Davonte Inferno Ten Years in the New York Public School Gulag Laurel M Sturt 9780991205103 Books
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A TEACHER'S STORY OF FEAR AND LOATHING IN AMERICAN EDUCATION TODAY. Calling on policy, research, humor and a generous serving of snark, in this cutting edge story irreverent Laurel M. Sturt pulls no punches detailing her bizarre life in the trenches teaching in a high-needs elementary school in the Bronx. With the Alice in Wonderland backdrop of teaching in a school strangled by poverty, No Child Left Behind's "accountability," and Michael Bloomberg's micromanagement, Sturt trains an unflinching eye on the crisis confronting today's educators, delivering a scathing indictment of pretentious education reform driven by a mercenary agenda to privatize a system worth billions. The author charges educators and parents to unite and organize at the grassroots level to fight for this civil rights issue of our time--the right to a decent education--coalescing around proven non-negotiables such as sufficient funding, universal pre-kindergarten, a rich curriculum free from high stakes testing, and the socioeconomic integration of schools. By refusing an apartheid in which the one percent and the ninety-nine percent receive vastly different educations, community by community we can drive back the privatizers, restoring the "public" to a system committed to all.
Davonte Inferno Ten Years in the New York Public School Gulag Laurel M Sturt 9780991205103 Books
Having met the author at an anti-reform rally in Washington DC a couple of years ago, I was prompted to download this book. As a (now-retired) New York City teacher of 30 years' experience, I can say that everything Ms. Sturt has to say about the insanity of the reform movement, NCLB and RTTT, the capriciousness of inexperienced and unqualified administrators, and the topsy-turvy world of the Bloomberg/Klein regime is absolutely spot on. A generation of kids has been destroyed by this cookie-cutter approach to education that not only fails to teach, but ignores the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable. Children without the most basic skills CANNOT teach themselves higher-order thinking. Privatizing public education, charter schools and slapping fancy names onto mini-schools to make them more inviting is akin to putting lipstick on a pig. It looks pretty, but it is still a pig - and the corporations and individuals bankrolling this travesty know it.Ms. Sturt gives an insider's account of ALL of this.
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Davonte Inferno Ten Years in the New York Public School Gulag Laurel M Sturt 9780991205103 Books Reviews
As a former teacher and para-educator in a big city school system, I know exactly what Laurel Sturt is talking about because my experiences have paralleled hers. It is time that the public realized that you cannot expect teachers to be both parents and teachers to their students, and that it is grossly unfair to blame them when they fall short of this totally unrealistic expectation.
As Ms. Sturt points out, parents are their children's first and most influential teachers. The behavior issues that students present in schools are a direct result of the failure of parents to instill a sense of the value of education and respect for teachers. Since approximately 25 percent of American children are growing up in poverty, this is not surprising. The percentage of children growing up in poverty today is approximately the same as it was in 1964--before the War on Poverty began.
Yet, instead of using their vast resources to address this issue by funding pre-natal care, parenting classes, and providing counseling, English language classes, job training, and other supports for poor parents, foundations are providing millions of dollars to set up charter schools, despite the fact that charter schools that draw their students from the same high-poverty areas as public schools are no more successful, and in some cases are less so, than the public schools.
The charter schools that are successful are those that can pick and choose students, leaving out students with special needs and English language learners and expelling students who cannot meet behavioral and/or academic expectations. The long-term result of this will a two-tier school system, private/charter schools for the best and brightest and public schools for the rest.
It is time that we reclaimed the public school system and gave teachers the respect and support that they deserve.
On Wednesday May 14th 2014, The Nuyorican Poets Café on East 3rd Street was the venue for a reading by Laurel Sturt from her recent memoir, “Davonte’s Inferno 10 Years in the New York Public School Gulag.”
Hers is a vivid, passionate and at times outrageous account of her years as the art teacher in one of the lowest scoring and most poverty stricken elementary schools in the South Bronx. While her descriptions of the school, and classroom life, are all authentic, the book also takes on the parallel narrative of the impact of political and academic shifts that emanated from the perfect storm of the Bloomberg administration, the Federal State and local governments' embrace of education “reform”, and the economic downturn. The sequential reporting of these events, woven into the reality of daily school life, takes us along the slippery slope experienced by teachers, who constantly believed it couldn't get any worse, and yet it did.
By all means, run out and read this book! Sturt’s message at all times shines through with a depth of concern for the children in her care, the limitations of their circumstances, and the ways in which school might have enriched them immeasurably with a better distribution of resources. Her heart breaks open on every page, whether describing some new indignity; enduring the hassle of an art room shared with a colleague who is a hoarder; the loss of the library and all of its resources when the librarian leaves and isn't replaced; or the glimpses of the children, individually and collectively. A must-read for anyone who cares about children, about society, and about changing the direction of our current educational goals.
I wish that this book had had clickable footnotes, as most e-books have. Perhaps it will, in future renditions, but my e-book did not. That was bothersome.
However, that said, I have just finished the book and I have been touting it's insight and importance to all of my colleagues since I first started reading it. It is inspiring to read books by master teachers such as Rafe Esquith, but Laurel Sturt should be mandatory reading for all prospective teachers. I (unfortunately) recognized my own district and experiences in the myriad problems described in detail in this book -- written by a normal, hard-working and dedicated teacher. The fact that she was a roving art teacher made her experience particularly apropos to me, as I am an itinerant music teacher. But the real lessons contained within speak to the trouble our public schools are in and the monsters (the big money and the big politicians and the big egos) that threaten public schools, especially in lower SES neighborhoods.
Content middle-classers, this crisis is coming for you next. Perhaps the only thing wrong with this book is that it is too soft on its critique of the monied interests, and too narrow in its focus on NYC. However, you could argue that therein lies the strength of the message. It is real; written by a real working teacher, trying to paint an accurate picture for all to read and understand.
In that regard well done! Or, as we say in my classrooms, "bravissimo!"
Having met the author at an anti-reform rally in Washington DC a couple of years ago, I was prompted to download this book. As a (now-retired) New York City teacher of 30 years' experience, I can say that everything Ms. Sturt has to say about the insanity of the reform movement, NCLB and RTTT, the capriciousness of inexperienced and unqualified administrators, and the topsy-turvy world of the Bloomberg/Klein regime is absolutely spot on. A generation of kids has been destroyed by this cookie-cutter approach to education that not only fails to teach, but ignores the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable. Children without the most basic skills CANNOT teach themselves higher-order thinking. Privatizing public education, charter schools and slapping fancy names onto mini-schools to make them more inviting is akin to putting lipstick on a pig. It looks pretty, but it is still a pig - and the corporations and individuals bankrolling this travesty know it.
Ms. Sturt gives an insider's account of ALL of this.
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