What do we want in our schools?

What do we want in our schools? by Penelope Swenson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.


Last Saturday I was visiting a local store. Christmas is coming and bells were ringing as I came to the door. Salvation Army bell ringers here are often people I know. This is a lovely thing about our small community. Service clubs take on the bell ringing shifts so all the money collected goes to serve right here in our town. The bell ringer is a teacher I have known for many years. (She does not teach in our hometown however.) She is an excellent teacher—one with that abiding concern for the children combined with a keen intellect, a personal sense of curiosity, and a continuing desire to learn more to serve the children even better. From her personal funds she buys materials to enrich the classroom; she attends even non-school events to see her students perform. She works preparing and often to tutoring beyond her contractual day. She is the type of teacher you hope your children and grandchildren have. She also is a bell ringer.

For a significant part of her career, she taught second grade. With the increasing insistence that external testing brings, she was less and less able to actually teach her students. Some of the kids, with this pull-out program and that, would be present for less than two hours of their school day, yet the teacher was increasingly considered the only force responsible for student learning. Many of the pull out programs were conducted by instructional paraprofessionals, not certificated teachers. She wondered how she could make a difference in student learning.

My friend is skilled in assessing student performance. Moving about the classroom and watching students work on assignments or problems, she can see where her various students need additional help. She does not need to wait for a benchmark test or the formal assessments. Between her keen observational skills and her reviewing student work, she is on top of providing support. Or, at least, she was before the class sizes skyrocketed and fewer parents were available to assist for an hour or two occasionally in the classroom.

“I saw what was happening and decided to teach kindergarten where I have more control over the curriculum and student learning.” She noted the supposedly proven curricular devices often were lacking, yet she was to use them. In kindergarten she has the freedom to meet the standards in ways she selects. While she comments that some children lack basic skills when they enter kindergarten, her ways of inspiring learning are working and the children are enjoying school. As she described the learning centers and activities along with their influence on student learning, she became animated and excited.

I asked her about her sense of professionalism was faring. Because of the change she made, she thought she was doing OK, but there was a strong sense of disillusionment, frustration, and sadness among her teacher colleagues generally. Without control over the curriculum and having students pulled out frequently, she reported that her colleagues saw their ability to reach those students compromised all the while facing the challenges of testing and more testing.

Many critics note that poor teachers slipped through the cracks and children were not learning before NCLB and RTT and these programs stress accountability. Today, the collaborative, hard working good teachers are feeling the pinch of constant testing, often on low level skills, and frequent threats that deviating from the curriculum is not appropriate, even when it is to take advantage of a teachable moment where the children really are interested. (Oh gee, it might help meet a standard from six weeks hence, but we just cannot do it now, even if the topic is on the news today and a child asked about it.)

I have heard calls for the “best and the brightest” to come into teaching, yet the impetus within No Child Left Behind and the current Race to the Top does not seem very welcoming to those best and brightest. With increasing class sizes and an emphasis on testing to the point of nearly eliminating science and social studies along with cutting music, art, and often cutting back on physical education (as the kids become more sedentary), the whole child and meaningful teaching and learning is in danger. The joy of teaching is supplanted by the fear of being judged almost exclusively on testing results over which the teacher may have little control.

One of those “best and brightest” did go into teaching and was very good. He became an administrator on that first rung of the path to being a principal. Some time ago he came to my class early, looking downcast. I asked him what was wrong. He quickly said, “Nothing,” then started to tell me his story. “You know I went to the school where I work. I had some of the teachers I’m evaluating now. They were so good to me, a little boy who spoke English haltingly.”

He continued, “Today I was to visit the fourth grade classes between 10:30 and 11:00 to see if all the teachers were on page 78 of the text. I had a checklist to mark who was there and who was not.”

“And?”

“Well, two were not. I’ve been in their classrooms many times. I know they are fine teachers. The kids do well on the testing too.”

“So what did you do?”

He hunched his shoulders a bit and whispered, “I marked the sheet that they were in compliance.”

Those kids actually were beyond page 78 and understood the material, yet their teachers were to be judged with a yes or no. Page 78 or not. Good teacher or not. This young administrator stepped out and marked what he thought was right, defying quietly the pressure to report 78 or not, as if that were the only important measure.

Is this what we want? Both of these experiences are replicated across districts, across schools. Pockets and whole schools pursue excellence exist with the teachers, and often their administrators, working collaboratively, yet, in this charged environment, it can be very difficult.

How did we get here? Are we doomed to continue the pursuit of the “flavor of the month” teaching process, often developed by someone who is far from the children? Could we please look at the 21st Century Skills? Few jobs we can define now will be waiting for today’s children when they graduate. Kids need a basis or the “3 Rs” or core knowledge plus the essentials for today and tomorrow of “4 Cs” also known as “Critical thinking and problem solving, Communication, Collaboration, and Creativity and innovation.” (For more on these ideas, please see http://www.p21.org/ ).

The essence of America, at least to me, has been creativity and innovative energy. Create a new nation with a dynamic Constitution? Sure. Provide schooling for all—even though it was only for the well-to-do in other countries? Sure. Span the continent with trails and then a rail system? Sure. Grow enough food for ourselves and millions of others? Sure. Put American feet on the Moon? Sure. Cure CML and other cancers? Sure—we are getting them one by one. That creative, innovative spirit must be nurtured. Teaching at the lowest level of the 3 Rs without meaningful context will not nurture innovation or encourage creativity.

What should we provide our kids? You might enjoy seeing a vision created by twin brothers, Peter and Paul Reynolds of Fablevision in concert with the Partnership for 21st Century Skills. Peter had a seventh grade math teacher who inspired him to make drawings that explain concepts and ideas. Check out this explanation of the 21st Century Skills view of what is needed, Above and Beyond: http://www.p21.org/tools-and-resources/above-aamp-beyond-animation OR http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KMM387HNQk

There are many ways to improve what we are doing. Charters are not the only answer, but some charter schools are making contributions to what we know works in great teaching and learning. Brain research continues to enhance what we understand about learning. University researchers and think tanks are conducting studies into what works. Industry giants offer ideas too, but we come back to the bell ringers. They want a voice in how we are helping locals. Educators and other community members in cities, towns, and hamlets across the USA want that too. Who is closest to the children? Who knows the community? Is it those who cobble together political documents such as NCLB or RTT? Or is it at a more local and regional level with parents, business people, teachers, and others, even right here in our town? Others are thinking and writing about this too.

I could share a long bibliography, yet, for today, I suggest two articles, the first is an opinion piece by two writers who often disagree. How to Rescue Education Reform, by Hess and Darling-Hammond, a fine article on how the Federal Government can best help education is found at: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/06/opinion/how-to-rescue-education-reform.html?_r=1

The second article quite worthy of reading is by Judith Warner, Why Are the Rich so Interested in School Reform? See it at: http://ideas.time.com/2011/12/09/why-are-the-rich-so-interested-in-public-school-reform/

An endnote—What will be the effect of LAUSD’s new contract? “Teachers in Los Angeles have overwhelmingly approved an agreement that is expected to give instructors and administrators more control of their schools, while also holding them responsible for academic achievement.” Here is the LA Times article from which the forgoing quote comes: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/12/la-teachers-approve-local-control-deal.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+lanowblog+%28L.A.+Now%29