Listen and Learn from Personal Experience and History

I retired from teaching thirteen years ago and I missed the classroom terribly. I never thought that I would become another kind of teacher with a much larger classroom and audience. Unfortunately, my writings attract wise and experienced adult students, world travelers within the kind of demographics who do not need convincing that communism is bad.

As we can clearly see, the audience and the students who really need to listen and learn from our collective history and experiences are never present – the young generations. They are never present at my speeches, lectures, never read my articles, never read my books, and never listen to my radio shows, never watch my TV shows or interviews.

The young people either know it all, want to experience failure on their own skin, or are beyond repair and redemption, having been fully and thoroughly indoctrinated by their teachers, professors, equally ignorant parents, Hollywood, and the dishonest lapdogs in the media.

Does that mean that we must give up as our efforts seem futile? Never! I will personally never surrender to the communist controllers and will fight in the honest media until the end.

In Memoriam

Rest in Peace, Dr. Bruce Lesley! 

You were a wonderful friend and mentor to thousands of students and their anxious parents who sent their children to college in hopes that they would adjust quickly and learn. They found joy, happiness, and knowledge in your classes.

Your remarkable personality, infectious smile, boundless energy, and rare talent have touched so many lives during your musical and teaching career. 

An accomplished pianist, organist, and conductor, Dr. Lesley's music resonated in the halls of academia and in his beloved Church. 

You have brought happiness to my mom and joy in our hearts with your music. And we enjoyed together many meals at the local Mexican restaurant on birthdays when you came to honor us with your presence.

I thank you for discovering my daughter's talent, teaching her, mentoring her, and guiding her to eventually become an accomplished opera singer. Our family will never forget you! 

You are now with the angels, directing that perfect concert in heaven but the world of music on earth sorely misses your talent and patient teaching.

Memory Eternal!

A Rare ‘Thank You’ from a Former Student

Photo: Ileana Johnson 2015

I don’t often get messages from students like this because most of my former students are hard-core lefties, not American patriots who love their country.

“Did you see Tucker Carlson say ‘The DC swamp corruption fighting Trump is the same as the corruption of Ceausescu?’  If it wasn't for you I wouldn't have gotten the reference. I'm grateful I had you as a teacher. I didn't realize as a high school student why you worked yourself so hard to push us to learn to our fullest. I'm grateful for it now. Most teachers didn't work that hard.”

It is a rare moment that a former student thanks me for my teaching years when I really did care about their education and tried my hardest to deliver stellar teaching which was never recognized by my peers and administrators.  As a life-long Adjunct Professor, we always had to fight for our contracts each year because conservatives never got tenure or special privileges like the rest of the leftist brigade of teachers.

Many of my former students, too wrapped up in the leftist ideology indoctrinated into their brains full of mush since kindergarten, wore t-shirts with shocking messages or supporting appalling leftist causes. They did not understand reality and some even wore Marxist-worshipping and Che Guevara t-shirts to class because he was such a “cool” revolutionary.  

They continued to wear them to class even though I told them who he really was, how many innocents he had butchered in Castro’s regime and in South America.  I gave them lectures on Marx and what his professorial ideology did to millions around the world who became oppressed under communism and how 100 million innocents died under such ideology simply because they held divergent opinions from the ruling communist party line and dared to express them publicly or to their snitching families. My own father was killed by commies in 1989. The messages flew over their heads filled with brains that had been too brainwashed to leave room for truth and reality.

One of the Che Guevara t-shirt wearers found me on Facebook a few years back and apologized for having worn the offensive t-shirt to class even after I had told him that my Dad died at the hands of communist goons and how that piece of cloth he displayed in front of me three times a week angered and saddened me so.

One particular student I remember to this day, worshipped Hitler openly and in occasional class projects about historical figures students admired. Despite the fact that the history teacher Judy placed gruesome posters of Hitler’s Holocaust victims when they studied modern European history, I could not fathom such a fixation. He must have been just as evil in his dark heart as Hitler was. It did not surprise me when I found out that he is now a staunch Democrat and a lawyer in a small southern town.

My Take on the Teacher of the Year Award

Photo credit: IJR Red

As a former teacher, I was annoyed but not at all surprised by the choice for this year’s Teacher of the Year Award. The recipient with a political agenda showed the nation what an “exceptional teacher” looks like. With her boorish and rude behavior during the ceremony at the White House, she bashed and disrespected our President in front of the entire nation and in front of school children who look up to teachers like her to be objective. Yet many indoctrinate their students into their twisted political world eight hours a day, not into the American-exceptionalism that they should.

