..debate or discussion between john deasy (current sup of lausd) & warren fletcher (utla pres) & monica garcia (board member) ...fletcher stands his ground in defending the teachers (fletcher himself having been a substitute & a regular teacher for some time in the lausd, while deasy mentioned having taught & having been principal at some point but didn't mention where or for how long...I dont think he taught in or around southern Cal ..figured he was just another former ceo hired to "talk the talk" ..) ..so fletcher was making some points & suddenly deasy says "let's step away from the rhetoric for a moment"..and starts listing some points but it sounded like more rhetoric to me ..he named programs & new projects..all with nice names, but where's the substance (as fletcher said, "where's the meat?") ..even if deasy had taught previously but not in ore around lausd he won't understand the true issues from an inside perspective ...he will spout out rhetoric about getting rid of ineffective teachers but won't understand what is going on around the teachers that makes a big difference in whether they may become effective or ineffective ..even when they talked to the one parent rep they had on the program who said "the parents know when a teacher is good or not..we r the consumers.." it smacked of arrogance... so u have deasy saying how much he cares for the kids (&parents) more than anything else (albeit has never had to personally deal with kid issues in the classroom (at least not in apparently a long time & never around los angeles..why he wasn't specific about where, when, & how long he was a teacher/principal I don't know) ..and as for whether a teacher is so "good" or not, sometimes that's more about "like" or not ..students decide to "like" a teacher & they work harder for that teacher, therefore the teacher is "effective" ..the problem is that "liking" a teacher can be so subjective based on very superficial things..so it can result in good, quality, knowledgeable teachers becoming "innefective" simply b/c they became "disliked" for whimsical reasons (and if the parents don't have the backbone to tell their kids "I don't care if u like him/her or not..u will do your work" then its basically the parents/students controlling the teachers..and the teachers end up simply catering to the students whimsies ...which I think could be very demoralizing after a while .. I've seen teachers who have NO LIFE outside teaching ..even if they are deemed "effective" they feel used, unappreciated, etc ..its NO WAY to live ..& of course deasy is pulling in a salary of several hundred thousand..he's not complaining.. as for monica garcia I don't know if she's ever been an educator ..u know who's missing in this conversation is a teacher (sure, fletcher has taught and he did his best to integrate that experience into his commentary, but its even better to have a CURRENT teacher... they had everybody BUT a current teacher )
