Return Tiffani Eaton to Her Classroom Immediately!

The Petition plea on the www.change.org website reads:

Return Tiffany Eaton to the classroom!

This teacher did what she could to protect the students both fighting and not. She did not have proper equipment to call for security nor can she leave students alone. This teacher had no reason to be fired… These students should stay home if they cannot act like law abiding citizens. Please help spread the word so she can get her job back.

Here is the link to the story and video:

http://www.myfoxdetroit.com/story/25435501/detroit-teacher-fired-after-breaking-up-fight-with-broom ;

Here is the link to the petition: (See below under Comments for the “live” link)

https://www.change.org/petitions/lamar-lemmons-give-this-teacher-her-job-back

Here is the message of the Petition itself:

To:
LaMar Lemmons, President At-Large: Detroit Board of Education

Tiffani Eaton didn’t deserve to be fired, she did what she could to protect all the students in her classroom. Things could have got even more out of control between those boys and she stepped in before that could happen. Give this teacher her job back! Hold those students accountable for their behaviors.

Sincerely,

[Your name]

I signed the petition and left the following response:

I grew up in the Pershing High School region: it was my neighborhood high school. I taught high school in Detroit and served as the DFT Union Representative at two high schools. When the protection of the union is lost, the carefully defined rights to due process are lost also. This beginning teacher most certainly should not be fired. As an experienced teacher I faced the same problems when I taught in Detroit in my own classroom. Where there is no penalty, there is no law. I found a solution that worked miracles in changing the lives of my students for the better. Unfortunately, no one in authority in the state of Michigan or the Detroit school district has ever consulted me, though I am well known to the school district administration, the DFT, and the state department of education. I have posted the solution I discovered on the Internet at two of my websites, where the information is there for free. The school needs help. The students need help. I am thankful so many have come to the support of this teacher.

My Further Comments:

The trouble is, the people who have the experience and the expertise to solve this problem are almost never consulted.

Solutions that work are posted in my online lesson plans at www.readingsteps.com, where I share my material for free. Any teacher, administrator, or school district is welcome to make use of the procedures I have developed. They really do work.

Here at www.realbiblestudy.com I have written of these matters in several articles posted in the category to the right under Education Issues.

The solutions, in brief, include:

(1) Teach students how to set goals for themselves

Any teacher can surely have students write a composition about themselves at the start of the semester. Reading these compositions will help the teacher get better acquainted with each student.

I assigned my students a composition where students wrote about what they wanted to do after they finished high school. Since many students need much encouragement and instruction in order to write a composition, I set up a number of variations for this assignment. I had a short questionnaire where students could simply finish the furnished sentences already started by using their own words. I had additional options at increasing levels of sophistication for students to make use of as they became better at writing. Students loved answering questions about themselves and their plans.

I conducted a class discussion, writing the results on the blackboard, about how each student wanted to live when they finished school. What kind of car did they wish to have? Where would they live? How much rent would they have to pay? What did they plan to eat? How much would it cost to eat what they planned to eat? By the time the period was over, with the students’ help, a rather realistic budget was posted before their very eyes that gave them their own statement of how they wanted to live and what it would cost per month. Then we figured out how much pay they needed per hour to earn enough to meet that budget. Suddenly it dawned on them that if they really planned to get anywhere, they had no time to just fool around. Getting ready for life in the real world outside school was utterly important to reach any kind of meaningful and satisfying goals.

To make a long story short, my students became most interested and were highly motivated in learning what they needed to know to get where they wanted to go. Hall wandering, skipping classes, skipping school, no longer made any sense at all economically.

(2) Administrators need to learn to listen effectively to experienced teachers

Administrators, take notice. Teachers ought to be free to teach what their specific students need to know. The idea that every student has to be on the same page the same day as every other student in the school for that class, and that class for that school district, just so if students frequently move they won’t be “lost” in a new school, is nonsense. Top-down lesson planning directed by the school district curriculum supervisors arranged like a “bible” that every teacher must follow are likewise nonsense. Very poor ideas like those need to be replaced by the better ideas that work.

(3) Foundational principles behind successful teaching and learning

When I began teaching, my goal was to help each student learn as much as they possibly could. No two students are ever exactly alike. I worked to individualize my instruction to match the needs, interests, and abilities of each student as closely as possible.

To raise student achievement levels, I developed assignments in what I call learning ladders. I start students at the easier level, and let them progress through gradually increasing levels of difficulty until they reached advanced levels even beyond their designated grade level. This kind of instruction cannot be done with “lock-step,” “top-down,” “one-size fits all” mandated lesson plans and lesson plan formats.

(4) Students learn to write by writing.

(5) Students learn to read by reading.

When students are successful in an assignment, they enjoy doing what they are doing.

