Author: Tonya L. Thompson

The 787 teachers who were invited to a “voluntary” meeting at American Way Middle School last week were instead thrilled to be able to go home, grade papers, plan lessons, and do their job because a last-minute scheduling conflict occurred. However, a story in The Commercial Appeal suggested a different reason for the cancellation, one involving issues that were raised over the breach of confidentiality regarding the email invitation the teachers received.

According to Deputy Superintendent Irving Hamer, approximately 1,200 teachers in Memphis City Schools need to be counseled out of the teaching profession. This assessment comes in the wake of an administrative push for a marked increase in teachers’ value-added assessment data based on their students’ standardized test scores. The teachers invited to last week’s meeting knew from the onset that they were invited because their students did not show gains on these tests for three consecutive years.

Having taught in Memphis City Schools for seven years, I’ve seen the gamut of the approximate 7,000 teachers in the system. As with any system, there are those who actually teach, and there are those who come to work just to collect a paycheck. The latter group most often hands out worksheets to keep the students occupied, while the former group spends countless hours and countless dollars (of their own money) to keep the youth of Memphis engaged in the learning process. My guess is that the worksheet group, for the most part, was not on Hamer’s email list.

This value-added assessment data that prompted Thursday’s meeting is data that shows student gains on standardized testing after being placed with a particular teacher. It isn’t about how well they did on the test; it’s about how large the students’ gains were during that year under a particular teacher’s tutelage. Anyone who has ever been in the field of education for long enough understands that the process of education is so much more than standardized tests. It’s about teaching students how to make it in the world, how to love learning, how to respect themselves and each other, and how to build a better community within the classroom and outside of it.

Since I no longer have to worry about speaking out (a very real concern that many of my teacher colleagues have based on nondisclosure agreements they are forced to sign), I’d like to point out a few inherent problems to Hamer and to the rest of the administration of MCS, who have held these scores over teachers’ heads like a threat for years.

First, to teach a student how to perform well on a standardized test, you have to constantly give them standardized tests in class. This is best done with a worksheet. The catch is that when given a choice of A, B, C, or D, children do not think outside of the box and they do not use advanced problem-solving skills. Standardized testing requires mere basic recall and memorization. While in grad school, teachers are taught to avoid lower-level recall questions like the plague.

Second, when an intellectually gifted student, who typically makes a 98 percent on the TCAP, doesn’t make a 99 percent the following year, this does not show an ineffective teacher, despite what the value-added data says. The student is still advanced in his or her age group, but since there were no value-added gains, that student’s teacher will be directly threatened with unemployment under the Kriner Cash/Irving Hamer regime.

Finally, there are the multiple extenuating circumstances that are present in classrooms across the city on a daily basis. Many students are living in poverty, dealing with emotional and family trauma — and yet these children are supposed to show gains on a standardized test despite the enormous obstacles facing them.

So as Hamer counsels teachers not showing gains out of the profession and replaces them with teachers who consistently give worksheets in class in order to achieve the elusive value-added gains, I worry about the future of our city and our city’s children. Education is more than standardized testing; it is about teaching young people to be innovative citizens of the world who can think and reason for themselves. To push some of our best teachers from the classroom based on the inane concept of value-added gains does nothing but harm the future leaders and thinkers of Memphis.

Tonya L. Thompson, who works with the Young Memphis Writers Collective, is a former Memphis City Schools teacher.

In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

We all remember that rhyme from elementary school, and as Americans, observed a celebration this week for one of our nation’s most legendary heroes, Christopher Columbus. The mythology of the man who defied common thinking, chased his dream, and opened up European trade routes into the New World remains the epitome of all that is American, all that is innovative, and all that is good.

Or does it?

The truth is that after his “discovery” of what he thought to be India, Columbus returned in 1493 with 17 ships and thousands of germ-carrying soldiers who had an affinity for raping women and children and set up what amounted to a theocratic government. A few years of exerting sadistic power over the peaceful Tiano tribes resulted in Columbus and his men initiating one of the most atrocious and widespread genocides in the history of the Western world. By 1496, the indigenous population of the Americas declined from eight million to three million.

But that part of the story doesn’t have a nice rhyme to go with it. Which, quite literally, begs the question: If our need for a mythologized history, one that is grossly and erroneously slanted, has created a national holiday which actually celebrates Christopher Columbus, what else have we blindly accepted under the guise of national myth and patriotism? And are those who don’t accept our whitewashed myths simply petty, divisive, or — worse — unpatriotic?

The question brings to mind someone who, almost inadvertently, became a national figure this year and played a role in our 2008 presidential election. This would be the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the controversial long-time pastor — now ex-pastor — of Democratic candidate Barack Obama, who disowned Wright several months ago on account of the clergyman’s more incendiary statements.

Wright basically became the poster child for “unpatriotic.” To say, as he allegedly did, that we deserved 9/11 was an unforgivable statement, especially in the eyes and ears of a public that is just now coming to grips with the fear of terrorism — a fear that the rest of the world has dealt with for centuries.

