What are the solutions? What do our kids need that they are not getting in their current school experiences? That, in essence, is what this blog is all about. "What do we want for our kids?"
For pretty much my whole life I have heard about what a disaster America's public schools are. For a few years my parents put me and my little brother in private schools (this was the late 70s in the State of Hawaii) because they had been told by their friends that they don't dare put their kids in public school beyond the 6th grade year.
Politicians and concerned members of the community are always giving us the message that our schools are failing our kids. I can remember a couple of years ago when I was living in the Seattle area when Bill Gates proclaimed that our High Schools are dysfunctional and failing.
It is easy to grumble and complain about what is wrong with our schools. I am a public school teacher. If I chose to there is a lot I could say about what is wrong. Morale is low among many staff members. Nobody I know is very happy about NCLB, high stakes testing, crowded classrooms, lack of funding, and low teacher pay. I read recently in the current issue of NEA magazine yet another article about the high teacher turnover rate; especially among new teachers.
Hear is what I propose we do. Let's move our energy away from all the complaining and focus on what are we for. What do want for our kids? What do we want for our schools?
I Invite all of you to please post your ideas. Let's center. Let's think about what we want for our kids. What could our public schools be like? I will begin with a few ideas...
- Give teachers respect and let us teach. We are professionals. We are the ones that work with our students seven hours a day. We know what the kids need. Let us do the good work we want to do with them. That is why we went into the teaching profession.
- Pay teachers a professional salary. How do our kids benefit when wonderful intelligent and loving people who want to work with kids don't enter our profession or leave for economic reasons? What message does this give our kids when they know their teachers are broke?
- Make learning fun. This seems like an obvious one to me but there is a lot going on in today's public school classroom that is not fun. I do not mean that school should be all fun and games. Obviously school needs to be a place where children do their best work and learn how to become responsible citizens. How do we get them there though if they hate coming to school? Last year I taught fifth grade. What I saw in many of my students was apathy and disgust. They were just so sick of school. They are only in fifth grade! This year I am working with second graders. They are still young and enthusiastic about school for the most part. I want them to keep that enthusiasm! I think I could post a separate article on ways we can make learning fun for kids (note to myself to do just that!).
- Make school and class size smaller. There have been many studies that show kids learn better in a small class size setting. As a teacher I see it first hand. There is so much more I can do with them when we have less students. So many of these kids are just so needy and I want to give them what they need. It is difficult when there are almost thirty of them and just one of me! There are also so many wonderful hands on and cooperative lessons I can set up much more easier when I have less kids to manage. This, again, could be a future post for I have much more to say on this...
- Fund our schools. Pay the teachers (yes, I know I have mentioned teacher pay already but it bears repeating!). Here where I live in Florida a property tax measure was recently passed in my community. So now each property owner may save a few extra hundred dollars while our school district is considering: doing away with bus school routes, athletics for middle schools, a freeze on teacher pay and benefits, reduction in support staff members, and much more. Again, what message are we giving our kids?
- Support and nurture families. This is another idea that I think is so important and I could write a lot more about. For now, I will just say that a lot of my students do not come from the best home life situations. As a community, we need to come up with ways to support these families who are struggling.
- Have our public schools more connected to the greater community. One thing that has always struck me about our schools is their isolation. They physically look like institutions separate from the rest of the community (especially the larger schools). Students spend their entire school days in an artificial environment separate from the real world. My vision: smaller schools in neighborhoods, programs where students go out in the real world more during their school day for apprenticeships, and business people visiting more often and are a regular presence in the schools. If we want to prepare our kids for real life why are we keeping them isolated from real life? Again, I think we'll go into this further in a future post...
- Promote a culture of kindness and gentle civility in our schools. This is another one that sounds kind of obvious. But believe it or not the culture in some of our public schools is anything but kind and civil. We lecture to our kids the importance of treating each other nicely and yet some schools find it perfectly acceptable to permit adult staff members to yell at the kids and treat them disrespectfully. This is something our society really needs to look at. Certainly, discipline and a well run and safe school is important. It only becomes a problem when order and "discipline" occur at the expense of young people's spirits, self esteem, and dignity. Would you want to go to a place where you were humiliated and shamed your entire day? How we choose to interact with children makes such a profound difference. We can choose to engage with them in a positive and caring way or we can go the other route. I will stop here for now but I am sure will have more to say about this at some future time...
- Bring curriculum alive. There are so many ways that all members of a school community can do this. I have seen so many wonderful things that teachers do with their students. It is very inspirational to see a group of students truly engaged in what they are learning. A lot of this goes back to one of my earlier points. Just let us teachers teach. What I mean by that is if we see our students interested in something, give us the time to really let the students explore and learn at a more deeper level. If we are tied to strict and shallow learning schedules, textbook curriculum with lots of worksheets, and pressure to teach to the high stakes tests, exciting and active learning are hard to come by.
- Think out of the box. There are a lot of great things people are doing in our communities with kids that do not fall into the traditional public school settling. We need to open our minds and see some of the good work and learning that is going on in the non-traditional settings such as: online learning, magnet and charter schools, homeschooling, Waldorf schools, Montesorri schools, and Sudbury schools. Not every parent can afford to send their child to an alternative private school or home school them. I very much do support public schools. I think they could be wonderful places for kids to learn and teachers to teach. Perhaps we can learn from some of these alternative educational methods and bring them into our public classrooms. I think it is an idea worth exploring!
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