Building and Department Politics—Talking English

Recently a teacher was suspended for her use of poetry in a unit for her freshman and sophomore ELA classes. Here is her response to the experience: Irizarry said she has no plans to talk with her students about the incident when she returns to school, but has firm plans on how to teach next year's poetry unit. “We will stick to the lessons in the curriculum adopted by the school board with nothing additional added,” Irizarry said. In the two weeks since her suspension, Irizarry said she has received an outpouring of support from colleagues and former professors and only one negative comment. “The bottom line on all of this is that it is important for me to let people know that I am not the kind of person who would use those words in my home or classroom,” Irizarry said. “My advice to other teachers is to stick to guidelines and curriculum as adopted by the school board. I'm glad this is over. I just want to teach.” (Voyles, 2007)

Ewell (2007) makes a serious observation about the fact of district and school decision-making and its impact on teaching and learning literacy: “It is popular to blame the federal No Child Left Behind Act for California's educational woes, but our misery is largely homegrown and predates the 2001 law.” Then Ewell shares a disturbing reality of the literacy classroom and mandates from within: I know how she feels. This fall, we were at first forbidden to teach novels—any novels—in the college preparatory English classes at our high school. We must teach from the textbook because “the Holt textbook is aligned to the California content standards,” the principal said. No “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” No “To Kill a Mockingbird.”