Teaching Profession

The focus of this blog is environmental geography, broadly conceived. As a teacher and a teacher of teachers, however, I include occasional observations about the noble but much-maligned profession.

Today's Letters to the Editor in the Boston Globe included an excellent letter from retired teacher David Amirault. I am taking the liberty of including the full text, since letters often disappear from news sites after a while, and I consider this a "keeper." 

I CAN’T imagine any reputable airline asking pilots to help out at the ticket counter or assist in serving drinks. I’ve never heard of a hospital assigning physicians to empty wastebaskets or provide building security between appointments.
Yet every day we see teachers heading out to recess or bus duty, keeping order in the cafeteria, and policing corridors and bathrooms. Maybe this model made sense at one time, but it doesn’t take an honor student to see something wrong with the current picture.
While the movers and shakers of school reform expect ever-increasing student test scores and seem to value linking teacher pay to “merit’’ (whatever that is), then isn’t it time to look seriously at the efficiency of how we use a teacher’s time?
Expectations for teachers in 2011 should include a significant reduction in housekeeping tasks. Planning, conferring, and research during non-instructional time seem more likely to aid teachers in helping kids than having to deal with the daily hassles of nonprofessional duties.
David Amirault Amesbury 

At a time when professional educators are constantly buffeted by self-appointed experts, many of whom seek positions of management over public servants, even though they disdain public service. Small-government zealots insist on "accountability" and then create large-government bureaucracies in vain attempts to measure the unmeasurable.

Some of the online comments are generally supportive and offer a few interesting considerations. For example, in small markets, airline pilots do take on more mundane tasks. Some of the non-classroom duties do also provide teachable moments. As someone who spends a lot of time in schools of all sizes, I think scale matters. In some schools, lunch or bus duty is large-scale, rushed, and chaotic, and should be treated as a specialty of its own. If time and space allow for more leisurely lunches and transition times, classroom teachers may well make constructive use of the time.

The key is to respect both the classroom professionals who need time for preparation, research, reflection, and renewal and the work of people who are sometimes called "paraprofessionals" and whose contributions are equally important to productive learning environments.

The letter also reminds me of other comparisons I make between educators and other professionals. Extreme caution with respect to student privacy, for example, puts professors in the role of physicians who are not given a patient's file. Cavalier administrations that exclude faculty from policy decisions put professors in the role of law partners whose firm has been taken over by an outside agency.

Teachers whose preparation time is not valued are like actors given no time for rehearsal. Jack Nicholson is among Hollywood's most prolific actors (and one of my favorites). His filmography lists "only" 75 credits over a 50-year period, and even when he stars, he is "only" acting about half of the running time of each film. Would anybody seriously argue, though, that Jack works only an hour or two a year?

Somaliland Neighborhood Watch

Kabir Dhanji for NPR

As even casual news listeners know by now, several locational factors combine to make Somalia the world headquarters of piracy on the high seas. Conditions of health, education, and poverty are so severe and so difficult to measure that Somalia does not even have a Human Development Index ranking. That misery is common on a point of land situated near one of the world's most important sea lanes has resulted in piracy becoming a common way of life, and in some communities harboring pirates because of the riches their ransoms can bring. And although the results are sometimes violent, many shipping firms and their insurers treat the payments as a cost of doing business, amortized over billions of dollars worth of goods. (Some individual ships carry enough cargo to make a truck caravan 200 miles long, so even a $9,000,000 ransom can be absorbed from time to time.)

Somalia is, in many ways, the razor's edge of the growing global wealth gap.

Having posted on piracy a few times before, I was not really planning to do so again, until I heard two of the three parts of an NPR series on efforts to curb Somaliland. At first I thought -- foolishly -- that a reporter was erroneously using an archaic name for the country. As the report makes clear, however, Somalia barely is a country, but within that country are three distinct regions. Residents of Somaliland, along the north coast, consider it to be a sovereign nation, and are working against pirates along the Gulf of Aden.

