We should be saluting great teachers not beating them down

From Mr. Chuck Olynyk, one a brillant history teacher who brings history to life writes:
"Good Morning, World! Our last hurrah as the Humanitas Arts School at Roosevelt Senior High begins. Next year will begin the apartheid of public education: AP classes on one side, double-blocking of English and Math and elimination of any real enrichment of the curriculum, but plenty oof multiple choice questions answered on computers about articles kids read once and forget. Between Roosevelt and Fremont Highs, I've taught for 19 years in the Humanitas Program, linking History, English and Art, and for a really awesome year at Edison Middle School with Andrea Mordoh and Dwayne Turner doing likewise. Guess I'll just have to have a final project which involves creativity instead of recall, innovation instead of repetition. Because, as my friend Jesse Turner has observed, children are more than test scores"

Something is rotten in an America that crushes our learning and teaching spirits for test scores. The saddest piece of these efforts to focus on testing is that none of it has improved our nation's test scores. Our 17-olds are scoring lower on NAEP assessment than they did two decades ago, (NAEP 2009). We are now moving into further declines. In other words the data points to NCLB/RTTT as the biggest education policy failure in our nation's history.

Who is Mr. Olynyk?
To know this kind of teacher is to love him. Every child dreams of one day having a teacher like him. To get Mr. OLynyk in High School at the most cynical age is sheer bliss. Everyday in High School is like a holiday when Mr. Olynyk is in the house. You walk around what did he do today...OMG...can't wait until class...
To fully understand what it means to bring history to life for inner city Los Angeles high school students. You need to see Mr. Chuck Olynk teaching his students. Chuck's classroom is like no other classroom. He lives, he breathes, he empties his soul into his teaching. He is a 19-year vetran who has blogged this attacked on public education since 2010. He is not walking away, he is not giving up, but he is documenting this tragedy happening to his students and fellow teachers. After all this is what historians do. Chuck's story is a living primary source. I don't have to tell you this, but Mr. Olynk is loved by his students. That love keeps him going, and his teaching story inspires me. It reminds me of why I have to fight the power.
I salute you Mr. Olynk,
Jesse The Walking Man Turner
I can sleep at night peacefully, because Mr. Olynyk will not go quiet into that good night. 

If you are wondering what I am listening to on my walk today. It is Public Enemy "Fight The Power"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WHe5fxS3dA

A crime against humanity

http://www.cbs6albany.com/news/features/top-story/stories/the-real-deal-4th-grader-asked-take-nys-test-hospital-bed-7933.shtml …
Where was the NY Times editorial board on this crime against this New York child hooked up to his IV waiting for surgery? 

What that you say they were writing about how the common core State Standards are the best thing since slice bread.  

Perhaps they were on a conference call to Secretary Duncan asking how can we help spread your lies?

Perhaps they saw no profit in the truth?

Perhaps they are concerned they might offend Pearson?

Perhaps they just don't see, understand, or care about New York's children being victimized by meaningless standards and testing?

Someday our children will grow up, and they will ask how could you stand by while our childhoods were being crushed.

When that day comes I plan to say I fought for you every step of way my child.

What's your plan come that day?

Sincerely, 

Jesse The Walking Man Turner

Taking the fight local

Some readers may wonder where the walking man has been these days. I have been collaborating with others to grow the fight against those people who are bent on reducing public school learning to teaching to the test. Linda Hall, Jonathan Pelto, with Dianne deVries, and I worked on bulding a real Save Our Schools Connecticut Chapter. We formed alliances with Defending Public Education Cradle to College, with AUUP, Hartford AFT, and CT AFT, and with CCSU Student Government Assocation, and other local groups. As Chair of the Literacy Essentails Conference I worked with Connecticut After School Programs to bring Antonia Darder's turth to Connecticut. http://www.darder.org/ She shared her view that RTTT Ed Reforms are attempts at Language Assination for second langauge learners, and cultural killers. In between all of that I drove down to DC to support my Opt Out Brothers and sisters as they occuiped the United States Department of Education in April.
While I may stop blogging for a while, I never stop marching against those reformers who want to reduce public education to teaching to the test. Fighting those that want to reduce reading and writing to inpersonal repsonses to mandated texts is an every day event, on my walks, in my classroom, and every where else I go for me. Like Muhammad Ali  said "I float like a butterfly and sting like a bee" against their insane vision of that "The Brave New World" committed to the production of perfect little worker bees. You know perfect little Bill Gates clones.
So readers I am still fighting wind mills, still feeling strong, and still strongly believing that good will beat evil in the end. Here is my lastest venture "Taking the Fight Local:
https://www.facebook.com/events/159038687593865/
Defending Public Education Cradle to college: A free one-day conference addressing issues that cut across all levels of public education, including fighting back against assessment and addressing inequities in public education. We have great speakers lined up, including Jonathan Pelto, Roberto Cotto, and Ceresta Smith.
Spread the word Connecticut has joined the battle to save our public schools.

Why, why, oh why fight this battle.....
Why I am going to Defending Public Education: Cradle to College this Sunday?
Ever since NCLB started testing children every year from grades 3-8, elementary schools have become houses of detention where teachers are force to teach to the test, and children suffer.
Teaching should be more than testing,
Childhood is more than filling in their bubble sheets.
Child hood is a gift,
A time of wonder,
A time for play,
A time for reading anything your heart feels like reading,
Imagining new worlds,
Journeying through old ones,
A time for art,
For music,
For dancing,
For running and jumping,
A place where teachers open imaginations, not imprisoning them into objective little Common Core Close Reading boxes,
Where science, history, literature are not experiments in mind control, but in celebrating the liberation of young minds,
Where our seeds of democracy are nurtured not ignored,
A place where friendships are grown,
A place where failure is a mere side step on the jounrney to smart,
Where you fall often, but get up time and time again with the help of teachers, families, and friends,
Where Laughter sings,
Where giants and dragons live,
Where school buses take you to museums, historic places, and on safaris,
Child hood should not be a prisoning of the mind,
Schools should not have armed guards at their doors,
Police officers should not patrol our school halls,
Testing should be meaningful for personal learning,
Testing should not be a sorting, a weighing, and measuring of young minds for corporate futures,
I am going to the Defending Public Education: Cradle to College conference on Sunday, because childhood is a gift not a race,
Education should be a never-ending journey that does not end in bankruptcy for our children,
Most of all I am going because I care enough not to become apathetic and silent while our policy makers and politicians crush young minds,
Jesse The Walking Man Turner

If you are wondering what the Walking is listening to on his walks lately:

"Preacher man, don't tell me, 

Heaven is under the earth. 

I know you don't know 

What life is really worth. 

It's not all that glitters is gold; 

'Alf the story has never been told: 

So now you see the light, eh! 

Stand up for your rights. come on! 

Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights! 

Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight! 

Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights! 

Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight! "  

http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=A0oG7hElX3VR2z8Ab_NXNyoA?p=bob%20marley%20stand%20up%20utube&fr2=sb-top&fr=moz35