Bredesen meets with teachers to discuss future funding
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Their suggestions Tuesday ranged from the financially unlikely — buy all students a laptop computer, for one — to the Holy Grail of getting parents more involved.
On a more practical note, Bredesen asked the teachers where they would put the next dollar of state funding. Nearly all of them suggested some variation on the theme of teaching students to read well and as early as possible. And it wasn’t just the elementary school teachers.
‘I teach middle school math and my students struggle every day picking out the key words in problems,’ said Michael Carter of Cheatham County Middle School. ‘A lot of the time they’ll put away the word problems because they’re intimidated by the reading.’
Jeff Morris, a science teacher at Milan High School, answered: ‘I’m a high school teacher but I’d say preschool. If they can’t read when we get them it’s really sad. They not only don’t learn but they make trouble. If they can’t make a difference one way they make it another.’
Bredesen said afterward he was surprised at the support for pre-K or elementary programs from the teachers in later grades.
‘The emphasis on reading across the board underlined it for me as something worth working on,’ he said.
Bredesen told the teachers he would love to see a comprehensive pre-K program in the future, ‘especially if the lottery continues to go so well.’
He asked what pre-K should teach and whether it should be academically or socially oriented, and received a mixed bag of answers.
‘Developmentally appropriate programs will do both,’ said Judy McDonald, a kindergarten teacher at Waynesboro Elementary School. ‘Some will need the socialization first and then go more toward academics.’
Bredesen stressed two other aspects of his budget: to enhance the use of technology and to develop programs to challenge the brightest students.
He noted $2 million was put into the budget for a technology initiative and said he hopes it can be used ‘to directly support the curriculum we have here in Tennessee, tailored to specific items.’ Bredesen said he especially hopes it will be useful in schools struggling to meet the requirements of the federal No Child Left Behind act.
‘Am I dreaming?’ he asked.
Not entirely, the teachers said, but there are some problems. Teachers need to be trained in how best to use new equipment or it mostly gathers dust.
‘In the business world the breakdown between hardware, software and training is about a third each,’ Bredesen agreed. ‘In the schools it’s more like 80-20-0.’
Teachers supported the notion that children raised on video games often respond better to teaching tools that look similar to the games.
Bredesen also noted he added money to the budget to return the Governor’s Schools, intensive summer training in advanced subjects for high school juniors, to six weeks instead of four.
‘This is a personal thing for me,’ Bredesen said, recalling a summer physics course at Cornell University he took while in high school ‘that changed my life.’
He also said he has instructed Education Commissioner Lana Seivers to ‘make the courses harder.’
‘I don’t want to forget the other children. There are probably a lot of students out there making Bs who could be making As,’ the governor said.
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On the Net:
Tennessee Department of Education: http://www.state.tn.us/education