This is scandalous, my friends. University of Houston Distinguished Professor Alberto Rodriguez calls foul in the preparation of science educators in HISD and the response by the university is not only disappointing but also over the top by threatening this distinguished professor's tenure who is speaking truth to power. Check out this Click2Houston video where he expressed well the problem and the ethics behind his decision to discontinue sending pre-service teachers into the school district.

One doesn't have to dig too deeply into the news to learn just how punishing HISD Superintendent Mike Miles' scripted curriculum is on students and teachers. There have been protests about this. Check out the pages of Houston Community Voices for Public Education to get a solid accounting of what's up in what used to be HISD but which has been taken over by Miles' education management organization called the New Education System (NES)/Third Future Schools. Also check out this earlier blog post on the matter for more information: Welcome to the Houston's No longer Independent  School District. Bilingual Education and Special Education are also on the rocks. See People's Report of HISD takeover at State Board of Ed, as well as Support for Houston ISD’s Spanish speakers has dwindled under state-appointed leader, parents say. Considering the accumulating evidence, Professor Rodriguez is not at all out of line with respect to his assessment of Miles' science curriculum.

It's true to form in an authoritarian regime, regardless, that the school district's spokesman, Jose Irizarry, responds to this outing of the science curriculum by Dr. Rodriguez by deciding to gaslight the Houston community. He states that the curriculum amounts to "high-quality instruction and curriculum" when nothing could be further from the truth. Don't drink the Kool-aid, my friends. And let's protect tenure. This is exactly what tenure allows one to do, to talk back to the corporation and call out injustice. Schools should never be used to organize principal, teacher, and student disaffection and failure. 

Moreover, let's not participate in our own miseducation in our understanding of freedom. By this, I mean that we should not be comfortable with conditions like those called out by Dr. Rodriguez. We need to take back our power, beginning with advocating for a quality public education that honors our communities' and students' right to one. We must not become apathetic about this.

Along with the accreditation agencies that require quality, research-based best practices in the preparation of future educators, the Houston community would do well to stand solidly behind this professor. Too many people's lives and well-being are at stake, as is the future of our democracy.

-Angela Valenzuela

UH education professor suspends course in protest of HISD's rigid lessons

By Sam González KellyFeb 23, 2024

A University of Houston education professor stopped teaching his course last week in protest of his student teachers' placements in Houston ISD schools, where he said the "scripted curriculum" used in HISD classes made it impossible for them to complete their assignments. 

Alberto Rodriguez, a distinguished professor of science education at the University of Houston College of Education, informed students in his "Science in the Elementary School II" course of the decision in a Feb. 14 email.

"I regret to inform you that I am suspending my teaching of this course in protest of the impossible school placements to which some of you have been assigned," Rodriguez wrote. "I feel it is unethical and unprofessional for me to continue teaching this course when you have been placed in school settings that make it very challenging for you to complete field-based assignments as expected in the effective preparation of teachers." 

MORE ON HISD: Superintendent Miles announces major overhaul to tackle 'inefficiencies,' pay for NES expansion.

University of Houston spokeswoman Shawn Lindsey said the college immediately assigned another faculty member, who teaches the other section of the course, to Rodriguez's class, ensuring the course continued uninterrupted. Lindsey declined to say whether Rodriguez, who is tenured at the university, would face any disciplinary action, saying they do not comment on personnel matters. 

"As districts across the state and nation have moved to varying degrees of curriculum autonomy, our teacher education program works to ensure our student-teachers gain valuable, authentic classroom experiences," Lindsey said. "We teach our student-teachers to work within a district’s curriculum guidelines just as they would in the real world, and our student-teachers remain able to practice skills a successful teacher needs — such as keeping students engaged, checking for understanding and adapting as needed."

Students in the "Science in the Elementary School II" course, all of whom are seniors, receive student teaching assignments at schools in the Houston, Cypress-Fairbanks and Spring Branch school districts, which they rank in order of preference. 

Rodriguez said the spread of highly structured lessons that may include word-for-word scripts for teachers is a "national issue" that is not isolated to HISD. But this semester, roughly a dozen students placed at HISD schools were complaining to him, sometimes in tears, that the rigid expectations imposed under state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles made it difficult for them to complete their assignments for his course.

