Darrell Watkins wrote a very angry letter (Observer?American, Feb. 28) about Oak Hill and KUSD. His anger would be justified if his statements were true. To impugn my character and that of others in my district by using false and unverified inflammatory statements shows a remarkable lack of integrity on his part. I choose not to match his angry hyperbole. I will only quietly bear my testimony of what I know to be the truth.
Referring to the accusations in his letter, Mr. Watkins did not do his homework. He has given us a strange mix of Darwin, Carroll, and Dickens.
While it is certainly not the best of times; it is definitely not the worst. He wants to return to the 1950s and 1960s in which spanking or hitting a child at school was part of normal discipline. In that era of education, oftentimes important concepts dropped through the cracks of memorization. If Mr. Watkins went through school at that time, he failed to learn: (1) Respect is a critical factor in any kind of communication. (2) The root word of discipline is disciple: to follow, not to fear. (3) Libel is against the law. (4) When you are making statements of fact or opinion, you need to establish at least two things: your credentials as an expert or proof that you are a knowledgeable person on the topic, and proof of the veracity of the statements you are making.
My credentials and experience for education include: for 32 years I have been an active member of PTA, and have received the PTA lifetime achievement honors award. When urged to do so by my children”s educators, I left the fields of financial supervision and returned to college. I got my AA from Yuba College and my BA from Sonoma State University, gathering honors and scholarships along the way. While at Sonoma State I worked with Project Group One, an outreach organization for education and the community. I graduated cum laude, and with distinction, from the rigorous Hutchins School. I have taken many classes and trainings since then, both in core subject disciplines and in teaching and discipline methods. My husband and I moved our family to Lake County in 1988 and we have been involved in many volunteer programs here. Two of our four children were educated in Konocti Unified School District. As a teacher, I was awarded Lake County Teacher of the Year in 2004 and California Schoolmaster of the year in 2005.
By the way, another KUSD teacher, Alan Siegel, also won those awards and went on to be one of the top five teachers recognized by the state of California the following year. Mrs. Friedrich also has gathered many awards and recognitions along the way, which I will mention more specifically later. We have many excellent teachers at KUSD. We must be doing something right. Now,
I invite Mr. Watkins to state his expertise in the field of education and social interaction. If he does not do so I can only presume that he has none.
I will address Mr. Watkins” accusations in the order in which he stated them. I invite Mr. Watkins to respectfully provide significant, verifiable, contextual data which will prove his accusations. Again, if he does not do so I can only presume that he has none. They need to be verifiable by independent sources.
1. ACCUSATION: I do not care about the children because I did not mention them enough in my Feb. 14 letter. ANSWER: In that letter, I restricted myself to one issue, the most critical in terms of time and the IMPACT it would have on our STUDENTS. Mrs. Friedrich is a recipient of the Lake County Administrator of the Year award, the California Schoolmasters Award and many other prestigious awards. Mr. Maes has developed into one of the most effective vice principals I have ever known.
2. ACCUSATION: Test scores are bottom-of-the-barrel low. ANSWER: Although our test scores are lower than we want them to be, they were never bottom of the barrel. When the process started in 1999 we had a base score of 519. The lowest score that year was 345. Along with most of California, we have been steadily raising our scores, making our targeted growth rate for the state most years, but falling short of the federal government target. This can be verified on the testing pages of the web site of the California State Department of Education.
3. ACCUSATION: Dr. Nan should fire somebody. ANSWER: Like the Red Queen in Carroll”s Through the Looking Glass, Mr. Watkins is too busy screaming, “Off with their heads!” to even begin to understand the problem. At KUSD, we are working extremely hard to try to understand a very complex problem, for which there is no quick fix like the ones inferred by Mr. Watkins.
4. ACCUSATION: Teachers like me want to preserve the status quo. ANSWER: This is partially correct; however, Mr. Watkins” spin on it is incorrect. We want to preserve what is working and change what is not, always, ALWAYS with the needs of the children and families whom we serve, first in our hearts, minds and actions.
5. ACCUSATION: “… they”re all participating in the nastiest kind of child abuse.” ANSWER: Anyone who knows me knows I love my students and that I show that love appropriately. To attempt to impugn my character and that of others in my district by using this inflammatory statement is libelous. From prior newspaper letters, I can ascertain that random spewing of non-informed, inflammatory vehemence is part of Mr. Watkins” pattern of living.
6. ACCUSATION: Kids are getting everything they want but discipline. ANSWER:
First of all, the goal in education is not to give children what they want; it is, in part, to slowly change their thinking so that what they want is what they need: an education that will help them succeed in life. We have in place the BEST discipline plan out of the University of Oregon, Dr. Ruby Payne”s insight and methodologies, and the Monty Roberts Join-Up methods of non-violent “inviting to join” instead of physical or mental haranguing or verbal abuse, the latter being something Watkins seems to think he is good at. We use all of these in concert with each other. We do not want students to fear us or education or schools; we want them to want to learn, to know that continuing education can be part of the joy in their lives if they try hard, and that positive actions bring positive consequences and vice versa.
