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beutifully put.  what other profession out there is there where we consider ourselves experts simply because we have been consumers?  I have been to the dentist for the majority of my life, but I don't tell her/him how to fill a cavity; I don't tell my lawyer how to prepare my will; and I don't tell the person at the DMV how to file my paperwork.  examples are endless.  for some reason, we don't trust our teachers, the training they have received, or the skills they have developed.  that is sad.  Ironically, some of the loudest voices from parents who consider themselves experts b/c they have been students (decades prior to offering their expert advice) -- or because they pay property taxes -- are also parents who can't handle working with more than one or two students at a time.  Parenting, being a student, and paying property taxes offer us all tremendous insight and life skills; but these experiences do not offer ANY insight into the world of teaching large groups of children at one time.  In Eugene, a perfect example is the general call for maintaining class size at any cost - but do you really want small classes at the cost of music, PE, art?  or do parents really want smaller classsizes without teachers getting the preptime they receive when students attend "specials?"  sometimes what we see as parents is only a portion of the vision.  so few parents are in schools regularly and when they are it is typically for a few hours, not the entire day, on a daily basis.  It is time to respect the experts we have hired and who our children often expose as gems or duds.

posted 2 years, 2 months ago
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