and Chancery Court are obviated. We believe this to be contrary to the legislative intent of and due process rights provided by Tennessee Code Annotated §49-5-511 and Tennessee Code Annotated §49-5-512.

Let me put it into something more relatable for the average reader. Imagine you walk into your job today and are questioned by a supervisor. You are told you are being sent home because a subordinate told you something. Keep in mind you followed company policy and reported the conversation which involved illegal activities to authorities, as required by company policy. Now the “Leave of Absence” is under media scrutiny, you cannot defend yourself. To make matters worse, the supervisor can take as long as he wants to investigate the issue. The longer you stay at home, the more damaging to your career. Rumors begin to circulate that you must have done something wrong, which you clearly did not. The supervisor purposely skirts company policy, by using the term, “Leave of Absence.” Ask yourself this question, would you want to work for that company? More importantly would anybody want to work for that company?

While this sounds complicated. It is really simple: Follow the Law. People should not play semantics with words. If a teacher or administrator has done something that warrants a reprimand or suspension, then address that issue and allow due process to take place. When districts try to avoid following the law, the recourse will eventually and most certainly end up in court. When that happens students lose, teachers and administrators lose, and most importantly taxpayers lose.

My advice to school districts. You may not like the law. You may not agree with the law. But as long as it is the law…. follow the law.

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JC Bowman is the Executive Director of Professional Educators of Tennessee, a non-partisan teacher association headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided that the author and the association are properly cited. For more information on this subject or any education issue please contact Professional Educators of Tennessee.

Bullying is a Global Problem

by JC Bowman, posted in Bullying, Educators, Leadership, Legislation, Uncategorized

frustrated student

Bullying is a matter that adults and students alike must take seriously.  “Bullying is a form of aggressive behavior in which someone intentionally and repeatedly causes another person injury or discomfort. Bullying can take the form of physical contact, words or more subtle actions,” according to the American Psychological Association.  They add, “The bullied individual typically has trouble defending him or herself and does nothing to “cause” the bullying.”   In addition, bullying includes actions such as making threats, spreading rumors, attacking someone physically or verbally, and excluding someone from a group on purpose according to the US Government website StopBullying.gov.

School violence and bullying is a global problem.  The countries we are most familiar with, South Korea and the United States, recognizes the growing issue.  Almost one of every three students (32%) in South Korean elementary, middle and high schools are victims of bullying according to a Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs study.  In the United States it is almost one out of every four students (22%) report being bullied during the school year according to the National Center for Educational Statistics.  Some victims of school violence and bullying never reveal their secret.

When a 15-year-old high school student killed himself in the Gyeongsan, North Gyeongsang Province in South Korea, it sparked a national discussion of bullying. South Korea had started using surveillance cameras to limit bullying opportunities.  The student left a note that listed the names of five schoolmates who had repeatedly bullied him for two years.  His note said he was beaten by them in locations that were not covered by surveillance cameras.  In Knoxville, Tennessee in December 2017, a video of student Keaton Jones went viral drawing massive celebrity support against bullying.  Jones, alleges that he is often bullied at school. “They make fun of my nose. They call me ugly. They say I have no friends,” Keaton emotionally describes to his mother.  He even said sometimes things get physical at lunch.  “They poured milk on me and put ham down my clothes,” he recounted, fighting back tears. “Throw bread at me.” Then Keaton asked a question we all wonder: “Why do they bully? What’s the point of it?”

What can policymakers and stakeholders do to address bullying?  We argue for a three-point strategy.  1) We must promote awareness of bullying.  We have to confront the harmful impact of school violence and bullying.  2) We must establish systems to report school violence and bullying.  We must also provide support and services to those who are impacted by bullying and school violence.  Finally, 3) We must require professional development that educates teachers and students in order to identify, prevent and respond to school violence and bullying.

Let’s send a global message that bullying and school violence is unacceptable.  It will take a united effort, at the local level, to the state level and even the national level.  We should share ideas of what works in each school.  We need a clearinghouse to share ideas on how to stop the problem.   When you see people make threats, spread rumors, attack someone physically or verbally, and excluding others be that person who stands up for others.  Together, we can stop bullying in its tracks.

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Solee Lee, is an International Exchange Student from Daejon, South Korea.  She is an intern at Professional Educators of Tennessee.  JC Bowman is the Executive Director of Professional Educators of Tennessee, a non-partisan teacher association headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided that the author and the association are properly cited. For more information on this subject or any education issue please contact Professional Educators of Tennessee.

