Digging Into the Headlines

Digging Into the Headlines

I was going to write about something completely different today when I noticed the headlines for one of the professional journals I still get messages from.  I won't say which one in case that gets me into trouble.  Suffice it to say though that it is aimed at administration types who work in the field of public education. What set me thinking was a series of headlines indicating how far the struggle between public versus private education has evolved in the United States.  From its earliest beginnings, public education was conceived as a way to have an impact on the way in which young people saw their country and were prepared to take advantage of all that it had to offer.  Going back to the earliest days of the previous century, after laws were enacted to keep young people out of harm's way in factories all over the industrialized world, public schools were designed to take those now liberated young people and teach them how to read and write and thereby become productive members of society. It was a way to structure their world so that they were disciplined as well as educated.  It worked very well for many of us who are now aging baby boomers.  The generation after us benefitted from the idea that curriculum could be redesigned and expanded so that the better students would be kept productive while the average student in a desk could still evolve and learn. But there was never any idea that something aside from public education was necessary. In Canada, where we benefitted from both Catholic and Protestant schools, there were the two complimentary systems and they eventually came to be seen as entitled to the exact same proportion of public taxpayers monies.  Private schools were left for those wealthy enough to provide their children with essentially the same curriculum stemming from the same consensus about pedagogy.  Then, in the United States, where free enterprise and capitalism have developed powerful roots, the private school system expanded to something called charter schools. Anyone who wanted to could start their own school and  enlist students to pay for it.  Now, that charter school network has expanded to such an extent and the Conservative movement in the U. S, underpinning free enterprise and capitalism is demanding a share of the public monies devoted to education just like they have in the health system.  The problem with that bifurcation is that now the public system is where all those who are disadvantaged are sending their kids.  Now, in the U. S. you have all these middle and upper class kids benefitting from all the finest tools and technology while the public school system is being drained and underfunded.  This is furthering the divide between haves and have nots, rich and poor, educated and non-educated, urban poor and rural poor and so forth.  The unity of purpose displayed in the U.S. for the whole of the 20th Century, that which made it great and powerful and a beacon for democracy is now being undermined so that capitalism can thrive and it's working, according to the headlines I read this morning.  However, I don't think many people realize just how this trend is detracting from the unity in the country. Sadly, the United States in loosing its stature and its power because a few have ensured that capitalism and freedom are being taken to the extreme. Only one more reason  to hope for a political change because, like so much else, the Dems seem to be working against this trend while the G. O. P. trying to further the divide.  One can only hope that this does not infect the rest of the democracies because a proud public education system for all is one of its pillars and no one really wants to live in a world bereft of democracy.

Louder Than Words

Louder Than Words 

For weeks, there has been this ongoing discussion about what might happen when schools convene for the fall.  The whole of the debate has centered around safety for the students and how well prepared the schools would be for the onslaught. As expected there have been more than a few problems and a whack of school boards have had to deal with closures. The public is going to complain about the schools because it wants to be able to lay the blame at someone's doorstep. But the problem begins and ends with the governments who have not done enough to ensure that there was the ability to conduct rapid testing and determine whether a school was safe or not.  Whether we are talking about elementary or secondary schools, post secondary or not, when a problem arises, there is not the really necessary ability to test all the individuals involved and determine who has the infection and who doesn't.  I know that everyone is well-intentioned, at least here in Canada.  Everyone wants to do the best they can to ensure schools stay open and every school board has the ability to determine who needs to be isolated and who doesn't. Teacher do what they always do and try their best for their students.  But far too many jurisdictions have not done what they need to do to ensure that there are plenty of tests available and the turn around time is sufficient so that maybe schools can stay open but the sick students and their families can be isolated and quarantined.  No one lays out all the eventualities and deals with every single one so that every step is covered.  Then you read that school boards are holding back starting because they need more teachers to cover the online classes which have only grown in size because of the fear of leaving students in schools in real time, given how many students have been found to be contaminated, putting it bluntly.  Then you have all those university students who are not obeying the requirements mainly because they are coming from families that are more likely to deny that there is a problem or are unable to discipline their kids.  What this pandemic is revealing is just how poorly we were prepared as a society to deal with a crisis like this. The headline of one article in HaAretz, the Israeli left-leaning newspaper pointed out that Israeli society was able to get behind and unite in the face of danger from war but where they have to depend upon each other, nothing is possible, or working the way it should. Until we learn as a society and as a group of nations that we are in this together, and the solution depends upon all of use, nothing is going to change.  Sadly;y too many people think of it as them against the world and we need to see it is US against the virus, against a warming climate and so forth.

