Teachers

In a recent op-ed state senator and Montgomery County Education Association employee Paul Pinsky asked the state of Maryland to "dig deeper" when looking at the impact that changes to local evaluation systems could make on teachers and students. I say it's time we do just that, by taking a look at what we are really being asked to change. As stated by the U.S. Department of Education, the "Race to the Top" funding, among other things, is about "improving teacher and principal effectiveness based on performance."

Mary B. Filler, a former dance instructor and preschool teacher, died May 13 from bladder cancer at Harmony Hall, a Columbia retirement community. She was 99. The daughter of the owner of a Baltimore feed and seed store and a homemaker, the former Mary Bolgiano was born in Baltimore and raised in Roland Park. After graduating in 1933 from Friends School, she joined the Estelle Dennis Dance Theater in Baltimore, and also studied at the American Ballet School in New York. For many years, Mrs. Filler was the owner and instructor at the Bolgiano School of Dancing in Baltimore.

WASHINGTON -- A policy used in Prince George's County for more than two decades making race a key factor in transferring teachers among public schools withstood a constitutional challenge in the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday.The justices refused to disturb a federal appeals court ruling allowing the county to continue, as it has since 1971, to use involuntary transfers of teachers based on their race to maintain racial ratios on the faculty of individual schools.Although the county no longer has any need to remedy race bias in initial assignments of teachers to schools, since that kind of discrimination ended nearly a decade ago, school officials contend that they must go on using race as a factor in transfers tTC to support the overall goal of desegregating its schools.

As the founder of KIPP Baltimore, which operates two high-performing public charter schools in the city, I am heartened and encouraged by our progress over the past six years under schools CEO Andrés Alonso. As I move to a new role as executive director of MarylandCAN - the Maryland Campaign for Achievement Now - I am hopeful that many of the policies and approaches that have driven this progress will be replicated in other Maryland school systems. But the work in Baltimore is far from over.

The Howard County Arts Council is looking for teachers to fill positions in its Visual and Performing Arts Summer Camps next year. Camps are open to students in grades K-7. Interested teachers should contact Wendy Meetze at 410-313-2787 for more information.

Every good teacher deserves a gift   - rare tokens of appreciation for their hard work. But, Andrea Segovia, third-grade teacher at Ashburton Elementary School in Bethesda, was a little concerned when she unwrapped an expensive-looking necklace stuffed in a Ziploc baggie. She suspected the “gift” from a boy in her classroom probably came from his mother's jewelry box. She was right. “I could just tell that it was someone else's necklace,” Segovia says. Almost every teacher has at least one story of the unusual holiday gift.

The National Rifle Association's push to arm school teachers and its suggestion that 40 to 60 hours of weapons training will enable them to handle a confrontation with a shooter in their classroom is short-sighted and unrealistic ("Gun advocates detail plan to arm teachers," April 3). I know from my own experience that amount of training is wholly inadequate. After seven weeks of intense weapons instruction in Army basic training, where we basically lived and slept with our weapons, we went on a night-time exercise meant to simulate battle conditions.

As the husband of a teacher and brother-in-law of two other teachers, I have to say Dan Rodricks ' recent column ("This looks a lot like playing hooky," Nov. 13) about teacher absences is missing a big chunk of the story. The fact is the only time off teachers have available to them during the school year are sick days and two or three personal days. They don't get three weeks or more of paid vacation like a lot of people do in their jobs. This is the only time available to them.

Editor: I am writing in response to Mr. Flen's letter to the editor published on Feb. 24. My daughter is an elementary school teacher and I know that she and her colleagues do not work 70 percent of the time! That may be what they are paid for, but that is not what they work. If you drive by any Harford County public school, you will see cars there well before the school day begins and also after the day ends. Teachers spend several hours before and after school preparing their lessons.