As reported by Frank Langfitt, the national identity and sense of duty lead coastal residents to patrol the shore, and a map of pirate attacks does show that activity within the Gulf of Aden is clustered along the coast of Yemen, not Somaliland. According to Norwegian professor Stig Hansen, Somaliland resists the pirate stereotype, and is hoping that their resistance leads of the world to recognize it as an independent nation.

Northern Charm

As we noted in our Celebrating the States blog last year, I was born in that city that President Kennedy dryly noted for its "northern charm" and "southern efficiency." Both of my parents and I were born there because northern Virginia -- then part of the rural South -- in those years had no maternity ward. My younger brother was born in Fairfax just a year after I would, and now the entire region is a model of suburban sprawl and development.

After spending my middle school years in Kansas City, I returned to the DC area, this time in Annapolis, Maryland -- by then the southernmost part of the metropolitan North. It was not until many years later, however, that I actually moved north of the Mason-Dixon line: JFK was speaking both culturally and latitudinally when he placed the capital of the Union in Dixie.

Will Convenience Kill Coffee?

When people find out that I am a coffee enthusiast, they are often led to ask one of a few common questions. The most common used to be, "What do you think of Starbucks?" (I few of my blog posts have mentioned the company in various contexts, but I do not have a single answer.) Almost as common is "What do you think of Dunkin' Donuts?" (Here I have both a smattering of blog posts and a standard answer.)

In recent months, these questions have been replaced by "What do you think of the Keurig?" Initially, I tried to be positive, because Keurig is owned by Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, a growing regional roaster that I believe to be committed to ethical sourcing of coffee. I have met GMCR employees in Nicaragua, and one of my best coffee-farmer friends routinely wears a GMCR hat. (It is not just the hat -- I've met GMCR people in his house.) Besides, the Keurig provides flexibility, and gives people the option of fair-trade coffee at their local hairdresser or garage. What could be wrong with that?

Still, I had misgivings about the waste and the cost. An article on the blog of North Carolina-based Muddy Dog Roasting helped me turn the corner. Muddy Dog argues persuasively that the Keurig could be the beginning of the end for great coffee. I hope this is wrong, but we are moving rapidly beyond the slippery slope, as I am now seeing Dunkin' Donuts and even Folger's in materials from Green Mountain. These are not good signs, especially as the convenience of the machine is lulling people into a willingness to pay $20 to $30 a pound for mediocre or even bad coffee.

NOTE: Right after I posted this in April, an online Keurig retailer offered to commercialize my main coffee page. I would not and could not have done it anyway, but I found it amusing that the offer came right after I had finally come down from my Keurig fence-sitting. More recently, the blogger Caffeinated Calm -- who has considerably more coffee experience than I do -- offered a deeper critique of both Keurig and its parent company.

November 2011 update: Back in March the blog Dear Coffee, I Love you has provided an even more detailed critique, entitled Love Keurig? Nope.

Mapping Japan's Quake Damage

Japan is situated at the convergence of three major tectonic plates, which created the islands themselves and has made Japan and its people accustomed to earthquakes. In fact, Japan is among the countries of the world best prepared for both earthquakes and tsunamis, making the devastation of the 9.0 quake on March 11 all the more shocking. Japan is, of course, also highly dependent on nuclear power for its energy needs, and the unexpected destruction of the Fukushima Daiichi has received much of the worldwide attention in the wake of the disaster.

The New York Times has created a series of interactive maps that include the radiation effects but also remind readers of many other important dimensions of this tragedy. In addition to radiation levels, the maps show where buildings have been destroyed and lives lost, and that the spatial distribution of casualties differs from that of property damage. Another map includes links to selected photographs of the disasters and recovery. Finally, the map of seismic activity (screenshot above) shows the great number of worrisome aftershocks and illustrates the logarithmic nature of the Richter Scale.

Most of the island of Honshu is is in a climatic zone roughly comparable to that of the mid-Atlantic of the United States. This means that people displaced from their homes face early-spring weather conditions that are cold and uncomfortable, even if not life-threatening. See the Sendai forecast for an idea of current conditions, particularly at night.

(See my earlier post on Japan's Global Links for more thoughts on the geographic implications of the March 11 disaster.)