President Trump, exhibiting class and respect, mentioned the “incredible devotion that has earned her the adoration, total adoration, of her students and colleagues, the school district, community, and the entire state.” https://www.facebook.com/ijrredpresents/videos/179722432727814/

The petty little ideologue was not just wearing an insufferable smirk the whole time, she was rude and ungrateful and refused to shake the president’s hand or clap when appropriate.  Honored for her “adoration” in the classroom, she could not muster the slightest propriety for the moment and the place.  

Her rudeness and lack of decorum are a disgrace to the profession. There are so many deserving teachers out there who work in the education trenches every day without being recognized for their work because their politics are of a different kind than the Democrat-sanctioned socialist plantation of Marxist adoration.

Selecting a Teacher of the Year begins at the local level and each school district has their own criteria that tend to match the national guidelines. You will be very surprised to know that parents and students have nothing to do with the selection process even though they say the nominee is adored and respected by the community which they serve. The high ranking administrators form a selection committee composed of administrators, teachers, educational service personnel, student support personnel, and past Teacher of the Year winners and nominees.

Some common denominators are membership in the National Education Association (NEA), American Federation of Teachers (AFT), with their financial support for the Democrat Party, and other university-sponsored organizations who are mills for future teachers.

Teaching awards are nothing but a Democrat popularity contest of who is the most progressive, outrageous, and anti-American progressive ideologues in good standing with the top administrators and other decision-makers who can send that person to the top of the heap.

“According to the criteria for the National Teacher of the Year Program, a Teacher of the Year should inspire all students to learn. Teachers who aspire to this award do not stick to the textbook or traditional methods of teaching.”

The nominees usually push the latest fad in education, currently the Common Core curriculum. The top nominees believe in global education, global citizenship, no borders, the anthropogenic global warming, the rights of the illegal aliens and refugees that trump those of American citizens, alternative lifestyles, Islam over Christianity, and deviant sexual behaviors promoted as the norm and introduced by force into the classroom as early as kindergarten in some states.

Mandy Manning, this year’s awardee, is an English teacher in Spokane, Washington, and teaches refugees and immigrant children from countries like Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Guatemala, Myanmar, Mexico, and Tanzania. It is no surprise that a political person like her would be chosen as spokesperson for an entire profession. https://www.yahoo.com/news/mandy-manning-teacher-handed-trump-080024349.html

No mention is made whether these immigrant children are legal or illegal as it does not matter to liberals if we follow the law as long as we have more future Democrat Party voters in our midst.

Is it any wonder that such “educators” are turning our children into communist agitators and snowflakes, with no allegiance to our country, our history, our sovereignty, our flag, our pledge of allegiance, God, and to a sound education?

This teacher of the year affronted our President the entire time.  If she is the teacher of the year, the best and brightest that our country can produce, what must the rest of the teachers be like?

Based on the buttons she was wearing during the ceremony, a rainbow apple, Transgender Rights, Women’s March, and the letters she gave the President from her immigrant students, this person obviously puts the interests of immigrant children, refugee children, and a women’s movement that embarrasses at least half of this country’s female population ahead of America’s students’ interests.

Whatever happened to teaching reading, writing, American history, American exceptionalism, science, and American civics objectively, without the teacher’s political agenda being front and center eight hours a day?

 

Marginalized or Successful Indoctrinator

Photo Credit: Marijane Green

If you’ve ever been marginalized by progressives for your conservative views, for your anti-communist teaching philosophy and other divergent opinions, you were not alone. 

If you’ve worked in highly progressive academic environments and were not re-hired as adjunct, granted tenure, or were not even considered for tenure unless you belonged to organizations such as the NEA, AFT, or other Democrat-supporting organizations, you were not alone.

If you’ve worked in secondary education and were told that your opinions did not matter because the entrenched Democrat bureaucracy did things entirely different from what you perceive as common sense and logical in supporting an American education, you were not alone.

If you taught full-time or part-time and the Dean, Director, or Principal told you that you must use a certain textbook that you found offensive, or that you must teach or grade a certain way, dumb down the curriculum in order to allow everyone to avoid failure and pass students who otherwise did not deserve to pass but their parents were threatening to sue the school, you were not alone.

This is how the politics in education work today and have worked for quite some time. Incisive parents who were involved in their children’s education understood the schemes and fads early on and took measures to protect their children by home schooling them or putting them in private schools.

Other parents who were seldom seen at school or PTA meetings were oblivious, did not care who influenced their children’s world views, or were too trusting of those empowered to shape their children’s minds eight hours a day. Television, Hollywood, violent video games, alcohol and drugs did the rest.

And a small percentage of parents were only concerned that Johnny received free tuition and free meals, thus they did not have to be responsible or participate in the education of their progeny. Why bother if the state provided free education, free meals, and paid teachers?

Everybody knows that children see teachers as the ultimate authority and respect them. Some teachers are truly exceptional, others speak with authority in their subject area, and yet others are highly respected for their scholarship or as influential role models.