 

Among other directives, Miles expects teachers to use timers during their lessons, engage in "multiple response strategies" roughly every four minutes and, at schools in his New Education System, administer daily quizzes, while school administrators and district officials go from room to room to monitor their work.

MORE ON NEW EDUCATION SYSTEM: HISD names 19 campuses joining New Education System for 2024-25 school year after opting in

One key assignment in Rodriguez's course involved developing a lesson plan for students to teach in March or April, which would go through a series of revisions in Rodriguez's course before being delivered to children. Rodriguez's students at HISD, however, told him they were unable to plan that far ahead because the lead classroom teachers themselves did not know what they would be teaching at that point — the "script" had not yet been posted online. 

Rodriguez said such constraints violated accreditation standards developed by the Association for Advancing Quality in Educator Preparation (AAQEP) and the Texas State Board of Educator Certification (SBEC), both of which require education students to be able to effectively lesson plan, among other things.

"They are being placed in schools that are following a scripted curriculum that totally contradicts everything that we're talking about in class," Rodriguez said. "There's no way you can make science inclusive and relevant to all students — especially students of color or bilingual students — when you have a teacher that is not allowed to carry out their craft." 

Representatives for the AAQEP and the Texas Education Agency, which oversees the SBEC, did not return a request for comment. The University of Houston noted that its education program is fully accredited by both bodies. 

Houston ISD spokesman Jose Irizarry, in a statement, said district leaders are "pleased that UH has identified an experienced professor to take over the course so that student teachers can continue their work in our schools, where they are seeing how high-quality instruction and curriculum lead to academic growth and gains in student performance." 

Rodriguez said he approached College of Education Dean Catherine Horn, University Chancellor Renu Khator and Provost Diane Chase with his concerns, and that Horn was the only person to respond, arguing that the university could not control the actions of its partners and asking him to continue teaching the course and making arrangements for his students like everybody else. 

The response disappointed Rodriguez, who said he'd hoped the university might try to work with HISD to reach a compromise. 

"That doesn't sound like much of a partnership to me. Partners don't watch teachers being pushed off a cliff and then just kind of look the other way," Rodriguez said. "You try to engage in conversations with school district officials to provide space for our students to practice what they're learning in the classroom."

Horn deferred comment to the University of Houston press office.

"We have found that all of our district partners are willing to work with us so our teacher candidates can complete their certification requirements, including teaching lessons for formal observations," Lindsey said. "In cases where a student-teacher is concerned about their school experience, our faculty work with campus leadership to make adjustments or, in rare cases, move placements."

The professor's future with the university is uncertain. The science education course was the only one he taught this semester, and though he is still engaged in a variety of research projects at the university, he no longer has access to his class files on Canvas, the learning management software used by the University of Houston. 

"I don't know what the next step is on their side, but I'm going to continue pursuing this because I feel like I cannot just sit by as the new generation of teachers are not well prepared," Rodriguez said. 

By Sam González Kelly

Sam González Kelly is an education reporter for the Houston Chronicle covering the Houston Independent School District. He can be reached at sam.kelly@houstonchronicle.com.

A Chicago native, Sam joined the Chronicle in 2021 to cover marginalized communities after two years covering breaking news at the Chicago Sun-Times. Sam has a bachelor's degree from Pomona College.

Must-See Movie on Education: "Radical" win this year's Festival Favorite Award at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival

Friends:

I highly recommend that you see the movie, "Radical," that is showing here in Austin at the Galaxy Theater through December 13th. The brilliant Mexican actor, Eugenio Derbez, won this year's Festival Favorite Award at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. Congratulations to director and writer Christopher Zalla who—as you can hear in this interview, got approached by Derbez, who expressed an eagerness at wanting to be cast in the film. Check out the interview. The recounting, the narrative of the making of the movie itself sounds so magical and wondrous.

It's similar to a degree to other movies described by Goldstein in his November 3, 2023 review appearing in the Los Angeles Times, but also very different in that this is a film about Mexico, addressing what life and existence meant in 2011 with the drug cartels in power and the daily experiences of horror and violence, particularly on the Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexico border in Matamoros, Tamaulipas—and within view of Elon Musk's Space X located at the state's furthest, southern tip in Boca Chica in Brownsville, Texas.

