Solution to Furloughs

As I was reading THIS article about furloughs and how parents are rallying to get school days back, I can't help but think that instead of fighting for all these furlough days to be put back into school, we (educators and parents) should focus our fight somewhere else.

We should be supporting and encouraging our students to work and study harder. Since there are less days of school, they should be getting MORE support from their families to learn harder. Instead of focusing on what isn't happening in education because of furloughs, how about we focus on what IS going on and spend our energies on making sure that the students are learning.

If the student's don't do their part to learn, to get their work done, there's nothing that the teachers can do at that point. We're doing our best to stuff our our content into the student's brains with 5 days of work into 4 days. The least the students' can do is work just as hard to get the education.

If not, the only other solutions I can see are pay cuts and/or layoffs. Neither is a good idea.

Pay cuts on an already low teacher salary? Do they want teachers to look for second jobs and focus less on students? We already take work home, hours we don't get paid for. We go above and beyond, stay for hours after our workday is done with no overtime pay. How do they expect us to feed, clothe and house our family with less income AND focus on our students?

Layoffs would be the worst solution ever. Laying off teachers mean that classroom sizes will get larger and the quality of education will lower. The teachers will have too many students to focus on and if class sizes increase, they can probably only catch a handful of the students that need help and miss an armful of kids that are borderline just making it but would have made it further if they had just gotten the help they needed. That my friends will be when the quality of education ends. We will be too busy trying to grade and assess what the students are learning but there will be too many kids just making it and because they are barely there, teachers won't focus on that. Instead of going more into depth and more explanations, teachers will just be trying to get the content finished in time.

I once read Pat Hamamoto say about putting furloughs back in and layoffs around the corner (paraphrased of course) " It's not about the quantity of education but about the QUALITY of education."


Instead of focusing on getting school days back from furloughs, how about we encourage and support the kids to work harder and study harder (since there is less school days). We can have all the furlough day taken away and students put back into school. BUT if the students don't do their part to learn, there's nothing more school days will do to help them.

Spelling

I've always considered myself a good speller. I came across this article today that talked about this new book called, So You Think You Can Spell, and I want to read it so I can see if I am really a good as spell as I think I am.

Furlough Fridays

Ok so I started writing on FB about my rationale for voting yes for Furlough Fridays but then I accidentally pressed back and now it's all gone so I decided to just write it here so I can have it auto save! hehe.

Here goes. Don't get offended, it's just my opinion.

Furloughs in education is NOT a good idea. I totally agree with that statement. Education shouldn't have been touched at all! I, myself, was kinda shocked that it was even an issue on the table. Education should've been the last thing to have been affected but be that as it may, it was the first one to make a move in response to Governer Lingle's request to help the state budget.

I don't claim to know everything about the what, why and how of the whole thing but I do know that it was said that the first one on the table with a "solution" would get the "better" end of the deal. That being said, teachers are getting 17 days of furlough this year and 20-odd next school year whereas HGEA is getting 18 days of furlough and 24-odd days next year.

One of the reasons I voted yes for furloughs is because I think this may have been the "better" deal us teachers would have gotten. It was either furloughs or the possibility of layoffs and I would much rather have a job. I'd like a job even if it means less pay because I still want and need my benefits (especially with baby #2 on the way).

I just get really irritated when the general public blames teachers for not caring about the future of our education. (We DO! or we wouldn't have become teachers in the first place!) Please don't blame us for the furloughs. We're getting a pay cut in the process! But-- I think that a lot of teachers settled for the furloughs because it meant still having a job because frankly, layoffs would suck (for lack of a better word) BIG TIME! If there wasn't a better option for teachers to still keep their jobs than layoffs would have probably been the next idea. Layoffs would have also been a BAD idea because that would mean even bigger class sizes!

Where do the struggling students get the help they need if their voices can't even be heard because the class size is too big?

At Kahuku High, we went from a 6 period to a 7 period schedule so that we cut back on teachers and in turn have "smaller" class sizes (I think...someone correct me if I'm wrong...) because we'd have more periods to disperse the students. That didn't turn out and now the electives have the biggest class sizes EVER! There are language and PE classes that have close to or over 50 kids!

Yes, furloughs aren't a good idea for the children but can you blame the teachers for wanting to keep their jobs? (especially in this economy...)

Please don't get mad at me! I'm just sayin'...