Suspended Teacher Speaks at Public Hearing on her Students Get-well Letters to Convicted Cop Killer

Marilyn Zuniga, a third-grade teacher, has been suspended with pay for sending Mumia Abul-Jamal get well letters written by her students.  The board is deciding on what, if any, further action will be taken.  

 

During the meeting that was being held, Ms. Zuniga made a public statement.  In this statement she said:

“Growing up in a predominantly white suburb, attending a majority white school district, my teachers and peers marginalized me as a first generation immigrant, Peruvian-American. The cultural gap between my educators and me caused me to feel disconnected from my school work and learning altogether. It wasn’t until my experience in the classroom my senior year of high school that I realized I could be the teacher I never had.”

 Ok, fair enough.  I hope that every teacher in the country has a passion to help all students learn and to think for themselves.  That is what a teacher should be doing.  The problem is that she is going beyond that mission.  She is putting her viewpoints into the classroom and to the heads of very innocent 8-year-olds.  

Now the problem with the supporters of Mumia is that they never answer the question about why he has never told who the murderer of Officer Faulkner is.  There is no dispute that he was there and witnesses it.  There is no dispute that he had a gun.  There is no dispute that his brother assaulted Officer Faulkner.  There is no dispute that the police arrived on the scene within minutes of the shooting.  There is no dispute that Mumia was shot by the police officer.  He was a very short distance away with a gun shot wound and a weapon when the police arrived.  

Most people want to say he was arrested due to his political beliefs.  The problem is that he was arrested within minutes of the police arriving on the scene.  They didn’t have time to find out about his political beliefs and writings.  Writing that includes talk about “killing pigs”.  For those that may be unclear what that means, it is police officers.  

Anyone that has read my writing over the years knows that I am against the death penalty.  I have no problem with him be taken off death row.  But I certainly don’t think he is some innocent lamb that is being led to slaughter.  

She is entitled to her beliefs, but she isn’t entitled to bring those beliefs into the classroom.  No teacher is.  What really kills me is the people who were at this meeting supporting her.  

“It is teaching children at a tender age one of the most valuable lessons that they need to absorb in order to mature into adults who sympathize with the plight of their fellow human beings,”

It goes on:

“The lesson that was taught through this project is that in order for society to be peaceful and just, we must care about or reach out to those members of society who are most vulnerable, including children, the frail, elderly, the sick and disabled, the poor and, yes, even prisoners.”

What about the family of the dead officer?  Don’t they deserve someone to reach out to them as well?  What about the compassion for the young woman who had to go the hospital in very early hours of the morning to see her husband with a gunshot wound to his face?  A wound that was done at very close range and literally blew most of his head off.  Where is the compassion for a woman who didn’t have her happily ever after simply because her husband was doing his job?  A car was driving down the wrong way on a one-way street so he pulled it over.  He didn’t pull that car over because the driver was black.  He pulled it over because is was posing a safety hazard and violated the law.  She has lived her life without the man she loved enough to marry and pledge the rest of her life to.  

“We are here tonight because Marylin Zuniga is our hero,” Larry Hamm, chairman of the People’s Organization for Progress, said to the board members. “We ask that you restore her to her job and let her continue to teach the compassion that our children need to learn.”

Sorry to tell you Mr. Hamm, that isn’t her job.  Teaching compassion is the job of the parent.  Her job is to teach children how to think for themselves, not what to think.  Did she go over the evidence of the case?  Did she tell these students that this man has had two trials and numerous hearings and the best the defense can come up with is that it was a racist police force that sent an innocent man to jail because he was black and a political activist?  If not, that isn’t compassion, that is indoctrination.  There are two sides to this story.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I think this way beyond what a third-grader should be taught in a classroom.  But the point is still the same.  

Yes Ms. Zuniga should lose her job.  She wasn’t doing her job.  She was making political points in a classroom.  That is a job of an activist, not an educator.  She should lose her job the same way the teacher who went an anti-Obama rant should lose hers.  You are not there to push your point of view.  You are there to help them develop their own point of view.  

If you have any doubts that she is an activist her tweet that caused this uproar says it all:

Just dropped off these letters to comrade Johanna Fernandez. My 3rd graders wrote to Mumia to lift up his spirits as he is ill. #freemumia

Comrade?  Oh yeah, she doesn’t have an agenda.   