Christopher Zalla

What may also distinguish it from other films in this genre is that the teacher, Sergio (played by Eugenio Derbez), expresses not knowing what he is doing. However, Sergio does know more than he realizes in that he knows what schools should not be when they fail to educate youth for liberation and opt instead—in the words of the late Brazilian educator, Paolo Friere—"to educate for domestication."

"Radical," is a word never used once in the film, sidestepping language and taking the viewer, along with his students, straight to the classroom floor. It speaks to the exquisitely combined powers of groundedness, the power of an exuberant teacher's authentic, expressive caring for his initially reluctant students.

Albeit circuitously, this birthed a de facto, curriculum and pedagogy that sparked the flame of inventiveness and curiosity by centering it in the youth themselves. His approach incited his students to learn and experience the joy of imagination and the ability to create, something often denied for both students and teachers embedded in patriarchal and paternalistic school "reform" models that are highly scripted and over-prescribed. 

Such approaches, in contrast, are fully about order and control. Staffed with over-burdened teachers for little pay and precious little respect, such schools "succeed" when they break our children's spirits with mind-numbing curricula, low expectations, and high-stakes tests.

"Death by PowerPoint," is an expression I recently heard from a teacher experiencing Mike Moses' and his charter company's, Third Futures Schools, curriculum, in what used to be the Houston Independent School District. The Third Futures curriculum is already being administered locally at Méndez Middle School in Austin, Texas. I heard from someone there who a week ago told me that "It's a total school-to-prison pipeline." 

Watch out, friends and community. The neoliberals took over the Houston Independent School District and are not just headed our way, but already here. Literally. 

The irony is that these agendas come almost exclusively from people who themselves benefitted from a public education! Texas Education Agency (TEA) Commissioner Mike Morath himself! You can listen to him yourself here. 

It's pathetic to hear Commissioner Morath absolve himself from the Houston Independent School District takeover. Feigning innocence, he is no better than the aloof, Mexican bureaucrats that Sergio confronted in the film when asking them to provide the school with computers. Spare me. Por favor!

How could we in Austin let this happen to Méndez...? Geez, what a deal for neoliberals. Our communities get disenfranchised and they profit mightily from our children's failures—as exhibited on high-stakes tests that are—and have been—handmaidens to charterization, corporatization, and privatization of public education, generally. 

Not unlike Governor Abbott's plot to dismantle public education through vouchers, this parallel agenda disenfranchises our communities and is thus politically helpful to those that neither believe in, nor want, democracy, and prioritize instead, the preservation of the incumbencies of those in power. 

I appreciate the film's critique of the kind of education that treats children and youth like objects as emblematic of close to 25 years of high-stakes testing, that are part of this very same system of organized failure and disempowerment. In the meantime, the private sector generates eye-popping profits. And this, with our precious public school tax dollars flowing out of the classroom into their pockets. This, despite students ultimately doing exceedingly well on the ENLACE test despite vast inequities that the film and context make clear. Cheers to Zalla for his unblinking look at life under crisis.

I found it to be gripping from beginning to end and super hard to hold back the tears at least a couple of times. I even found myself not wanting it to end because I wanted to know what happened to all the youth, as well as to engage the implicit question of educating youth toward improbable futures. I like to think that whereas there is an undeniable impact of underinvestment, that any intervention that maximizes students' potential for future achievement is worth undertaking, since learning is not just in the immediate, but life-long, as well.

I think that we should organize viewings of this film in our classrooms and communities everywhere to get us talking about the education we seek for our youth and ways to get us there.

A final comment. There really is so much joy and power in this film that I am confident that all of these youth and adult actors were profoundly impacted. Zalla, too! What a gift to the world! 

Kudos to Eugenio Derbéz, Christopher Zalla, and the entire team for helping us to envision the world anew. 🧡💚🧡

Sí se puede! Yes we can!

-Angela Valenzuela

@radicalthemovie

Review: ‘Radical’ uses an old syllabus but still scores highly on the inspiration scale

Eugenio Derbez, standing, in the movie “Radical.”

 

(Pantelion Films)

By Gary Goldstein | Nov.3, 2023 | Los Angeles Times

One of the more reliable movie subgenres involves the idealistic teacher who turns around a group of underachieving, often unruly and disadvantaged students. From such earlier films as “The Blackboard Jungle,” “To Sir, With Love” and “Up the Down Staircase” to later entries including “Stand and Deliver,” “Dangerous Minds” and 2008’s Palme d’Or-winning “The Class,” who doesn’t love stories about inspiring educators who help young folks beat the odds?

