I've got lots of thoughts in my head tonight. Too many to organize. Too many at once to elaborate on just one. The kind of thoughts that sit right in the middle of the brain, being pulled by inspiration and hope in one direction while being fought by doubt and reality from the other direction. Not the best frame of mind to carry into a piece of writing.
Why don't schools ever change? I know there are schools that have innovative practices, schools that celebrate change, schools that look nothing like the school I work in. But collectively, why does the fundamental way schools operate look very much like it did when I was in school? Grade levels, set classes, early morning start/mid-afternoon end, advancement determined by calendars....it boggles my mind that my parents and I and my children have lived in astronomically different worlds but have been schooled almost exactly the same way. Among the boggles on this night:
**Brain science and the study of human physiology has proven that different aged kids will learn better at different times of the day. Yet we send them all to school on the same bus at the same time.
**We gather far more, and far more specific, data on kids than we ever have. And with this expanded resource of information we......do very little differently than we did 30 years ago. We throw a bunch of kids in a room, give them one teacher, send in a different teacher for the low kids, let the high achievers sit there, and continue the routine for nine months.
**Why do we bother assigning kids to teachers before we even know the kids? We don't sort the patients in a waiting room into groups and send each group to a different doctor; patients see the doctor who can best treat their ailment. Mechanic A, you get these 15 cars today; figure out what needs fixing while Mechanic B figures out these 15. Sounds ridiculous....but isn't that what we do with classes of kids? Teacher A, you've got these 20 students....and two weeks later we find out that 17 of them are a year below grade level. Good luck, Teacher A!
**Teachers are so good at working with people, yet we are so hard to work with. We embrace change when it serves us, shun change that might serve others at our cost. We are stubborn out of concern for our students, even when that stubbornness might prevent a greater good. We want what's best for kids as long as it's pretty good for us, too. We are the key to a quality education; we are also the parking brake that often holds education back. The key word here is "we" - I'm as guilty as anyone on all of these points.
**We talk about educating all children and then ignore the needs of the most advanced students. We lock them in grade levels. We lock them in classrooms. We label them as "role models" for kids who don't pay attention to anything, let alone the modeling of a classmate. We partner them with struggling students. We reward their brain power with thicker books and papers with more empty lines to fill.
**Special education is destroying us. Not the kids - the laws, the paperwork, the minutes, the hoops, the cost. The resources we pour into this segment of education is staggering. The burden placed on teachers by the laws, not the kids, is staggering. The top heavy arrangement of program management is staggering. That we allow the needs of the majority of our students to come second to the needs of a few is staggering.
I realize I'm pointing out perceived problems and offering no solutions. I hate that. I have the solutions but not the confidence or the time to write them. I am in a hopeless state of mind tonight; nothing I've written is a new concern. Why would I expect any of these problems to change just because I offer a solution? I don't, and that's where I struggle with my career. I have a great job in a messed up field. I see potential but no hope for change. I have solutions to problems that most don't see as problems. I watch my team work hard and wonder if we could be working smarter instead. I feel like there's more to say, but the words seem to have ended. The battle continues.....
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