Sunday, June 23, 2013

Honestly, I cannot comprehend the city councilor’s reasoning.

Dear City Councilors,

I am an elementary art teacher in our district. Honestly, I cannot comprehend the city councilor’s reasoning.  Our schools are suffering from inept financial management that was not caused by the New Bedford teachers or their students. Yet we still have to bear the brunt of someone’s incompetence.  I guess when you have little knowledge of what it actually takes to teach children, your mind set is geared toward assumptions.  I will not bring up that old adage.

Place yourselves in our shoes for one day. This is what you will experience: huge class sizes, teaching without books, discipline problems, buying our own supplies, children with learning difficulties, minimal planning time, working at home until all hoursplanning for the next day, the Arts-once every two weeks for 45 minutes! Are you kidding me?   New Bedford is the only district that provides so little art/ music time for their students. How do you expect the children of New Bedford to succeed?

It has been proven countless times, when the students experience a lot of the Arts-all students, not a chosen few, Mcas scores are raised because the child’s critical thinking abilities improve. In the course of creating a piece of art, children explore many different possible solutions to any given problem.  These choices demonstrate the child’s insight and artistry. So many of my students are visual thinkers and need the arts to feel successful.  Art represents a child’s perception of his world. He is showing us what he feels, thinks and sees. The art piece becomes an extension of that child.  How can you take this power away from our students?  

Why not reconsider the Innovative school proposal at this time? It just doesn’t make sense to fund a school that takes a huge amount of funds off the New Bedford school’s budget when so many teachers will lose their jobs.  This is one of the blunders I was referring to earlier in this letter.  Why not just hire more music and art teachers so all children may benefit equally? I’m sure it would be more cost efficient. Your actions make me think you may want this district to become a level 4. Prove us wrong and do not decimate our school district any further.

“Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength for our nation.”   John F. Kennedy

 

Please reconsider your actions.


Sheila Sweeney Medeiros

7 comments:

mattiegirl said...


Great letter Sheila. I too am in the "trenches". Most of our day is spent teaching to a test. Soon History will be considered not needed also. Along with MCAS, data collection is all that seems to take precedent. Pre-test, Post-Test, Benchmarks, Assessments. My students are tested-out! Where's the fun in education. Where are we headed? So demoralizing.

Anonymous said...

I'm sick of this baloney on the part of politicians. We've got several on the school committee that don't know what their primary function is. We've got a mayor and city counselors playing chicken with the lives of the people of New Bedford. I've had enough! I vow to vote each and every one of you out of office.

Anonymous said...

We just need to remember when it's time to vote, we vote them out!

Anonymous said...

Not all of the City Council are the blame for the debacle that we are presently engulfed in. When it came time to speak out, on the record, Henry Bousquet (Ward 3) spoke out. When the madness of hitting the district NEXT year with an additional budget cut, Joe Lopes (Ward 6),along with Henry Bousquet (Ward 3) said "No". While we have these two friends in the city council, lets not kick them in a blanketed attempt to rid the city and district of its inept leadership. Besides, aren't the citizens of New Bedford complacent in this as well? Have they ever taken the time to see what their city leaders are about? If they had, Marlene Pollack and Jack Livermento would never have been elected in the first place, let alone re-elected. We need to band together and get involved in informing the citizens what is elcted officials stand for and what they're about. After all , aren't we teachers?

Anonymous said...

I could not have said it better myself. I might have added that the art, music and physical education teachers are the teachers who not only get little planning time, but with the exception of Friday afternoons, they get no other planning time to speak of. Where are our students headed? In a city with leaders like these, they are headed to destruction!!!

Anonymous said...

This is true!

Anonymous said...

This is true!