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Teacher evaluation ‘pilot’ program charts right path?
9/23/2011 4:42 PM EDT Tags: Teacher, Evaluations, Education, Schools, Teaching, Methods, Learning, Reading, Skills, Remedial, Reading, Don, Cole, Cartoons
TEACHER EVALUATION ‘PILOT’ PROGRAM CHARTS NEW PATH?
I can appreciate the needs for teacher evaluations, but in my experience as a professional cartoonist, caricaturist, and cartoon animator–who also teaches– I have found that often the public schools and their first “evaluations” can actually be more inhibiting than useful or helpful.
In my art career, I had never been taught such ‘teaching skills, ‘ such as: “Do not try to teach any more than five minutes, because of the students’ limited attention spans.” “Be sure to be entertaining and sugar coat everything you teach.” “Do not try to discipline anyone, they get enough of that at home.” “Keep the students busy and give them a lot of ‘projects’ (even before I’ve taught them anything).”
This makes me thankful that I never went to school to learn how to be a teacher. I never knew any better, and so consequently, over the years, I have found much pleasure and great success in teaching people basic drawing skills and cartooning, –my way! (My way works!) I can teach almost anybody how to draw, and all the schools everywhere should teach it, the way I learned it, –from a Disney animator. Everyone should learn or know how to draw, in school, as a basic skill.
Now here is just one example of what I am talking about. Years back, I was hired to teach a summer class in a NJ public school on Drawing and Cartooning. This was for five days a week, 90 min. classes, for six whole weeks. I went into this thinking to myself: ‘Wow! –six whole weeks — with this amount of time I will really be able to teach these kids how to draw!’ (One prerequisite to being a cartoonist is knowing how to draw, (even if one does then later choose, out of their own creativity, to break some of the rules).
After the first class or two, I thought I was really on a roll, and everything was going great! Then astonishingly, one evening, I get a phone call at home. It was the school principle, and without first saying anything, he proceeded giving me “suggestions” on how to teach and “projects” that I might assign to the students. I could hardly believe what I was hearing, because the classes were going great and the students were really into what I was teaching them about drawing. I told him that I was flabbergasted about this, and that he should just have patience, –because I knew what I was doing! Before I would give them ‘projects,’ I needed to teach them how to draw, and how to cartoon. It turns out, that there had been an art teacher, or who knows who, planted in the classroom, who was secretly evaluating me, and who had turned in a bad evaluation on me.)
However; –just like I had told the school principle would happen– when ‘Open House’, at the end of the sessions came and the parents walked around the gymnasium looking at the great multitudes of terrific cartoons and drawings that covered the vast array of display boards, drawings and cartoons created by the class, drawings extraordinare, and from their own children’s imaginations, –the parents were amazed! Their children’s drawings clearly showed an advanced knowledge of drawing and cartooning skills well beyond their peers. These were the kind of drawings that win contests, and do because they stand out from all the rest. (I was told that one of my students, when I was teaching at the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon & Graphic Art, Dover, NJ, years ago, went on to become a big part in the looks and creation of Sponge Bob Square pants.)
Needless to say, I was called back again to teach the following summer, and even was offered a job to head up the art dept.. (or whatever, I don’t remember). But, what really made me smile –is when I asked what happened to the art teacher who had first evaluated me? The answer was, that she wasn’t there anymore, that she had gone back to school. lol 8<) –dc
DUMMY DON …by Don Cole
Outdated Cartoons Dept (No longer funny.)
TIME WARP Our Economy
"So we have a trillion dollar national debt... we're good for it."
DUMMY DON …by Don Cole
"We're never going to get anywhere if you keep taking the fifth amendment."
DUMMY DON …by Don Cole
"They charged an arm and a leg."
DUMMY DON …by Don Cole
"Boy, the government is really cracking down on student loans!"
DUMMY DON, …by Don Cole
"I still don't like this approach to remedial reading!"
DUMMY DON …by Don Cole
Am I missing something here? Everybody would pay the same percentage of tax on their income, no matter what? So, if one person’s income is $5,000. per week his income tax would be, say on a 30% tax rate for everybody, –$1,500, which still leaves him with $3,500. per week to invest in forfeited real estate, or whatever, before he eventually has enough money and power to monopolize (like the game of monopoly) and take over our whole country, (or whatever). Compare this with with a senior citizen living on his Social Security checks , of about $200. per week (or less, and with COLAs frozen for three years now). 30% of $200. is $60. leaving the senior citizen with $140. per week to live on. Now the cost of rent, food, gas, heat, and other basic necessities to live being absolutely the same for everyone, who is going to be kicked over the cliff, or pushed out into the ocean currents on a raft to perish? Just because a person works hard all their life is no guarantee that they will never be in need (nor any of their family or loved ones). When things get even worse (and cheer up now, because things could be worse, –and probably will be.), such as in the Depression; should we revert back to businessmen jumping out of high-up skyscraper windows because the stock market collapsed? This ME-MYSELF-and I mentality is a crumbling foundation, or no foundation at all, and will never cure the ills of our nation. — Dummy Don (ref: my comic strip, “Dummy Don” http://www.worldfortruth.blogspot.com/ ).
"A dollar for the lottery, Sir?"
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