The Dream Did Not Die

by JC Bowman, posted in JC Bowman, Leadership, Professional Educators of Tennessee, Resources, Uncategorized

mlk

On April 4, 2018, we commemorate the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. King was shot and killed in Memphis. Tennessee has played a seminal role in Civil Rights, that we often fail to appreciate.

The ground breaking 1954 Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka was the case in which the Supreme Court Justices ruled unanimously that racial segregation of children in public schools was unconstitutional. It signaled the rightful end of the “separate but equal” principle set forth in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case. The Ferguson case constitutionally allowed laws barring African Americans from sharing the same buses, schools and other public facilities as whites — known as “Jim Crow” laws— and established the separate but equal doctrine that would stand for the next six decades.

Linda Brown, then a nine-year-old girl, became the face of the issue. Ms. Brown died at age 75 on March 25, 2018. Her national legacy in Civil Rights went far beyond public education. Brown said in a 1985 interview: “I feel that after thirty years, looking back on Brown v. The Board of Education, it has made an impact in all facets of life for minorities throughout the land. I really think of it in terms of what it has done for our young people, in taking away that feeling of second class citizenship. I think it has made the dreams, hopes and aspirations of our young people greater, today.”

Few people know the role Tennessee played in Civil Rights and public education. Avon Williams, Jr., a Knoxville, Tennessee native, became a cooperating attorney for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in 1949 and began a long career in civil rights activism. In 1950, four years before the Supreme Court outlawed school segregation in Brown v. Board of Education, Williams filed Tennessee’s first public school desegregation suit such case when he sued to integrate the public schools in Anderson County, Tennessee. (McSwain v. Board of Anderson County).

Williams’ first cousin, Thurgood Marshall, was the chief lawyer for the Legal Defense and Educational Fund of the NAACP. Marshall later became the first African-American to serve on the US Supreme Court. Williams and Marshall worked closely on racial discrimination cases. Williams went before the Supreme Court seven times to argue cases involving discrimination in public schools, public housing or other public accommodations. In 1955, Williams, Marshall and Z. Alexander Looby, a fellow African American lawyer focused on civil rights, filed suit Kelley v. Board of Education against the Nashville city schools on behalf of African American children.

Looby and Williams were without doubt the most prominent civil rights attorneys in Tennessee during their lifetime. The Journal of African American History stated that “Looby and Williams’s work in school desegregation cases alone encompassed every major case in the state (with the exception of Northcross v. Board of Education) and entered the highest realms of legal activity. Federal judges at the circuit, appeals, and U.S. Supreme Court levels cited and considered many of their cases as the post-Brown v. Board of Education (1954) litigation world unfolded.” In 1968, Avon Williams, Jr. was elected to the Tennessee State Senate. He was one of the first African-Americans to serve in that body since the Civil War. As a Senator, he worked to put guidance counselors in elementary schools and to establish kindergarten classes in Tennessee. Tennessee has a proud, but often untold history in Civil Rights, which greatly enhanced education in our state.

Racism, bigotry and vitriol hate have no place in a modern culture. All children are created in the image of God. Martin Luther King, Jr. poignantly stated: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Does character still matter? Of course, it does.

For centuries, our country has attracted people in search of a share of “the American dream” from all corners of the world. E Pluribus Unum (From Many, One) remains the national motto, yet it appears that there is no longer a consensus about what that should mean. If you step into our public schools today, the many different cultures are on full display.

Americans like Martin Luther King Jr., Linda Brown, Avon Williams, Alexander Looby, and Thurgood Marshall helped integrate America, and move the nation past the old paradigms and backwards thinking that dominated our society. We need to remember and reflect on that history. More importantly, we need to fulfill our destiny as a nation where all citizens can realize the benefits of integration and equality of opportunity regardless of the color of their skin. The dream of Martin Luther King Jr. did not die in Memphis in 1968, it is still alive in 2018.

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JC Bowman is the Executive Director of Professional Educators of Tennessee, a non-partisan teacher association headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided that the author and the association are properly cited. For more information on this subject or any education issue please contact Professional Educators of Tennessee. To schedule an interview please contact Audrey Shores, Director of Communications, at 1-800-471-4867 ext.102.

