Chapter Forty-Eight >>>>> Aimee Fearing Should Be Replaced By A Scholar Before She Has a Chance to Become Another Inept or Hamstrung Executive Director of the Chronically Ineffective Department of Teaching and Learning--- and the Current Staff Should Be Dismissed

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.

 

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.  Current Executive Director Jennifer Rose should be dismissed, as should Aimee Fearing, who occupied the post for a time during autumn 2019 and now has been moved to Interim Chief of Academics, Leadership, and Learning.  My program for teacher training would produce subject area specialists, do that the Department of Teaching and Learning would pass into much deserved oblivion.