The Real Super Hero's

With apologies to the late Senator Lloyd Bentsen of Texas for paraphrasing his infamous retort to Vice President Dan Quayle, "I knew Superman, Superman was a friend of mine. Secretary Duncan, Mr. Guggenheim, Mr. Gates, Ms. Winfrey, and all the folks at NBC's Education Nation, you're no Superman." The real super heroes are in the trenches of our nation's public school classrooms every day. They are the teachers and they're not waiting for some mythical Superman to appear. They don't seek the publicity and limelight as you do, they're not on a power trip to control or destroy public education, and they're not wasting one single minute of the day looking for scapegoats to blame for society's shortcomings. Instead they're busy from morning until dusk tending to their students' needs, constantly assessing their learning, planning prescriptive lessons and interventions, fending off bureaucratic meddling, listening to parent complaints and excuses, and doing the very best they can to teach an overflowing classroom full of students, most of which do little reading or writing outside of school, barely speak the same language, come to school hungry and inadequately clothed, and are bombarded all day long by news accounts that their school is failing and a continuing cacophony of noise about how their teachers are not doing a very good job.  (continue to full posting)