More Than Just Teachers Retiring

 

More Than Just Teachers Retiring

The last couple of days, I've had an eye-opening revelation. I have long understood and predicted that a large number of teachers would retire from the profession or retire to seek their fortunes elsewhere as a result of the pandemic and the circumstances facing them in classrooms this fall. But I had not thought about the problems that would affect princiapals and administrators up the chain of command. But the last couple of days, there have been a number of articles in different places reporting on principals of schools or superintendents of education directors of school boards indicating that they were leaving.  It is one thing to lose teachers but something else entirely when one location loses its leadership. The assumption is that it is the leadership who that is going to help schools get through.  I completely overlooked that the pressure on them would be immense.  One has to wonder how a director of education can find the strength of character to stand up to the powers that be and demand more money for all the things that his or her district require to facilitate students entering schools and staying safe given the problems with dealing with the pandemic.  If anything, I would have to imagine that the pressure on upper and lower management is far greater than that on the teachers in their classrooms. If I was a teacher, I would do what I have to do to do the best by my students. ButI would be leaving all the major decisions to those above me in the chain. But now, those above on the chain are under often superhuman challenges.  Safety issues, ventilation questions, staffing calculations, money for all the ppe and sanitizer stuff and how to staff a school so that the teachers don't feel overwhelmed by the numbers and the parents believe that their kids are safe.  I would imagine that in many school districts, it is a total fiasco trying to deal with all the challenges. The question though becomes how to the politicians pulling the strings answer the calls from their hired help, so to speak, to make what they want happen.  in the United States, on top of all the questions, you have the struggle over public versus private school funding and you have a recipe for total disaster.  Th equation will be, what will things look like a year from now?   Who will be left to pick up all the pieces. I worry about my young friends in classrooms today.  A part of me wishes I could just roll up my sleeves and get to work to help out.

Assessment is Key!

Assessment is Key!

Let's assume that you are a grade school teacher just beginning the school year and you now have 15 or 20 or more children sitting in front of you in the second week of school.   You have had an opportunity to familiarize yourself with them and they with  you. You come to realize that more than a small handful of the students did next to nothing during the months that schools were closed and another group of students who were taught extremely well by their parents and are waiting to continue their progress.  You have spent sleepless nights all week-end trying to decide where you would start to teach such a disparate group of students.  So let me tell you that I had a Grade 6 class once where the tested reading ability of my students went from barely Grades 2 (the days before so much testing and I. E. P.'s) to Grade 12.  That's right. I had students at every level of reading ability and it was NOT a small class and I had to some how teach them all.  So what did I do? Those were the days when I was still developing as a professional, but I remember one of the things I did with them was read books aloud. I remember reading them The Yearling by Marjorie Kennan Rawlings and they loved it so much that you could hear a pin drop the last day of the book and they clapped when I finished.  But think of all the things  you could do with small groups  of students around that book.  I read the book because it was a Newberry Award winning book, so the good readers could pick other books nominated in more recent years and then write or deliver book reports on their reading and compare the books in terms of why they might have won awards like The Yearling.  You could have some of the poorer readers find the movie of the book and watch it and then pretend that they were interviewing the lead actors and actresses and make a video of their interviews, skills that most kids have now because of TikTok.  You could have some of the kids doing a report on raising horses, and another on the differences between living in the city and living in the country. Those are just for starters.  Then, another thing I did the year was do a unit on banking and each child had an imaginary bank account and they did jobs around the classroom and got paid for their services and the money deposited to their accounts.  Then they formed themselves into groups and they used their money to organize booths for a fun-fair which we ran in the spring and each group ran their booths like businesses and had to report on profit and loss after the event. At Hallowe'en, they made stuffed dummies using clothes they brought from home and stuffed with paper and then the dummies were all over the school. We even had a picture in the local paper  with the kids grouped around their dummies out in the front of the school. They were so realistic, the principal was heard saying Excuse Me one time he walked in front of one of the dummies and then he had a great laugh over what he had done. My point with all of this is that there are hard and soft skills that we teach in school and although kids come from different environments and might have different learning abilities, there are things they ALL love to do and can enjoy that brings them to the plate where learning takes place and skills are developed.  Don't see the next weeks as challenges that you cannot overcome but rather opportunities to explore new ways of learning and extending the abilities of your students, regardless of how they spent the last six months.  Soon enough, they'll all be sailing and making great progress.