Re your editorial "Pay for Performance" (Aug.22): Yes, by all means, evaluate and compensate teachers on the basis of student performance. But why limit this process to educators? Let's apply the same norms to other professionals. Let's evaluate dentists according to performance, paying them more when their patients show progress in avoiding cavities, less when periodontal work is necessary. Let's evaluate and compensate physicians according to changes in their patients' health, with penalties assigned for overweight patients with heart attacks, or smoking patients who incur lung cancer.

In the weeks following the news that city schools CEO Andres Alonso was leaving, I've come across various pieces of commentary about the legacy the schools chief will leave. As with most resignations, much of the commentary has been expressions of gratitude, and encouraging forecasts of what's next. I thought this piece , written by a city school teacher, was particularly reflective. I've personally watched Iris Kirsch, a high school English teacher, challenge Alonso during public comment at city school board meetings.

The Baltimore Teacher's Union has called for the district hold off on attaching penalties to schools' performance on the the new  Common Core assessments, citing insufficient professional development and resources to implement the new high-stakes curriculum. In a news release, BTU's President Marietta English echoed the call of one of the nation's largest teachers union, the American Federation of Teachers, which called for a moratorium on penalties associated with the standardized testing that will measure a radically new curricula being rolled out across the nation, including Maryland, next year.

Being a teacher's pet as a child endeared me to no one but teachers. My third-grade teacher, Marian Gulley, once let me take a fourth-graders' history test. (At Elizaville Elementary School, the third and fourth grades were in a single classroom; the teacher instructed one class while the other studied, then reversed.) I scored a 96, from having listened to the fourth-grade class and read their history textbook for amusement. It was the highest grade on the test. I was proud, but my mother observed sagely, "I bet that didn't make you many friends in the fourth grade.

Morton "Jerry" Baum, founder and executive director of the Fund for Educational Excellence and a retired clothing manufacturing executive who was a tireless champion of city public schools, died May 5 from complications of Parkinson's disease at his Roland Park home. He was 87. "I first met Jerry in the 1980s when he was executive director of the Fund for Educational Excellence," said Brian C. Rogers, chairman of T. Rowe Price, who had served as a member of the organization's board.

Patapsco High School & Center for the Arts educator Sean McComb fondly recalls a high school English teacher who led him to see the world differently through books and a mentor from the student-run cable station who helped him to host his own weekly sports show. On Monday, McComb, 29, was honored as Baltimore County's 2013-2014 Teacher of the Year for, among other things, being an example of one who inspires and supports his students. "The teachers that I had in 10th, 11th, 12th grade were the models, and what they did for me made me believe it was possible to do that for other people," said McComb, a Joppa resident who is an English teacher and coordinates the school's AVID college prep program.

Editor: All citizens of Harford County should be dismayed by County Executive Craig's proposed FY2014 Budget. Despite his claims of being a life-long educator, despite Harford County taking in more revenue than ever before, County Executive Craig has once again shown his misplaced priorities and lack of dedication to our schools. I am disappointed that the County Executive has so little regard for the hardworking HCPS staff, our schools and our students. In February, over 500 school employees stood up for our schools.

Never before has public education been so perilously close to its demise. In the name of reform, we have tweaked, pushed, pulled, torn apart and done everything but "fix" education. This has been a long, tortuous process. The one ingredient that has always been missing has been true thoughtful collaboration with the very people who really do know what is going on in the classrooms: the teachers. The current administration talks to the educators but doesn't really listen ("Leaving no child behind," March 16)

David Jahnke is the winner of the Maryland Daughters of American Revolution Outstanding Teacher of American History for 2013. He was nominated by the Governor William Paca DAR Chapter of Harford County. On March 23 at Hunt Valley Inn, Jahnke was presented with a $750 check for his outstanding achievements. He will compete in the national DAR contest in June. Jahnke is teaching U.S. History at Harford Technical High School. He began his teaching career in February 2001 by teaching U.S. Government, U.S. History and finally Advanced Placement U.S. History.