7. ACCUSATION: Some don”t bring homework to class. ANSWER: Mr. Watkins, if you have a system that does not include hitting a child, to get them to turn in their homework, please respectfully share it with us, keeping in mind that each middle school teacher has 120 to 150 individual students, specific standards to teach and not enough minutes in the day to teach them, assessments which we often grade late into the night, and that to make a 30-second phone call to tell a parent their child is not turning in homework, and then not listen when the parent needs to discuss it with you at length, would be insulting to the parent. I make about 20 phone calls every Friday to parents. Sometimes a call lasts 2 minutes, sometimes half an hour. It depends on what is needed by the family, the student and by me to help the student succeed.
8. ACCUSATION: Classrooms don”t get quiet when the bell rings. ANSWER: Again, this is true for some of us some of the time, but never all of us all of the time. Year by year, it changes. Old methods for this do not always seem to work, and we are working on new ones. However, according to Watkins, we should just hit a few kids and that will solve all the problems. I acknowledge that, if I were a student and I was about to be involved in an exciting science experiment, it would be very difficult to restrain myself from asking about it when I entered the classroom. I also acknowledge that retraining them in this specific task and having it be a regular part of our classroom management has worked with most but not all of our students.
9. ACCUSATION: Instead of preparing kids for college, KUSD is turning out far too many for the state prison system. ANSWER: Where do you get this stuff? We can prove a direct correlation between the programs we have in place and an increasingly higher number of students going directly to college every year. Many of our students have been accepted to their first and second choices of universities. One even went to Harvard, some to Stanford. To my knowledge, we are the only district in Lake County who is participating in the AVID (Achievement Via Individual Determination) Program, a prestigious, internationally recognized program which prepares mid-level students for college. We also have the GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) program in place. Our students at Lower Lake High School just won the county”s academic decathlon (maybe you choose to ignore our successes), and we usually either place well, or have a good many individuals who place well in that competition. Where, Mr. Watkins, do you think those students went to middle school? Most of them were my students a few short years ago, and many still keep in touch with me because I believe in their dreams, their hopes, and their goals to succeed in life.
On what do you base your claim about the state prisons? I do not know of any county in the United States which has never had a resident go to prison.
Everyone attended school somewhere. Mr. Watkins, can you tell me where there is an easily available source that gives a direct correlation between which high school a student attended, and the year they went into the state prison system? Are you sure they are not going to prison because they have had someone like you for a co-worker after high school and they got addicted to the drama with which you seem to surround yourself? Is this flawed cause-and-effect only another facet of your ungrounded hysteria?
10. ACCUSATION: Board members have listened too long to the jabberwocky of Darwinian psychologists. ANSWER: I myself am not a follower of Darwin”s evolutionary theories because he leaves too much out of the equation. However, there exist in Darwinian theory three main facets: variation, heritability and selection.
While variation and heritability have somewhat to do with the educational process, selection does not seem to fit at all, so I am not sure what Darwinian psychology has to do with the issue as a whole, nor am I aware of any educators or board members in KUSD who follow Darwin”s theories as guidelines for any of the educational process.
11. ACCUSATION: We should be spanking the students instead of reasoning with them. ANSWER: Anyone who thinks you can accomplish anything by spanking a middle school student or a high school student knows nothing about human nature. CORPORAL PUNISHMENT IN SCHOOL IS AGAINST THE LAW. There are good reasons for the law. If you wish to quote scripture, however, consider “Do therefore unto others…”
12. ACCUSATION: Suspensions and expulsions are too high. ANSWER: Through a process of steadily improving our discipline process and adjusting it to the changing needs of our population of students, their families, and the educational system, we have actually lowered the number and percentage of suspensions and expulsions each year. The number of suspensions at Oak Hill has dropped dramatically the past few years, while district and county-wide rates stayed roughly the same. The figure for suspensions often includes one or two period suspensions to work in the office, cool down and be counseled.
If students receive an at-home suspension, it is because they have been through all the warnings, chances to refocus and change their attitude, etc, that we can offer. Watkins seems to view a suspension as a failure to discipline the child, while sometimes it is a wake up call, sometimes it is the only thing left when everything else has been tried, and sometimes it is for the good of the other students at school, to help guarantee THEM a safe, respectful place in which to learn.
To all our civil rights are attached civil responsibilities. Mr. Watkins apparently does not know that (1) some expulsions are required by law due to the nature of the offence or repeated offenses, and (2) often an expulsion is simply a form of transfer to an alternate school in which the child will have more of a chance to be successful because of smaller class sizes, a different curriculum that works better for them but not for the average child, or a stronger partnership with law enforcement.
Oh, by the way, Mr. Watkins, any of my students could tell you that when adults are involved in a public discussion, they should only use first names if they are family, friends, or respected colleagues. We are none of these. To you, I am Mrs. Chisam. I choose to call you Mr. Watkins, because I train my students to always act respectfully, even when the other person is not.
