Letters to the Editor

Re: Poverty  and Learning
(June 2008)

Thank you very much for this issue.  I  appreciated the balance of academic  research,  data, and theory with personal  teaching stories. As a teacher in the  inner  city, I understand that however grim  the statistics may appear, it is the  individual (sometimes) day-to-day  victories  that we cherish and celebrate. Of special mention was Ainsworth Morgan’s article, “Beating the Odds.”

It was a relief to read words of honesty and hope: words of honesty because, as  Mr.  Morgan writes, teaching does sometimes leave us feeling “depleted and void of answers” and despite our best efforts, our sacrifice of personal time, money and emotions, we are not “guaranteed success”;  words of hope, because,  unlike a pep talk from one’s administrator or minister of education, they were coming from a former student who has lived what he wrote.

I do believe it is every teacher’s (secret) wish to be remembered in the hearts of students. If not by all, then at least by one or two! That Mr.  Morgan still  holds dear his teachers from elementary school and remains in touch with them some 20  years later is truly a testament to the teaching profession. Unlike some other issues  of Voice, I will keep this one on my coffee table. Whenever someone asks what I do or what it’s like to work in the inner city, I will give them this issue.

Hilary  Hahn
ETFO member, Elementary Teachers of Toronto Local

I wanted  to let you know how much I enjoyed reading the June 2008  issue of Voice  on Poverty and Learning! I found it to be one issue that I read from front to back in a few hours.
Congratulations to ETFO on putting together an excellent magazine! The ETFO provincial staff, members, and schools  who have worked on this project should be commended for their efforts to  make a difference for children and their families. I know that many  members in the field appreciate your efforts to highlight poverty and ways to address it.

Adam  Peer
ETFO  member,  Elementary  Teachers  of Toronto Local

Re: “Math that Matters,”
Reviews (April 2008)

Seldom has news about a so-called teaching resource invoked  such an overwhelming feeling of fear and trepidation in me as has  this  review of David Stocker’s Math That Matters
Topics such as racial profiling, workers’ rights, and exploitation of the environment are all highly politically charged and, dare I say, subject to scrutiny and fair-mindedness, which, on first glance, appear to be missing from Stocker’s narrow leftist agenda. It’s one thing to “spark discussion” among students, quite another to inculcate one’s personal biases.  In my view, this book has no place in an elementary classroom, where grade 6, 7,and  8  students would benefit more from balanced objective instruction than from misguided social engineering. If that means embracing what Stocker derisively terms the “pizza party math” of current resources,  then make mine pepperoni and mushroom.

Michael  Boyko
ETFO member, Elementary Teachers of Toronto Local