Over summer 2019, the
position of Executive Director of the Department of Teaching and Learning
was bestowed upon Aimee Fearing. This was another affront to Cecilia Saddler,
who had assumed leadership of that department as Deputy Chief of Academics,
Leadership, and learning after being passed over for Chief of Academics, Leadership,
and Learning with Michael Thomas’s departure for Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Be reminded from
the pertinent portion of Part One, Facts, that Fearing’s credentials are as follows.
Academic
Credentials for Aimee Fearing
Minneapolis
Public Schools
Executive
Director, Teaching and Learning
Degrees
Earned Field in
Which
Institution at
Which
Degree Was Earned
Degree Was Earned
Bachelors
Degree ESL Education
University of Northwestern
13 May 2000
Masters
Degree
Education
Hamline University
23 May 2003
Doctorate
Degree Education
Hamline University
30 April 2015
Other Credentials
Professional
Licensures
K-12 Principal
Licensure
Expiration, 30
June 2023
K-12 ESL
Licensure
Expiration, 30
June 2023
5-12
Communication Arts Licensure
Expiration, 30 June 2023
Thus, Fearing has the typical
profile for an academic decision-maker at the Minneapolis Public Schools: Her training is entirely in education rather
than in an academic discipline (mathematics, natural science, history,
government, English) that should be at the core of the curriculum of a locally centralized
school district. Fearing is not a
scholar. She is not a subject area
specialist. She should not be making
decisions pertinent to academics. And yet
she leads a department that has the official responsibility for the academic
program of the Minneapolis Public Schools.
The position of Executive Director
of Teaching and Learning was most ably filled by Mike Lynch. Lynch served under Superintendent Bernadeia
Johnson and was fully behind her program of Focused Instruction, which had the
potential for imparting a Core Knowledge curriculum that Lynch also
embraced. But Lynch encountered a great
amount of opposition for his support of knowledge-intensive curriculum from
staff members of the Department of Teaching Learning. Although he and his immediate superior, Chief
of Academics Susanne Griffin, seemed to have a good relationship, Griffin
herself made few initiatives and leaned more to the prevailing anti-knowledge,
education professor-espoused view of her Department of Teaching and Learning
staff. Lynch departed for graduate study
in Boston in 2015.
Griffin brought in Macarre Traynham,
whose main expertise was in Culturally Relevant Curriculum. I met with Traynham and did not find her to
have much enthusiasm for knowledge-intensive curriculum or what by then was a
Focused Instruction plank of the Bernadeia Johnson program that was being
sabotaged by Teaching and Learning staff members. A mid-level Teaching and Learning official by
the name of Tina Platt had responsibility for Focused Instruction, without possessing
impressive credentials or the requisite knowledge base to oversee
knowledge-intensive curriculum. I
advocated for the dismissal of Traynham and Platt; Traynham lasted just a few months and Platt
also departed the district.
There was no Executive Director
of Teaching and Learning during academic years 2017-2018 and 2018-2019. Mercifully, this bloated department was
slimmed down from 53 staff members to a current 30. But the department is still overstaffed and full
of incompetent occupants of sinecures.
The department should be cleared of present occupants, all of whom are
trained in education rather than academic programs, at the graduate level and
for most even at the undergraduate level.
Again, we have the phenomenon of
non-academicians bearing the responsibility for the academic program of the
Minneapolis Public Schools.
If teachers were properly
trained in their subject areas, there would be little need for a Department of
Teaching and Learning. No such
department exists on college and university campuses to train professors, who
are experts in the subjects they teach.
Such a department would be ludicrous.
Accordingly, the Department of Teaching
and Learning should be disbanded. Fearing
and other staff members, all of them tainted by paltry education programs,
should be dismissed. As teachers are thoroughly
retrained as subject area specialists, the Department of Teaching and Learning
should pass into much deserved oblivion.
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