THE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION MEETING WHERE THERE WAS “NO THERE THERE”

The grand dame theatrical elocutions, the florid gay man’s voice and the intention of the questions, “How dared you? Why? Why? Why didn’t you assign student teachers to my school”, were truly out of place at a School of Education cooperating teachers’ meeting; but the Lord of the PS Whatever School in the Heights was more concerned with his ego than with acting like a professional in a bureaucratic meeting.

It was obvious that he wanted to recriminate and embarrass a colleague, a gay man in an elementary education faculty meeting (a not very easy place to be if you were gay, as opposed to a belle arts or  French literature department), for not placing student teachers in his school that semester.  The theatrics and the performance were not to be at what usually were highly bureaucratized meetings; though, one can argue that after Lillian Weber left the faculty the place became a Gertrude Stein's “there is no there there.”  

The pompous, inflated egocentric school principal did not realize that he was in a professional meeting. (As it was found out later on, one of the professors -a straight opportunistic “Latina”- went around justifying the grand-dame-male-school-principal outrageous behavior, in order for her to get points in her favor. It was not the first time nor the last one that this Latina would betray her colleagues. In academia, the climbing of the ladder has more to do with “political games” than with the quality of the work.) 

To requiere progressive educational practices in a pro-progressive teacher education institution should be a “no brainer”, but that was not the case with the Lord of the PS Whatever School.  Student teachers should experience different methods and approaches to teach elementary school students; and diversity was completely absent in that school, except on folkloric days when kids were asked to dressed un in their “ethnic” outfits. 

(Is this gossip? No, as it will be discussed later on, this  anecdotal case study can serve to explain why there is some degree of failure in the implementation of teacher education programs.)

The PS Whatever elementary school was a highly traditional school with its rigid lesson plans , offering very limited opportunities for the student teachers to experience diverse teaching approaches and methods. Student teacher must explore and put into practice not only the behaviorist-based methods found at the PS Whatever school, but also more open ended, student centered activities. In order for the student teachers to be able to plan and manage large group of children they need to be confronted with varied  educational situations. It is quite obvious that when these future teachers will go out into the field, they will have to handle multiple school philosophies and practices: from the rigid nineteenth century approaches still found in most inner city schools to schools where student centered curricula drives the teaching-learning experiences, usually found in middle class communities. 

Therefore, in the situation being discussed here, the student teachers had to be placed in schools where there were more educational opportunities for them to learn from. Although the theatrics gave a little flavor to what were usually quite boring meetings, the response by one of the colleagues serves to reveal why professional educational decisions are not often the priority at institutions of higher education. The next day, the very traditional principal of the school -where future teachers could not experience diverse scientifically based practices- was nominated to be chosen as Principal of the Year. Politics took over. 

What did not occur to the Latina teacher educator was how she was not only betraying a colleague; but sending the wrong message to the students who were refused the opportunities to observe and practice what they had studied in her/his own teacher education courses; and worse of all, how she/he was betraying what was one of the theoretical pillars of her/his educational institution: progressive education ideas.  This last betrayal is a common problem at schools of education: progressive teacher educators that are not progressive in their own practices, the old “do as I say but not as I do.” Once more, la Stein was correct, some schools of education are places where “there is no there there.”