(6) Address the matter of character education directly and meaningfully

Students need to be guided in their personal values and coping skills. I addressed these most important matters in my classroom by posting a carefully chosen proverb or quotation each day. Students were required in my classroom to keep a copy of the quotations I posted. Once a week I assigned students to select one of that week’s quotations and make it the basis of a “Proverb Application Composition.” I furnished guide questions which students could follow if they needed support to formulate their response to the chosen quotation. My students told me that this assignment changed their lives. They claimed it turned their lives around for the better.

(7) Evidence that these ideas do in fact work

On career day, speakers came to each classroom and made a presentation to the class. Perhaps the last year I taught, a college admissions officer from Almont College visited my classroom. He told me he had never met a group of classes and students like those he spoke to in my classes that day. He was impressed that my students knew where they were going and they knew how they were going to get there, and were well-mannered and most attentive.

I’ve had similar reaction from other visitors to my classroom through the years.

Now I have shared just a little of the what needs to be done and how to do it that will turn students around in a positive direction in each classroom.

Don’t tell me I am out of touch with students and the Black Community. Nonsense. I lived and taught in that community for longer than many of the parents and certainly their children/students have been alive. I was asked to teach the “failure classes” because none of the other teachers wanted to have to put up with those classes. It did not take long for the administration and counselors as well as athletic coaches to figure out that I was successful with these students. I was sometimes told by my administrators that I should not be surprised or disappointed if most of my students were absent frequently. I was told that most likely most of them would drop out before the school year was over. That did not happen. Most of my students did very well, had good attendance, closed the achievement gap, and graduated and went on to college. These were students at neighborhood high schools in Detroit (Southeastern High School and Denby High School) where I taught after leaving my first high school teaching position at Cass Technical High School.

My Closing Thoughts:

It is stated in the video on www.myfoxdetroit.com (I give the live link in the first comment below) that Tiffani Eaton was the fifth classroom teacher assigned to that class this school year.

I am not on the scene, so there may be many facts I am not aware of that pertain to this situation at Pershing High School. But I have taught many years in the Detroit Public School System, so I believe my judgments regarding the situation are correct.

The fault lies with the administration, hands down. Administrators are charged with the authority and duty of seeing to it that the school is a safe learning environment for both teachers and students. If Tiffany Eaton is the fifth teacher assigned to the class involved, there is something very wrong with how the school is being led by its administrative team.

The administration is at fault for not making absolutely sure that teachers have a safe way to get in touch with the administrators and the security personnel at the school immediately when such emergency situations develop in the classroom. It is stated in the sources I have cited that Tiffany had a walkie talkie or whatever communication device provided for her use but it did not work. Schools have an intercom system that can be accessed in each classroom. Apparently that system was not available to Tiffany. When security staff are a good distance from the teacher’s classroom, clearly they are of no direct help when they are too far away to be reached by the teacher.

Like usual, mistakes by administrators contribute to the problems teachers face every day in the classroom. My experience with both local and region administrators in Detroit highlighted that problem frequently. There should not be an “adversarial” relationship between teachers and administrators. Administrators are there to back the teacher, to facilitate what the teacher is there to do, not blame teachers for what is beyond their control. What is beyond a teacher’s control and authority to act is surely outside their responsibility.

Administrators at Pershing High School and those in authority above them are most assuredly morally and ethically responsible to provide full due process rights for Tiffany Eaton. Certainly they have been very quick to fire a teacher. What is good for the goose is good for the gander. The administrators responsible for this terrible decision and action on their part need to be taught a lesson by having the tables turned on them. They need to be fired for their very wrong response to this event unless they promptly correct their action.

Good administrators learn from events such as this. They learn to ask the right questions, instead of placing blame before all the facts are in and duly considered. If they would ask the right questions, they would seek to determine what changes they need to make so such events do not take place like this again, and if they do take place, learn to use better judgment than to fire the teacher.

Since when is it just to peremptorily fire a teacher who has no doubt gone through a great effort and expense to become a teacher on the basis of just one incident, but the students get a mere 10-day suspension from school?

The student responsible does not necessarily need a suspension. The student needs help along the lines I have suggested above like the instruction I gave my students to avoid having the student make such a mistake in judgment. From what I saw in the video, not only the student but his mother needs help as well. Parents should not be supporting the wrong behavior of their student, ever.

The evidence would suggest that since the educational program at Pershing High School is designed to help educate the bottom 5% of the students in the Detroit district, the student in this incident is very likely below grade level in reading achievement. I developed an unobtrusive but very effective means to address this problem in my classroom. Since there were not enough textbooks, and inadequate materials for reading instruction available to me as a new teacher, I wrote my own self-instructional reading program which has helped many students of all grade levels and even adult learners over the years since I first devised it. The equivalent of what I wrote for my classroom needs to be made available to parents and teachers as needed. Many of the students who “act out” in the classroom do so because they are highly frustrated at their lack of success in the classroom. That lack of success is almost always evidence of a reading problem waiting to be remedied.