Teachers’ Unions: my first encounter

Last updated on: January 22, 2014 at 9:36 pm by Jane the Actuary

Teachers’ Unions: my first encounter 2014-01-22T21:36:00-06:00 Jane the Actuary

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So my oldest son is starting high school in the fall, and this will be our first experience dealing with public schools. We were disappointed to learn that the school didn’t offer German, and were hoping to make some kind of study-online arranagements, and we even found an online option, where the program works directly with a teacher at the school to ensure that the class is recorded on the student’s transcripts. I had a couple conversations with the department head at the high school, and yesterday, at an Information Night found out that official District Policy is going to be a roadblock.

What I was told was this: if my son were interested in a foreign language that the school district didn’t offer, the district would help find an online/independent study/alternative solution. But because German is offered at one of the other high schools, and my son could, in principle, attend the class there, they can’t help us. Never mind that it doesn’t make sense to drive my kid 15 minutes one way to this other high school, and likely miss class time for another class due to the drive time and the improbability of coordinating schedules, much less the fact that — gee, I do have a job and can’t play chauffeur(even though I had already told him that I work from home so I suspect he didn’t consider that as a “real job” and a true impediment). He cited the fact that two students do this already, which is great for them but doesn’t make this any more possible for us.

When I countered that this policy simply doesn’t make sense, he started sputtering about “outsourcing” — and it’s not fair to “outsource” classes outside the district. And afterwards, I put 2 and 2 together: the only way this makes sense is if this isn’t a district policy but driven by union contracts — that a district teacher has a “right” to that student and those contact hours, and fear that the school district would “outsource” a program rather than hire a teacher for it mandates a policy that’s blind to particular students’ needs, putting the priorities of the union ahead of students.

And if that’s the case, then we likely are at a dead end. The only question that remains is whether, if my son continues to study German outside of school, a college would “count” that as the required high school foreign language study, or whether college admissions are equally blind to individual students’ circumstances.

UPDATE:

We decided to give the Online German a try, through a program at Oklahoma State University. This is relatively low-tech, consisting of videos and other instruction, where the student follows along with worksheets, then takes quizzes and tests, has weekly calls with a teacher, and speaking tests over the phone — rather than the online instruction of the other option I looked at, with graphics and online instant-feedback quizzes. The program was originally run via satellite, and I suspect the reason why it’s out of Oklahoma was for rural children with schools to small for foreign language. But I liked the low-tech worksheets — they basically function as a way of ensuring the student is paying attention and taking notes.

The advantage of the out-of-school language study is that it’ll free up an elective, so that he can take band and computer programming. The risk is that we won’t get him into a routine, and he won’t actually learn. But the hope is that he’ll take the AP test and that’ll be sufficient demonstration to colleges that he has in fact studied a foreign language.

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