On 7/03/09, Kim1ca (who just has to respond) wrote:
> The author writes, So I do not believe in “The Great
> Teacher.” I subscribe to the words of my former vice-
> principal, Larry Breen, who said, “I believe in the right
> teacher at the right time, at the right place. Because if you
> took our faculty from this wealthy neighborhood, which
> supposedly has a lot of great teachers in it, and you dropped
> them in the poor neighborhood twenty minutes away, you’d find
> that a lot of the ‘great teachers’ are not great
> teachers.”
>
> I believe this to be true but only to a certain extent.
>
> It takes a special kind of individual to answer the teaching
> call in a poor neighborhood. Just about anybody will find
> success working with upper-middle class kids, but it takes a
> true teacher to work with kids in poverty.
>
> Before I am accused of painting with a broad brush, allow me
> to say that children from middle class and upper middle class
> backgrounds TEND to come to school ready to learn and have
> had a plethora of language and literacy experiences that will
> make learning easier than for their poverty-stricken, ELL
> counterparts. These kids have the motivation and support to
> do well in school. Getting them to achieve GREAT success,
> however, will require a better teacher - no doubt about that.
>
>
> Teachers who do not work with kids in poverty squirm when I
> say these things because the work they do is still valuable,
> still important, and extremely relevant. ALL children deserve
> an outstanding education. The fact that they do this with
> kids who don't come to school under-dressed, under-bathed,
> under-fed, and with 'street smarts' that make the middle
> class stomach churn, does not devalue their teaching life.
>
> The teacher featured in this article is revered and
> legendary. His teaching style worked well with several
> generations of students in this wealthy neighborhood. But the
> principal makes an astute observation, although not directly
> in reference to the "great" teacher featured in this article.
> Had Mr. Barlow taken his style and flair to a school in
> perpetual lockdown, would he have succeeded? The answer lies
> in whatever it is that makes a teacher "great."
>
> :-)K
>
>

You would have to be an awesome teacher to succeed in all
environments, poor, rich, rural, suburban, urban, black, white,
Native American, what have you.

Isn't this part of the conditional knowledge Jan speaks of? I
mean, I believe good instruction is good instruction, but it's
the other parts surrounding the instruction (economics, home
life, management, behavior, culture, school climate, etc.) that
makes the difference between teaching each and every child in an
appropriate manner.

brad

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