And is she a millionaire thug union member?
Sorry, but those were my first thoughts when I read about Martha Rivera Alanis, the kindergarten teacher in Monterrey, Mexico, who kept her students calm and distracted during a shootout between rival drug gangs that left five people dead at a taxi stand.
In the video, the frightened but determined voice of a schoolteacher is heard as she attempts to maintain calm among a group of kindergartners lying on the floor before her, asking them to join her in a singalong as gunfire shatters the air outside . . .
People who think you can measure the effectiveness of a teacher through the use of some bullshit "standardized" test their students take, don't know what they're talking about.
Mon May 30, 2011 at 9:37 PM PT: The thought occurs to me that, had these kids been in, say, third grade, my guess is that 20 years from now they wouldn't remember the sentence diagramming they did that day, but they would remember like it was yesterday the way their teacher handled a life-threatening emergency. "Life skills," y'know?
But if It's Not On The Test, it's not important.