Roosevelt's Tree Army

In my introductory course on environmental geography, I use a text co-authored by my grad-school mentor. One of my favorite parts of Exploitation, Conservation, Preservation is an early chapter that describes pivotal changes in how the United States has related to the environment. Under the heading "Conservation for Economic Recovery," the text describes how the Great Depression created an opening for Franklin Delano Roosevelt to expand federal involvement in the protection of natural resources.

The history web site Mass Moments commemorates FDR's efforts on this date, the anniversary of the first deployment of Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) men in Massachusetts. (They were all men, and despite some rhetorical commitments to the contrary, they were mostly white.) The first group arrived at Fort Devins on this date in 1933. The April 13 article describes the political and economic context of the deployment, along with a lot of operational details I had not known. The scope of FDR's "stimulus package" continues to stand out for both its economic and ecologic effects.

Update on Coffee Figures

Last week I posted 2006 coffee-production figures from FAO, indicating that they were the most recent available. In one sense, this is still correct, since FAO counts production worldwide. A slightly different -- and more recent -- dataset is available from the International Coffee Organization (ICO), which is limited to exporting, member countries. I list the top 20 producers for 2010, according to that list. Browse the entire list for some interesting comparisons over the past five years (some of the ICO statistics are published in units of 1,000 bags, each bag weighing 132 pounds.)

Total production by country in metric tons.

Brazil	2,841,977
Vietnam	1,063,636
Indonesia	561,364
Colombia	531,818
Ethiopia	440,227
India	295,455
Mexico	265,909
Guatemala	236,364
Honduras	227,500
Peru	219,700
Uganda	189,091
Côte d'Ivoire	130,000
Nicaragua	106,364
Costa Rica	83,555
El Salvador	80,659
Papua New Guinea	65,000
Tanzania	63,995
Ecuador	53,182
Kenya	50,227
Thailand	50,227
Cameroon	44,318

Coffee Ranking

Here, for the convenience of anybody curious, is the most comprehensive and most recent list I could find of coffee production, ranked by country. These are 2006 figures from the FAO Statistical Yearbook; figures are in metric tons With 74 countries listed, it includes some very small producers that do not normally show up. I found it as part of my encyclopedia project. I do not want anybody to say we missed a spot!

Brazil	2,573,368
Viet Nam	853,500
Colombia	696,000
Indonesia	652,668
Mexico	310,000
India	274,000
Peru	258,314
Ethiopia	241,482
Guatemala	216,600
Honduras	192,000
Côte d'Ivoire	166,200
Uganda	133,310
Costa Rica	127,000
Philippines	104,093
El Salvador	78,482
Venezuela	74,332
Madagascar	61,635
Nicaragua	55,280
Kenya	48,300
Papua New Guinea	46,900
Thailand	46,873
Cameroon	45,000
Dominican Republic	44,000
Malaysia	40,000
Tanzania, United Republic of	34,300
Congo, Democratic Republic of the	31,960
Ecuador	31,461
Burundi	31,000
Bolivia	27,488
Lao People's Democratic Republic	27,000
China	23,000
Haiti	21,120
Rwanda	21,000
Sierra Leone	18,000
Yemen	17,292
Guinea	16,500
Timor-Leste	14,000
Cuba	13,500
Panama	13,500
Togo	10,100
Sri Lanka	6,460
Nigeria	5,340
Equatorial Guinea	4,500
Zimbabwe	4,500
Zambia	3,900
United States of America	3,311
Myanmar	3,300
Liberia	3,200
Paraguay	3,040
Jamaica	2,700
Central African Republic	2,580
Congo, Republic of	2,000
Angola	1,900
Ghana	1,500
Malawi	1,500
Mozambique	600
Dominica	380
Trinidad and Tobago	350
Cambodia	310
Nepal	300
Belize	250
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines	175
Guyana	150
Gabon	120
Comoros	100
Benin	60
New Caledonia	25
Sao Tome and Principe	20
Tonga	18
French Polynesia	16
Fiji	15
Vanuatu	15
Samoa	8
Suriname	4

Kids Rule

Author Susan Engle recently wrote a column for the New York Times that she begins with the following observations: 

In a speech last week, President Obama said it was unacceptable that “as many as a quarter of American students are not finishing high school.” But our current educational approach doesn’t just fail to prepare teenagers for graduation or for college academics; it fails to prepare them, in a profound way, for adult life.