But all teachers are not created equal or driven by the same desire to promote American exceptionalism and to shape tomorrow’s American leaders and thinkers. Most of the students shaped today will be America’s busy bees and compliant followers who believe everything they are told without asking pertinent questions.

Parents blame their children’s problems on teachers and administrators. Administrators blame everything on the lack of funding or the “low” teacher salaries when compared to the private sector. But the private sector does not get three-month vacations each year. Unionized teachers strike because their salaries are deemed inadequate even though they are the best paid teachers in the country.

Corrupt politicians and dishonest bureaucrats who retire from government or are fired receive cushy and well-remunerated teaching assignments in private colleges around the country, tasked with teaching ethics in general, political ropes, or social justice.

Democrats and some Republicans in higher positions of power receive millions in book advances, idolized by the press and book reviewers. Students flock to their classes so that they too can learn how to lie and cheat their way to the top in the name of social justice.

Teachers say that parents are the problem, their lack of involvement in their children’s education. Parents are not teaching their progeny manners, respect for authority, how to get along with other children without throwing a temper tantrum, lack of modesty in clothing and shoes, obscenely priced when compared to a teacher’s entire outfit, but expect teachers to provide pencils, pens, crayons, glue, scissors, writing paper, and other classroom supplies to their students.

Teachers find fault with parents who never show up at school regularly, who never help their children do homework, or check their homework every night. Some of their questions are:

-          Do parents help their children prepare for the next school day?

-          Do they punish their children for being disruptive elements in the classroom or do parents   complain to the principal that the teacher is unfairly singling out their child and thus she/he is the source of the problem?

-          Do they blame the teacher when their child cheats on a test instead of making their child responsible for their behavior?

-          Do they teach their children to listen in class and behave properly, respecting authority?

It is certainly difficult for a teacher to be both educator and parent to someone else’s child, especially when young teachers don’t have children of their own yet, are not allowed to discipline students in any way for fear of lawsuits, and must provide justification in writing for their lesson plans every day.

Using their students as pawns, public school teachers and administrators have nominated themselves the socialist political compass of our country and have allowed students to walk out of the classroom several times in order to protest the Democrat cause d’jour instead of doing the jobs they were hired to do, teach our children.

Teaching is an art and cannot be taught by the College of Education or by the latest education fad but it can be forced in a certain direction. Unfortunately, in order to keep their jobs, most teachers use all the prescribed lesson plans, worksheets, and textbooks provided by Common Core or whatever orders come down from the administration via the Department of Education which attaches their orders to school funding and grants.

Even though President Trump had expressed his intent to end Common Core in our public schools, the current Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos, a wealthy business woman and educational activist with no experience in public education, has made no effort to end Common Core which is very much alive and well in most of our public and private schools.

Whether the teacher is marginalized or a successful indoctrinator protected by the teacher’s union or by tenure, at the end of the day they must do as they are told in order to stay employed.

Dr. BobbyThompson, Mentor and Teacher of Teachers

Today I remember with fondness my friend, mentor, and professor, Dr. Bobby Thompson. Although I have a very poor opinion in general of the College of Education, Dr. Thompson was a rare individual who really cared about his students and mentored them in research and teaching, offering gentle suggestions and criticism. He is the reason why I became a teacher. He helped with my dissertation research at a time when floppy disks were just appearing and I had to actually go to the library to do searches for $25 a pop and, many times, I would find very little supporting literature but I would come home with boxes of punched cards that contained so very little information yet occupied so much space. A few times I spilled boxes on the sidewalk, having to go back to redo the whole process as it was impossible to put all the cards back in the proper order. 

At the time, when I first started school in the U.S., I was guilty of being just poor enough not to qualify for a Pell grant. Dr. Thompson sponsored, out of his own pocket, the tuition for my first courses. When I had a child and my mom as dependents, I was finally poor enough to receive a Pell grant. Apparently, making a minimum wage of $3.10 was not poor enough. 

I have repaid Dr. Thompson's kindness many times over through the years, mentoring and helping other people pro bono. He would not have accepted any money back, he often sponsored promising teachers. I did not find out until years later, when he passed away, that his generosity paid for my first semester of school. I always wondered who paid my fee. I received a notice in the mail that my tuition was paid in full that semester.

He was kind even when my toddler overfed his fish at the office and the tank became a large mass of goo, killing all his beautiful fish. He cleaned the tank, restocked it and taught my daughter with patience how much food fish actually need and how important oxygen was for their survival.

He and his wife Rebecca babysat my small daughter so I can attend a class or a conference that made me a better student and future teacher. I even cried on their shoulders when things got rough.

There are fewer and fewer professors like Dr. Thompson and they are certainly not found in the vaunted corridors of academia or the College of Education.

May his memory be eternal! His ideas and teachings live through me and hundreds of other teachers who were lucky enough to have met him in college.