The latest addition to this admirable bunch is “Radical,” a lovely and touching true-life portrait based on Joshua Davis’ 2013 Wired magazine article “A Radical Way of Unleashing a Generation of Geniuses.” The movie, anchored by a wonderful turn by Mexican superstar Eugenio Derbez, kicked off this year’s Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Festival Favorite Award.

Derbez, seen on American screens in the Oscar-winning “CODA” (in which he also notably played a teacher), stars as the real-life Sergio Juárez Correa, who in 2011 joined the teaching staff of José Urbina López Primary School in the border city of Matamoros, Mexico. (The film was shot mainly in and around San Salvador Atenco, a town outside Mexico City.)

Matamoros is a dusty, impoverished place beset by crime, corruption and apathy, all of which contribute to the state of its struggling elementary school, nicknamed “the School of Punishment,” where funding, test scores and student engagement are consistently, perhaps irrevocably low. That is until Correa — all jaunty, rules-be-damned enthusiasm — sweeps in at the start of the fall semester to teach sixth grade. He’s expecting an assist from the school’s computers but soon discovers they were stolen four years ago and never replaced.

Neither his wide-eyed students nor the rundown facility’s portly principal, Chucho (a winning Daniel Haddad), know what to make of Correa, who immediately steamrolls past traditional teaching methods, reimagines his classroom’s desks as lifeboats and launches into a rousing lesson about staying afloat, a resonant theme here.

There’s a learning curve, of course, but the eager kids soon find themselves on Team Correa, invigorated by his “radical” classroom stylings, intrigued by his references to such advanced topics as physics and philosophy, and encouraged by how he lets them each learn at their own pace. This includes eschewing any preparation for the standardized national exams, which Correa abhors but the school system unequivocally embraces.

It’s affecting and heartening to see Correa’s students blossom before our eyes, gaining a confidence and curiosity long suppressed by their bleak environment and the school’s stale methodology. Chucho and Correa become good friends as well, as the principal is won over by the new teacher’s creativity, commitment and elan.

Typical of these films, the story zeroes in on a handful of students, offering vivid snapshots of their home and personal lives and the intrusive effects on their schooling. First, there’s the pretty, quiet Paloma (Jennifer Trejo), a nascent math and science prodigy, who helps her ailing father (Gilberto Barraza) mine salable scrap metal from the smelly garbage dump near their makeshift home. Though her suspicious dad initially thinks Correa is filling Paloma’s young head with overly big and unattainable ideas, the teacher helps him to realize — and support — the girl’s potential. (The real Paloma broke a national record that term for her standardized test scores and later made the cover of Wired, which unironically dubbed her “The Next Steve Jobs.”)

Eugenio Derbez in the movie “Radical.”

(Pantelion Films)

Then there’s Nico (Danilo Guardiola), who begins as the class clown but goes on to appreciate his studies and inch away from the criminal activity he’s been drawn into by his older brother (Victor Estrada) and a local gang leader (Manuel Cruz Vivas). But will education alone be enough to set him on the right path?

Finally, there’s Lupe (Mia Fernanda Solis), the eldest child in a growing family, whose new love of books and philosophy may have to take a back seat to her responsibilities at home. (She and Nico are amalgamations of Correa’s other real-life students.)

Despite the story’s upward trajectory, Kenyan-born writer-director Christopher Zalla (Sundance’s 2007 Grand Jury Prize winner, “Padre Nuestro,” a.k.a. “Sangre de Mi Sangre”) lays in enough credible obstacles, including an especially heartbreaking one, to add effective tension and pathos to Correa’s and the kids’ journey.

If the script can sometimes feel a tad pro forma, the film still proves an authentically moving and involving crowd-pleaser. (Though, at a bit more than two hours, it might have benefited from some judicious trimming.)

It should also be noted that, while the real Correa was 31 when the movie takes place, Derbez, also a producer here, turned 62 in September. Regardless, the buoyant, youthful actor convincingly embodies the role (his character does drop in a sly comment about being “a little too old” to be a new father again) and makes a warm, engaging and memorable lead.

'Radical'

In Spanish, with English subtitles

Rating: PG-13, for some strong violent content, thematic material and strong language

Running time: 2 hours, 6 minutes

Playing: In limited release