A student in Garfield High School's HCC program takes a hard look at Danny Westneat's 'racially insensitive editorial'

/
A student in Garfield High School's HCC program takes a hard look at Danny Westneat's 'racially insensitive editorial'

Earlier this week, the Seattle Times’ columnist, Danny Westneat, wrote a racially insensitive editorial about the high school that both his son and I attend. We don’t need dismissal and condescending advocation. We need people who are actually ready to listen, engage, and do the work to change the system, not write patronizing articles.

Read More

You know it's bad when students end up teaching the class themselves

/

How many ways can we let our kids down? If you are a public school system it seems the ways are innumerable.

Case in point: due to dysfunction in the Seattle Public Schools students in one class are teaching themselves, even though there are three teachers on staff paid to do the teaching.

Julia Furukawa, a senior at Garfield High School, has taken the lead in teaching her Concert Choir class - a task she preps for during her AP Statistics, AP Biology, and History classes.

Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat says the problem stems from adults "behaving badly," and kids getting short-changed.

He reports:

It’s a sore point because the district is astonishingly employing three adults related to these classes. One is the former choir director Carol Burton, whom the district fired last year for multiple lapses on a field trip. She was reinstated by a judge last week but remains on paid leave as the district figures out whether to let her return to Garfield.
Another is a replacement choir director who mysteriously bolted midyear but who mysteriously also remains employed by the district. The third is a sub called in to oversee the classes, but who has no music experience.
Bottom line: Since that fateful field trip to New Orleans in early 2015, the choirs have had no real instructor for about seven of the 12 months the school has been in session.
[...]
Most every adult at every level — from the original choir teacher to district staff who didn’t warn the school of a student with behavioral problems to the superintendent who has seemed more concerned with legal liability than getting these kids a teacher — all failed these students to one degree or another.

It's one thing to keep the pressure on the state for full-funding of our public schools. It's another to demand the district isn't paying teachers not to teach.

If you want to read the full face-palm inducing story, read it here.