An Introduction to My Mission

When presenting my resume for a new teaching job, I am ALWAYS asked "so why have you changed jobs so many times?" It is a valid question and I always give my run down of why I went here and there and why I moved from place to place and why I did not continue on with Teach For America, etc, etc. However, if I truly ask myself "so why have you changed jobs so many times" then the answer becomes, "because I hate what I do." Now before you jump to any conclusions, let me say, I do not hate education and I do not hate teaching, I hate how we "do" the whole thing.

There are only a few truths in life. For instance, it is proven that the United States has an obesity problem. That problem primarily stems from the fact that since industrialization in this country we have been increasingly feeding our children processed, unhealthy foods. We have made it OK to endorse institutions that manufacture our meat, dairy, and vegetables, and over process even things that should be healthy like wheat to the point that gluten intolerance is now another rampant issue. We know that eating fresh fruits and vegetables, grass fed beef, free range chickens, freshly churned butter, and a host of other natural and organic products can keep us more healthy and perhaps allow us to live longer. Our bodies have not yet evolved to keep up with the processed foods that we have come so accustomed to feeding ourselves. What we also know is that every person on this planet is different, even those from the same family, culture, region of the world, or even race. Knowing that truth, it should also be plenty obvious that all people learn differently. Dr. Howard Gardner introduced us to the theory of Multiple Intelligences and since then schools of all genres attempt to promote the fact that children learn differently and as a result teachers must develop diversified instruction in an effort to teach to all students. On the flip side of the coin, apparently the government has not recognized this at all thus implementing such jewels as No Child Left Behind. As a  result, this diversified instruction gets jumbled up and mostly becomes teaching to the lowest denominator which is a mess in and of itself.

Let me describe my personal viewpoint of how NCLB works in the public school setting. Each year when school begins teachers are given a set of standards depending on the content that the teacher teaches. Along with these Student Performance Indicators (SPIs) as we call them in Tennessee, teachers are also given a pacing guide. In my experience, when I am being evaluated the three times a year I am required to be observed, if I am not in line with the pacing guide, that is a mark against my teaching ability. When February hits, the schools get hectic. Faculty meetings turn in to forums for pouring over data to determine which individual students we need to work with in order to ensure that those specific kids score higher on their TCAP math and reading tests so our school will not be taken over by the government. Students are pulled out from science and social studies classes for math and reading intervention, even though science and social studies teachers are still held accountable for the TCAP scores for kids in their classes. Basically the entire school is teaching whatever we need to teach to ensure that when our students sit down with those bubble sheets, they will get high enough scores to keep our doors open. No one cares about anything but this one test year in and year out. When the test is done, it is a struggle for the rest of the school year to convince kids that learning still needs to take place in order to be ready for the next year. TCAP scores aren't released until at least September of the following school year, so the kids know they get zero benefit from taking this test. What's more, kids know that because of NCLB, they virtually cannot fail and be retained. They will get passed on through the system until they graduate or turn 18 and can drop out.

Let me ask this question: What is right about this scenario? What is just or equitable in what I have described? If you ask me, absolutely nothing. NCLB has pretty much said, we want everyone to be the same, and if you aren't the same, we will stick you in special ed so your test scores won't have to count and you can still graduate anyway. And what happens when kids either graduate or drop out? Pretty much the same thing either way. Yes, some will go to college, others will try but are so ill prepared for that level of education that they can hang, and some will do exactly what parents and others in their neighborhoods do, live off of government welfare and sell drugs (generalizing here of course).

Do I have research that backs these statistics, absolutely. I also have something that most people aren't willing to listen to and that is a vantage point that not all are privy too. I sit in my urban, low-income, Title I, inner-city, under served (or any other catch phrases you want to use) schools each year and see the same thing: poor performance, lack of interest, lack of community support, lack of parent involvement, gangs, drugs, fights, teenage pregnancy, poor eating habits leading to an overwhelming amount of health problems, disrespect for adults, and what do we do? make excuses for these kids and keep teaching to the test! We band-aid the problem and keep throwing valuable dollars allocated for education into failing programs in an effort to look like we are doing something. All the while, the people who are running this system, most of whom have never been teachers or administrators, keep closing their eyes to the big issue.

THESE KIDS ARE BORED OUT OF THEIR MINDS AND SO ARE THEIR TEACHERS!!!! It is my goal to do something about this issue. I may not be a PhD, an attorney, an MBA, or have any other background that apparently people think you have to have to solve our education problem. What I am is an educator. A teacher. A lover of all children regardless of their individual background because I know these kids are not robots and cannot be standardized. They are creative, passionate, caring, wonderful human beings. If we keep stifling them under the guise of NCLB, then we will continue to have the same problems that we have dealt with for years.

Over the course of the next few months I will be presenting ideas for change in how we "do" education. I hope that you can follow me on my journey to save our kids from this mess and help transform our schools and the communities that surround them into thriving places of learning. I wish to create an educational system that is supported by all and where teachers are held up as leaders and children are viewed as people in this world too. I can't wait to continue this conversation and I want lots of feedback!