The part I think I like best about this whole thing is this:

“In April, I mentioned to my students that Mumia was very ill and they told me they would like to write ‘get well’ letters to Mumia,”

That’s right, lets throw the eight-year-olds under the bus.  

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Michelle Obama’s Message to the Black Community – Education Is Not “Acting White”

It is rare, but I happen to agree with Michelle Obama on something.  Over the weekend she gave a commencement speech at a historically black college and during this speech she said:

“reject the slander that a black child with a book is trying to act white.”

There was a time in my life that I wouldn’t believe that this was so widespread of a belief in the black community.  But that naiveté is long gone.  I have done some volunteer work with the scholarship program in Washington, D.C..  It is basically a voucher program that allows low-income families to apply for money to be used at the school of their choice.  The forms can be a little overwhelming, so I would help parents fill out the forms for the application.  I also did outreach to get as many as possible to apply.  During this outreach I got a little education of my own.  This is a common theme among the inner city blacks, at least in D.C..  I heard this mantra over and over again.   I also heard far too often that learning how to fight wouldn’t happen in those “white schools”.  Sadly, that is true story.

What exactly is “acting white” supposed to mean anyway?  Why would getting an education that can lift your child out of poverty and a life of low earning jobs a bad thing?  Every one of the parents I spoke with were living in low-income, high crime areas of The District.  They have lived the life of not having enough money to get their children into a neighborhood that would provide them a better school and reduce the amount of violence around them.  I went into doing this work thinking every parent would jump at the chance to get some help for their child. Wrong.

Education is an issue that I feel very strongly about.  Every child in this country deserves a quality education; regardless of the income of their parents.  Sadly, when you are living in low-income areas, the public schools are failing your children.  A lack of a good education leads to all kinds of social ills throughout your life and in many instances leads to a life dependent on government subsidies just to survive.  It also costs the taxpayers a great deal of money when you start looking at the rates of incarceration among people who don’t finish high school.  They are far less likely to add to the economy; actually they become a drain to tax payers.  From a human point of view it is a difficult life to lead.

It has also been shown that pay disparities between blacks and whites disappear within one generation.  A black person who finishes two-year of college will have children that makes just as much as their white counterparts.  This is among one of the chief complaints among “civil rights” leaders.  Well, here is a your solution.  Yet, this is something that is rarely, if ever, spoken about by these race hustlers.  They just talk about all that is wrong, but rarely every talk about the ‘unspeakable”.  The apathy in the black community that has haunted far too many and allows generation after generation to live a life of poverty need to hear this message.  You can lift yourself and your family out of poverty by getting yourself an education.

She went on:

“Today, more than 150 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, more than 50 years after the end of ‘separate but equal,’ when it comes to getting an education, too many of our young people just can’t be bothered,” she said.

“Today, instead of walking miles every day to school, they’re sitting on couches for hours, playing video games, watching TV. Instead of dreaming of being a teacher or a lawyer or a business leader, they’re fantasizing about being a baller or a rapper,” Obama kept going. “Right now, one in three African American students are dropping out of high school, only one in five African Americans between the ages of 25 and 29 has gotten a college degree.”

This is something that the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton don’t understand.  They continue to hold onto the belief that somehow only access to the same public schools that whites go to is enough.  The evidence that clearly isn’t true sadly is the many inner city black youths who are being robbed of a decent education.  This is demonstrated quite clearly when the NAACP sued the City of New York to keep the worst performing school in the country open.  That incident also clearly demonstrated how hypocritical they truly are about the issue.  The lawyer for the NAACP that filed the lawsuit sends her daughter to boarding school in New Hampshire.  If you are stunned by that, you really shouldn’t be.  It is par for the course.  Education for me, but not for thee seems to be mantra of the race hustlers that have money.  Letting those poor kids stay in the under performing schools is perfectly fine, as long as it isn’t their children.

I have waited four long years for the Obama family to make these type of statements.  While I truly believe that singling out people by race is a bad thing, I also truly believe that with the type of platform that they have it is a crying shame that they have not used it more effectively to reach those in the black community.  Simply being president and first lady isn’t enough.  The message must be that you too, with an education, can accomplish what we have accomplished.  You too can make it to Harvard and Princeton if you work hard.  You too can lift your families to greater heights.  I also feel that they need to talk about the family dinner table and the importance of fathers in the home and being around to raise your children.  While I have heard it from him, it isn’t nearly often enough.  Every study shows that having a father around increases grades, decreases drug use, and makes the possibility of that child growing up in poverty that much less.  In fact, the percentage that lift themselves out of poverty is more than 70% when three simple things are done, finishing high school, not marrying before the age of 21, and not having children out-of-wedlock.  This study was also confirmed by a left leaning think tank that tried to prove it wrong.