We want young people to become independent and capable, yet we structure their days to the minute and give them few opportunities to do anything but answer multiple-choice questions, follow instructions and memorize information. 

Sadly, armies of education "reformers" from across our country's ever-narrowing political spectrum (middle-right to far-right on education issues) fail to see the futility of anti-intellectual approaches to teaching. The high-stakes testing industry generates mediocrity and offers a remedy: more high-stakes testing.

Engle's essay -- Let Kids Rule the School -- describes an experiment in which eight public-school students in western Massachusetts were enabled to develop their own curriculum, in which their learning was directed toward questions. They had to figure out how to direct that learning, guided by teachers and advisors, but not spoon-fed answers.

Democracy and Higher Education

As part of the BSU Blogfest in the third week of March, I was among the campus bloggers who responded to a common set of questions throughout five days of blogging. In my responses to questions about leadership (Day 3) and the future of our university (Day 5), I expressed some concerns about the ability of a growing university to live up to rhetorical commitments we have made to meaningful social change.

Subsequently, I was encouraged by a few developments during the fourth week of March. The first of these was the initial meeting of the committee that will be implementing our university's commitment to becoming certified as a Fair Trade University. The committee is led by students and also includes some dedicated members of both the faculty and administration. We agreed not to rush into the effort but to use the process to ensure that the program goes beyond "mere" certification to ensure transformation. We achieved a number of important things for a one-hour meeting. For me the most exciting is that something I call "coffee melt" (an alleged coffee substance made from concentrated robusta) will be disappearing from our campus catering menus. More important than that single step is the sense of common purpose around not only meeting the requirements of certification but also beginning seriously to transform our practices around consumption as a campus.

Later on the day of that committee meeting was an annual event known as Arts for Advocacy, organized by our university's Social Justice League. Students and other members of the community share visual and performing arts that advocate for various dimensions of justice. The diversity issues was impressive, but the common thread was a depth of commitment to justice and -- here is the important part -- critical thinking. With students -- and other community members -- of this caliber, a bright future is within reach.

This brings me to the third major encounter of the week -- a day-long meeting about democratic civic engagement. I was able to attend only the opening session, led by Dr. John Saltmarsh. He posed the question of whether civic engagement is a movement that is transforming higher education or whether higher education is transforming the movement into something that merely perpetuates existing structures and priorities. In other words, are universities co-opting social movements whose aims are deep transformation? On one level, the question is discouraging, but I was delighted to know that I am not alone in my misgivings, and that others have already been articulating them -- far better than I have.

Dr. Saltmarsh advocates building on what has become known simply as "civic engagement" to something more transformative, which he and his colleagues call "democratic (civic) engagement." In fact, he has co-authored something called the Democratic Engagement White Paper, which describes where the movement has been and what democratization would entail as both an end and a means within education. As the report argues:

[Democratic engagement] has significant implications for transforming higher education such that democratic values are part of the leadership of administrators, the scholarly work of faculty, the educational work of staff, and the leadership development and learning outcomes of students. It has epistemological, curricular, pedagogical, research, policy, and cultural implications. It adheres to the shared understanding that the only way to learn the norms and develop the values of democracy is to practice democracy as part of one's education. (p. 6) 

and

Civic engagement in the democratic-centered paradigm is intentionally political in that students learn about democracy by acting democratically. (p. 11) 

These are radical notions in that they seek to transform the educational enterprise at its roots. The university becomes not a center of knowledge and learning, but part of an ecological system of knowledge and learning. This transformation requires a lot of self-confidence on the part of academic leaders -- be they in the classroom or in administrative roles -- as they (we) move from the front of the room to the middle and sides. As faculty members become less "sage on the stage" and more "coach" and ultimately "co-learner" we have to trust the process and the community of learners of which we are a part. The discourse around civic engagement has already been moving many faculty members in this direction. What is new in the discourse around democratic engagement -- as I understand it -- is that the institutions themselves are challenged to move in a similar direction.