Is Culture Still Relevant?

by JC Bowman, posted in Leadership, Professional Educators of Tennessee, Uncategorized

JC Bowman in NYC

We now live in a world where borders apparently don’t matter. The activities of corporations operating in multiple countries simultaneously, as well as travel being readily accessible, and networking possibilities of the Internet and social media render national borders somewhat less significant.  Then we need to ask the question:  Is culture still relevant?

Yet, William Bennett, a rather brilliant man and former US Secretary of Education, made an observation last year that politics and public engagement in social issues can make more of a difference than he once thought. Bennett is rather philosophical, and his opinion still carries much weight among policymakers and media.

To take it a step further, examine the words of Richard Shweder: “I believe that all the good things in life can’t be simultaneously maximized. I believe that when it comes to implementing true values there are always trade-offs, which is why there are different traditions of values (i.e., cultures) and why no one cultural tradition has ever been able to honor everything that is good.” People fail to consider there is no perfect society despite our historical attempts at creating it.

Debates on culture also include our conflicting orientation on matters such as secular versus religious, our concept of freedom along with our trust or distrust in the leadership of those who govern us. Culture impacts the success or failure of a certain aspect of society, such as health, education, institutions, justice, national security as well as other policy issues.

Thomas Jefferson wrote of the self-evident truth that “all men are created equal; endowed by their creator with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” This endures as the powerful philosophical and moral foundation of the American republic itself.

On the subject of freedom in culture, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his State of the Union Address he delivered on January 6, 1941, stated that American’s looked forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. Roosevelt may not recognize the current age, but his points are worth a reminder.

  • The first is freedom of speech and expression—everywhere in the world.
  • The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world.
  • The third is freedom from want—which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants—everywhere in the world.
  • The fourth is freedom from fear—which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor—anywhere in the world.

Samuel Huntington, a political scientist at Harvard University, suggested that there are a set of eight cultural “civilizations” who are a major influence on current culture–Western, Eastern Orthodox, Latin American, Islamic, Japanese, Chinese, Hindu, and African. This explains our present-day struggles across the nation and the world, as well as repeated conflicts between countries and cultures.

Another major theme Huntington puts forward was that we have moved from a bi-polar competition between communism and democracy/capitalism to a geopolitical battle fostered by a multi-polar world of competing civilizations. In regards to immigration in our own country, that is manifested by the failure of people to assimilate into American society and culture.  He argues that could eventually change our nation into one where multiple languages, multiple cultures, create multiple peoples.   This is also a direct conflict with the concept of the founding principles of our nation.

Huntington wrote: “September 11 gave a major boost to the supporters of America as one people with a common culture. Yet the war to deconstruct our culture has not ended. It remains unresolved today whether America will be a nation of individuals with equal rights sharing a common culture, or an association of racial, ethnic, and cultural groups held together by hopes for material gains.”

Orwellian logic from which the principle that “All animals are equal” gives birth to the transformative postscript: “but some animals are more equal than others” when we are only focused on material gains. Equal rights are a common goal that culture should embrace.  As we consider culture, we have to see how this becomes applicable to public education, and what role should public schools plays in building a common culture, if any?  The time for discussion is now.

The United States is a diverse country, racially and ethnically, as well as in how people choose to organize themselves socially and politically. It can be argued that our public schools are integrally situated to communicate society’s values, such as individual responsibility, patriotism, integrity, objectivity, justice, respect for others, being on time, doing a good job, working well with others, being a good citizen, and exercising democracy in government and other interactions.  Americans have thus far kept our republic, and created it to be resilient and strong.  However, the United States will remain free only with relentless vigilance and public engagement, which must be transmitted in our culture.

Certainly we can do more to improve opportunities for all students. Public education has done an excellent job of positioning our state, nation and students for success.  Our ethnic identity and culture is rapidly changing.  The question we must ask ourselves, is that always for the better?  If we are not careful, we may risk losing what made America the envy of the world and a continual place of liberty and opportunity for our citizens. Educators must be the ones that provide hope, opportunity, and optimism for the subsequent generations.  In the end, history will prove that culture matters.

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JC Bowman is the Executive Director of Professional Educators of Tennessee, a non-partisan teacher association headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee.  Permission to reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided that the author and the association are properly cited. Follow him on social media via Twitter at @jcbowman.