I will always give credit where credit is due.  I want to hear more of this from Michelle Obama.  I also would like other leaders in the black community to follow her lead.  Lets talk about some of the uncomfortable truths, that sometimes blacks are their own worst enemies.  Believing that getting an education is “white” then getting ahead will be nearly impossible.  The choice is yours black community, the choice is yours.

Reason 14,982 To Home School – “Boyd Bucks” & Bathroom Breaks

A first grader in Irving Texas wet his pants in school.  It probably isn’t all that unusual of occurence for first graders, they sometimes still have accidents.  But this little boy didn’t have an accident.  He didn’t have “Boyd Bucks” that allowed him to use the bathroom when he needed to go.   These “Boyd Bucks” are earned from the teacher as rewards for good behavior, and two are needed to use the facilities during an “unscheduled” bathroom break.

Scheduled bathroom breaks?  Seriously?  What is this jail?  I mean a first grader sometimes will still have accidents even though they have developed bladder control.  I have worked retail on and off over the years as a way to make extra money, and even in that environment, I could use the lady’s room when I needed to.  I didn’t have to wait until it was scheduled.

This is a first year teacher, who I guess is trying to show children that good behavior has benefits.  Well, yes it does.  But A. you shouldn’t be getting a “prize” for doing what you are supposed to be doing, and B. it shouldn’t include emptying your bladder when it is full.

The poor boy made his way home that day and explained to his mother in tears why he wet pants.  I am sure that was a humiliating experience for him.  First he had to deal with walking around with urine in his clothing for the balance of the day, and he was, I am, sure embarrassed to explain this to his mother.  Most children at that age are very eager to be “big boy”.  Peeing in your pants is not seen as an activity that adults partake in.

The mother comforted her son as best as she could, then went to have a little discussion with teacher.  The teacher then told her she would give her son an exception to the “Boyd Bucks” rules to use the bathroom.   After this incident she was still planning on charging children to pee.  The mother pushed the teacher and said that isn’t good enough and that all children should be allowed to use the bathroom when they have to go.

Granted I am sure that many kids use the bathroom as an excuse to get out of doing some work, but generally speaking first graders are very eager to learn.  They are like sponges at that age, just absorbing everything around them.  So I doubt this a huge problem in the first grade, but I am willing to admit I could be wrong about that.  But another thing this teacher is not taking into account is the embarrassment she caused this little boy.  Do you think that other 6 and 7 year olds are not going to pick on him and call him pissy pants?

I have experience with this topic, sadly.  When I was young I had to have three surgeries on my urinary track, I had many problems and not being able to hold it was a real issue for me.  You smell and your clothing doesn’t dry in a minute.  This little boy will be picked about something that was in the teacher’s control to prevent.

The school administration has told the teacher that she can no longer use  the “Boyd Bucks”  system to use the bathroom.  But the system will continue.

My question is what else do you need “Boyd Bucks” to do? The head spins just thinking about it.

You Have a Headache? Too Bad. Oh, You Need Morning After Pill, No Problem. – NYC City Schools Give out Plan B Without Parental Consent

As unbelievable as this sounds, it is true.  If you a high school student in New York City you will be given nothing to help you with a headache, but you can be given the morning after pill.  Your daughter can also get an injection of birth control that will last for three months.  New York City also does hand out free condoms as well.

Birth control pills can cause hypertension and stroke.  Are these girls being given a full exam before these are administered?  Are they being monitored by an actual doctor?

About 28 percent of city students entering ninth grade have already had sex, and more than half are sexually active before completing high school, according to city data.

My heart just breaks for these girls.  I remember when I was that age I knew only girl who was sexually active and nearly everyone had a name for her.   I was 13 when I started high school.  It is heartbreaking to me that girls that young are already engaging in an activity that they do not have the maturity to understand.  They are looking for love in all the wrong places.

One teacher says:

Teacher Rosa Chavez applauded CATCH, saying she had two pregnant students last year. Getting knocked up, she said, “is not cool and not accepted among peers.”