What did he say that bothered us so much? What foreign and domestic policies have we initiated to stir up such anger from radical Islamists, civil rights activists, and religious leaders who see firsthand the suffering of our nation’s disenfranchised and poor citizens? And beyond the admittedly hate-filled rhetoric, on some level, was Wright right? Did we invite, with our aggressive policies in the Third World, what another presidential candidate, the iconoclastic libertarian Ron Paul, would call “blowback?”

Michael Kammen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and professor of American cultural history at Cornell University, once said, “We arouse and arrange our memories to suit our psychic needs.” Americans, at their core, have a savior complex. We want to save the world from terror and stand, as Ronald Reagan proclaimed, as a shining beacon on a hill. To suggest that we have been or done anything to the contrary is, well, unpatriotic.

But where does myth begin and honesty end, and how do we assure that our international and domestic policies reflect actual integrity rather than imagined greatness? No one wants to live in a fantasy land.

I would venture to say that questioning the established myth of our nation is not only patriotic — it is absolutely vital if we are to learn from our mistakes and create a new chapter that has more honor. There is a difference between blind acceptance and historical fact; the salvation we seek to impart to the world can only be borne through the labor pains of acknowledging the truth — in all of its ugliness. Only then can we move forward and be a nation of truly mythical proportions.

And, in that sense, perhaps the vilified Jeremiah Wright was himself an explorer — typical of those among us who set out to rediscover facts, unpleasant as they are, that are nevertheless worth remembering.

Tonya L. Thompson, a former Memphis City Schools teacher, operates eWriter, Inc.

My father’s a die-hard Republican. Ask him why, and he’ll tell you because the Republicans are the “lesser of the two evils.”

No idealism there, but it’s one of the things I’ve come to appreciate about him. He and I often break that unspoken rule of avoiding politics in polite conversation. We can’t help it — it’s our “thing.” This year’s election is no different, although the discussions with him are becoming increasingly heated as the months pass. I can only imagine what they’ll be like in November.

In the onslaught of wins for the Obama campaign, our exchange has become a series of sound bites we’ve both heard. “Obama is the ‘candyman,’ making impossible promises.” And then, my response: “What’s wrong with giving people hope?”

I’ve realized in the past few weeks that there is more going on in the current political climate than meets the eye. It goes beyond Republican vs. Democrat, capitalist vs. socialist, or whatever philosophical or social slugfest you want to label it as. The reality of the grossly polarized views of our society has never been more evident than in this year’s election.

Yet in the midst of all of the bickering, talk-show rants, and sad attempts at slander, the underlying issue is not a polarization of parties but a polarization of mentality. It’s between those who see the glass half-full and those who see it half-empty. It’s between those who have faith and those who have fear — fear of socialism, fear of the dissolution of the middle class, and fear of the black man, however light the shade of his skin might be.

The experienced politicians are offering us a world of growing threats from the “evil-doers” and a culture of fear that is inexorably embedded in our mindset. Meanwhile, the “inexperienced” politician is offering us idealism — a much brighter world filled with community effort, successful schools, and health care for everyone.

And then there’s Santa Claus. When I was a kid, I believed in Santa Claus and wrote him letters every year to tell him my wish list. When I became older, I learned the truth. Santa was just Mom and Dad piling on credit card debt and skipping a few bills to grant me those wishes. Sure, this knowledge changed my outlook on Christmas. The guy in the red suit was reduced to some actor in a mall eking out a living by dressing up in costume and pretending to listen to little kids.

The truth is, I miss believing in Santa. I miss believing in him the way some politicians in Washington probably miss believing in a government that isn’t run by corrupt agendas and the almighty dollar. I know the accusation that ignorance is bliss, but where does faith come into play? I’m not talking about the kind of faith that forces one person’s moral views on another. I’m talking about faith in the system, faith in people, and faith in our nation.

I like Obama’s message of hope, not because I know for certain that he’ll follow through on his promises, but because he gives me faith that we can become the noble country we claim to be. Even if it is just rhetoric, it moves me. His speeches make me want to fly an American flag on my rooftop, an act that has never once crossed my mind. He gives me faith that maybe, just maybe, we can work together as members of a community to repair the brokenness we see around us.

Sure, he’s peddling hope, in the same way that my parents peddled the magic of Christmas. That magic left me with a longing to offer the same illusion to my own children, so that they, too, can experience the wonder of waking up on Christmas morning to see if Santa visited.

What is wrong with peddling hope? Have we become a nation so jaded, so wrapped in greed and corruption that we have given up on the one thing that has produced the most important moments in our collective story?

I’m not expecting a quick fix to our country’s problems, just as I’m not expecting Santa to buy toys for my kids. But I’ll still tell my children of Christmas magic, of the meaning of brotherhood, and hold to the hope that their future — as Americans — is a bright one.

Tonya L. Thompson, a former Memphis City Schools teacher, operates eWriter, Inc.