Understanding The Concept Of Teaching
- Details
- Category: Education
- Published: Saturday, 18 October 2014 02:22
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by Lawrence A. Robinson
There are articles by several writers, including myself, who have pointed out the lack of leadership skills in Candidate Linda Kobert. Linda Kobert is running for the Orange County School Board District 3 Representative seat and she is so very unqualified and unfamiliar with the issues and certainly has no clue how to solve them.
She was endorsed by Chairman Bill Sublette and if elected, she will become just another puppet for him. An endorsement by Sublette in itself is not a good thing. However, this endorsement of Linda Kobert should shed some light on the direction of the district and how he and the board will deal with issues.
It is all about the money and the slickest way of moving the money around the county.
Sublette is a nice guy, but he has little respect for the teachers of OCPS; he has no respect for the
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students of OCPS; and even less respect for the parents of Orange County.
But I digress. This article is about his new top Elitist, Linda Kobert.
Yes, 'ELITIST.' Linda Kobert always boasts about affiliations with her nonprofit organizations and was considered volunteer of the year. She did these things with 2 other partners, both of which were much more involved in organizations than her. But now she wants the credit for doing nothing. Which is what she will do as a puppet for Bill Sublette.
Here are just a few things to think about when you are voting for School Board District 3 Representative.
1. Linda Kobert is a typical "outsider", who doesn't really know what our schools need. She promotes additional programs in reading, industry, and anti-bullying. Our schools are already flooded with programs that policy makers are using as band-aids to problems they don't understand.
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We need an expert from the "inside" - a proven leader in education and multiple teacher of the year recipient to truly LEAD our school district by bringing understanding from decades of experience and dedication in the classroom. (Candidate Regina Hellinger, is such a person).
Candidate Regina Hellinger will not need to look to an outside program to help our schools, she will use her expertise to guide her fellow board leaders on the ways we can support our teachers - without throwing additional programs on them.
2. Linda Kobert boasts of bringing Industry Certification programs to our schools for our skilled trades. These programs aren't nearly as valuable as the vocational apprenticeship programs that we currently have available in OCPS for electricians, iron workers, painters, and other trades.
Currently students are given hands on learning and on actual experience working in their trade of choice. With industry certification programs the school district will pay less money and student learning will be reduced to a majority of book learning instead of 'hands on training'. The result: Linda Kobert's private sector will PROFIT off of our children's education and our community suffers because our future generation of trade workers are less prepared, and consequently, will earn less.
3. Candidate Linda Kobert's mailer quotes, "I am the only candidate committed to keeping the school board - and our schools - free from political agendas". But wait, you should see her list of supporters which shows who she is representing - builders associations, lawyers, and the business community; the elitist, the money people. Certainly not the common folk.
4. There is a lot of information on Linda Kobert's flyer, but guess what is not mentioned: STUDENTS! yeah, she forgot about the students! She talks about "accountability" "results", there are numbers all over it....showing that she, like the rest of the politicians looking to tear down public education are looking at students as pieces of data. We need to start looking our students as PEOPLE again. People whom it is our responsibility to educate and prepare for the future.
Our teachers deserve respect as being the experts in education. They are the ones that went to college to learn best practices and continue, on a regular basis, to get professional development. We need to trust them and give them the room that they need to do what is right for our students.
School board members should at least understand what teachers have to deal with if they want to properly manage schools. Working the numbers is not the most important part of being a school board representative. It's about the kids.
It is my opinion, that Regina Hellinger is the right person for Orange County School Board District 3. She has walked the path with students and teachers alike. She has studied the numbers and the theories. She understands. Yeah, Regina Hellinger understands the concept of TEACHING.