But Chavez worries that giving girls Plan B emergency contraception might encourage careless sex.

Gee, ya think?  Of course it gives girls the idea that they don’t have to be responsible for their actions, someone else will help them take care of it later.

“We can’t give out a Tylenol without a doctor’ s order,” said a school staffer. “Why should we give out hormonal preparations with far more serious possible side effects, such as blood clots and hypertension?”

Here we are America, the public school system has decided that they can give your children hormones without your consent.  While they do offer an opt-out plan:

But sophomore Annette Palacios, 15, outside the school with her mom, said parents should give consent in case their children are “allergic” to the drugs.

“Girls shouldn’t be sexually active at that age,” she added.

Her mom, Pania, complained that she got no opt-out letter — and does not want Annette to secretly get Plan B or birth-control pills from the nurse.

You want your food cooked with salt?  Nope.  You want to eat something that contains trans fats?  Nope.  You want a Big Gulp?  Forgetaboutit.  Birth control and Plan B pills without parental consent?  Perfectly acceptable.

It is a brave new world, America.

Rahm Emanuel Now in the Crosshairs – Closing of Under Performing Public Schools Raises the Hackles of Jesse Jackson

Rahm Emanuel is about to experience for himself that the racebaiters of the world don’t care about your politics.  He is planning on closing 17 poorly performing public schools.  Not something that is sitting well with the likes of Jesse Jackson.

“I cannot wait another year and allow a child to be caught in a school system that, for five years running, has been on the watch list or the troubled list with no prospect of getting off of it. … Nothing to me is worse in the sense of discrimination than leaving kids in a system that, year-in-and-year-out, has been scored as failing.”

Not that you are apt to hear me say this often, but he is right.  These schools need to be closed and these kids have the right to get a better quality education.  Jackson on the other hand is calling it:

“educational apartheid,”

No, Mr. Jackson apartheid is keeping these black children in a failing school that gives them little to chance of becoming a productive adult.  It would be apartheid to keep them there.  Jackson is under the impression that just spending more money will solve the problems.  Chicago spends more money per pupil then they do for the students in the public school system where I live.  We have a 90% on time graduation rate and almost 92% rate of students going onto a post-secondary education.  The problems go beyond money.

Someone actually took the time to write down the costs associated with the low graduation rates for the city of Chicago (which is just above 50%) and the results of what it costs the community are staggering:

15% of high school dropouts were in the jail system in the year 2010-2011 overall and rise to 25% for blacks.  More than 50% of the prison population in Illinois are high school dropouts.

Nearly 48% of 18 to 64-year-old high-school dropouts in Chicago did not work even one week last year. The statewide number, 42%, is not much better and is four times higher than the figure of those with bachelor’s or higher degrees.

If those numbers are not enough:

The study, based on U.S. Census data, suggests that dropouts nationally will be a net drain on the government, collecting an average of $70,850 more in benefits like food stamps in their lifetimes than they’ll pay in taxes. In comparison, the typical high-school grad will make a net positive contribution of $236,060.

About 33% of dropouts will collect food stamps, twice the share of graduates, and fewer than half will own a home. And such bleak figures tend to be passed down to their children.

“Children living in families headed by high-school dropouts face a substantially above average probability of encountering cognitive, health, housing adequacy and nutrition problems that will limit their future, their chances of securing a bachelor’s degree by their mid-20s are close to zero.”

Now, I don’t believe that every person should go to college.  Some people are not cut out for it and they would prefer to do jobs that don’t require a college degree.  But they will still usually need some sort of training or education in order to find a job that will allow them to live above the poverty line.  While that is not true in all cases, it is true in many.

So it seems that Jesse Jackson would prefer that these kids just stay in these schools, increase the odds of them dropping out and have a much harder time leading lives that will bring more financially security to them.   He plans on filing a lawsuit to stop the closing of these schools.

There are no words for the stupidity of what Jesse Jackson is doing.  People need to wake up and realize that the likes of Jesse Jackson has lost all relevance and his ideas of what constitutes fairness not only are outdated but dangerous to the community that he says he is trying to help.

This report details the costs to society as a whole in just one state.  multiply this by 50% and it is not hard to see why we are broke.  Our broken educational system is not just drain on us financially, it is becoming a national security issue.  It was just 40 years ago that we had the highest rates of high school and college graduates in the world.  We now rank at 21st.  That is how far we have fallen is such a short time.

