European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - February 10, 1986, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Page 18 the stars and stripes monday. February 10,1986 today s crossword christa1 s legacy to fellow teachers by Art Buchwald a few weeks ago i wrote a piece about schoolteachers going up in space. I speculated As to what kinds or candidates my own teachers at is 35 would have made  had applied Tor the trip. It was a Light piece because like most americans i never dreamed any thing could happen to the flight of the shuttle challenger. Unow after that numbing week of watching the television screen i got to thinking about teachers. Although Chrisla Mcauliffe was t a professional astronaut she did leave behind a wonderful legacy. Consider this. For the past 15 or 20 years America s teachers could not have been held in lower esteem. They were under paid underrated and blamed for anything that Wen wrong with our schools. It appeared the Only time we saw teachers on to was when they were on strike or arrested for child abuse. The perception was that teachers were people who taught because they could t make it in the real world. Except for covering vandalism and crime in schools the Media ignored what was going on in the  with reason if teachers were teaching and stud dents were learning it wan t news that is until the destruction of challenger. Suddenly our schools received More attention than they have Ever been Given before. Seven Brave people died that morning but it was the death of a school teacher that made our children cry. When the to cameras entered the nation s class rooms to record their grief we saw principals and teach ers fighting Back their own tears As they tried to com fort the students. The cameras not Only focused on teachers but also panned to the agonized faces of the students and in that moment of sadness we witnessed the educational process at its Best. When these pictures came into our Homes we were reminded of something we tend to take for granted the role teachers quietly play in the lives of children. The lesson was not just for grown ups. You had the feeling that the students had gained a new respect for teachers As Well. It went something like this. Christa was a teacher and Christa died in space but it could have been any body s teacher including  so what was Christa Mcauliffe s legacy when sputnik went up and we realized the russians were ahead there was a great clamor to educate Ameri can children and make our schools second to none. Then after the successes of our own space program the Clam or died Down. Education was dropped As our no. I priority. At least it was until last week. After that one horrify ing moment in Florida things changed again. The Par ent teacher Pupil Bond that had been fraying for a generation seemed to be joined again. Christa Mcauliffe s gift to us is not in the skies but Here on Earth. From everything you can read she was a teacher before she went up and she intended to be a teacher when she returned. In death her legacy is to give her fellow teachers new dignity and Honor. Thanks to Christa each one of them can say with Pride i m teacher  c leu admin time translating English into English by James Kilpatrick not Long ago a Reader in Oregon sent me a set of recommendations that had been developed for the leaching of Reading in the schools of Lincoln county. My correspondent found the document repulsive. He manifested his disgust with Tome vicious underlining and some querulous question Marks in the margins. The five teachers who had compiled the report in his View were engaged in gobbledygook. The authors had spoken of language development areas prescriptive activities Content area teachers and concept formations. They hoped to cultivate human empathy and a sense of identity in their first graders. They spoke of Oral communication experiences Oral language skills and Oral Reading. They proposed to assess skills acquisition in relation to the instructional  teachers should apply Model analytical approaches to teaching literature said the authors emphasizing both the subjective experience and the flow from careful objectified Reading of the text to the level of  my correspondent also sent me a memorandum that had been sent to Lincoln High school this past novem Ber by the Central administration. Teachers were asked to say whether certain conceptual elements of the curriculum were primary or supportive. Among these elements were follow ship skills understanding wellness interacting with things and respecting others non put Down environment said my correspondent groan the problem Here is that the educators were speaking a language within a language. They were writing Pri Marily in Educa Ionesc but they were writing within the linguistic Structure of English. This happens All the Lime. Every profession every occupation every ethnic or cultural or geographic subset of society has a Lan Guage of its own. The other Day 1 heard a couple of computer Buffi who were going into raptures Over some new piece of software. Clearly they were speaking English i could recognize an occasional and or but and then but otherwise they could have been speak ing greek. Yet they understood each other perfectly. So it is with the jargon of Academia. Here people do not have conversations they engage in Oral communication experiences. They do not work in classrooms or schools they work in an instructional environment. So Long As teachers Are writing or speaking to an audience of teachers those of us who do not speak education behave no right to object. It is when educators write for a larger audience that the trouble begins. If they would be understood they must now translate Educa Ionesc into everyday English. This is not As easy As it sounds for professional vocabularies get to be ingrained. Deprive a lawyer of such terms As tort discovery and standing and the lawyer May be Tongue tied. Take away infarction and a doctor is helpless. We have to work on our skills of translation being careful not to write Down to an audience or to fall into baby talk. Within the fraternity an Oregon educator May be free to speak of  when he talks to the taxpayers he d better speak of Good health or suffer a response of snickers and hoots. We ought also to Check our writing for those banalities that creep in when our mental switches Are turned off. There is bound to be a better phrase than state of the  i am getting Good and fed up with lifestyle and innovative  a motion is in order i sub Mit that painterly be expelled from the vocabulary of Art critics. What can we do about game Type situation and emergency Type situation Are we stuck forever with contextualize and conceptualize the primary object of speech or writing is to communicate an idea from a to a a secondary object is to do this pleasurably. Toward these ends when we Are writ ing to the world at Large let us Stop speaking in specialists tongues. 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Colloq.38 strangers 40 school org. 42conftised43 puff of wind44 Dirk 46 biblical people 47 Miami oftv48 actress sommer50 engine part Hubert Stop in shins census