Again, you not likely to see this again real soon – Kudos to Mayor Emanuel for having the courage to take on the unions and Jesse Jackson to do what is right for children instead of what is easy.

Homeschooling Reaching the Black Communities

A dirty little secret that you won’t find out about from the U.S. media (shocker, I know) is that more and more black families are turning to home schooling in an attempt to give their children the education that they deserve.  While I am sure it is very difficult in the more urban areas where the public schools are especially atrocious, it is still a growing trend.  Another thing many are probably not aware of the existence of is a homeschool cooperative dedicated to the black community.

 Monica Utsey, who runs a home schooling co-operative for African American children in Washington DC, says: “African-American mothers, especially those who have boys, have a lot of trouble in the school system. The way the classroom is designed is more conducive for girls.”

For her, though, the main motivation was cultural – she wanted her sons to learn about their African roots and not “to believe that their history begins with slavery”

Another words, she doesn’t want her sons to be taught that they are victims who have no real chance of succeeding because of a racist society that is America.  Derrick Bell will be rolling over in his grave.  How will the left indoctrinate these young sons who are taught they are equal human beings and have the same opportunities that their white counterparts have, they just have to work for it? Oh Al Sharpton, watch out, you may not be able to make a living peddling fear anymore.

It is true that homeschooling is not something that will work for every family.  Some parents don’t have the discipline, the qualifications, and some children do well in a public school environment.  I know someone who has one child in public school and homeschools the other.  Her son was just not doing well in school and his teachers were not communicating that to them.  They pulled him out and have him at home.  She works full-time, but works from home most of the time.  He does much of his school work online and if she happens to be away from home she can log in and watch his progress.  She told me the difference is night and day; he is learning –eager even–and is much happier.  Her daughter has excelled in the public school and is a very social young lady, homeschooling wouldn’t suit her personality.  It is a situation that works for their family.  It is the essence of choice.  Not every parent who has that choice will pull their children out of public school.

Of course that destroys the narrative that the public school system will crumble.  More homeschooling will make the public school system better.  Competition is a good thing.  If they need to compete for the dollars they make sure that they are giving an added benefit to the parents who are making that choice.  One of the things you hear unions complain about all the time is the fact that the class sizes are too large (they are right, they are in most cases) this will also help with this problem.  The teachers will have smaller classes and will be able to give more attention to the individual students.

Another topic that has come up with these homeschoolers is how they resent that teachers now are only teaching to the test (Thanks Sen. Kennedy and President Bush).  The evil of No Child Left Behind has left children behind.  The school systems are under so much financial pressure to keep and/or improve test scores that the joy of learning has been taken out of the equation.  I am sure it is no joy for the teachers either.  But students are suffering because of this piece of lousy legislation.  Parents are seeing for themselves that their kids are losing motivation:

It was not the violence, or even the fact that he was being bullied, that finally led to the decision to remove Copeland from his public school in what she describes as a “really bad area” of Washington DC, but the fact that he was “losing his love of learning”.

Of course this little boy was learning his love of learning – which by the way, is innate in a child – if he is being bullied, seeing violence, and being taught only to a standardized test.

The shift to homeschooling has been much slower for the black community than for the white.  They are under even more pressure to keep pretending that the public school system has their child’s best interests at heart:

“For the African-American community there was a huge amount of pressure against it, because in America, the grandparents of today’s home-schooled children fought for desegregation of schools. They thought, ‘The public schools are going to save us,'” he says.

But Dr Ray, who regularly interviews black home-schoolers as part of his research, says attitudes are changing fast – and it’s also a lot easier today for black families to try it than it was 20 years ago, he points out.

Joyce Burges, co-founder of National Black Home Educators, who home-schooled all five of her children, aged 16 to 35, says the practice is growing “exponentially” in the African American community.

“The failings of public schools have caused all of us, whether we are white or black, to come up with creative ideas about how we can educate children.

It is way past time that the black community push back and stop accepting the failing status quo that has become our public school system and take matters into their own hands.  Stop listening to the stories of the past generation that believed that it was going to be public schools that solved the ills of the black community.  Access is meaningless if the school is failing.  Your children will be much better off for it.

H/T Jammie Wearing Fool