It's Not That Simple

So Arne Duncan and I are at odds. I only wish he knew it because I would love to give him an ear full! With ACT releasing their reports that only about 25% of graduating seniors are prepared for college, Mr. Duncan decides that means it's time to "raise academic standards." I have heard this same desire and watched standards change and become more unattainable over the past 6 years. Why in the world does this seem to be the only answer to the problem? Furthermore, how is this anyone's idea in the first place? So when kids are clearly not graduating and failing and scoring terribly low on college entrance exams, then we make it tougher on them? Are we assuming that we are dealing with hundreds of thousands of academic savants who simply aren't being challenged? Come on people.

If Mr. Duncan and many of the other folks who are making the big decisions for education really looked at their client base, they would understand that tweaking the standards and making them tougher is not the answer. It is much more difficult than that. This country was founded on the principal that "all men are created equal." This does not mean that all men are the same but that all men (women and children) should have equal rights and opportunities in our country. We have developed into a country that is considered a melting pot of cultures, languages, skin colors, religions, etc. We have intelligent people researching and telling us that everyone's brain works differently and we each learn based on one or more of the Multiple Intelligences. We have children and adults who are gifted, learning disabled, genius, mentally and physically challenged, poor, rich, middle class, those with parents who would do anything for them, and those who could care less. Each of these differences within our melting pot chalk up to the fact that we cannot be so robotic when it comes to academic standards. While the Common Core seems like a good idea as it is just a "recommendation" of what students should know, at the end of the day, those 45 states that have adopted it will eventually hold schools accountable to these standards and expect all children, or at least 93% or so, to meet those standards in a very robotic way and all will be judged by the state standardized test.

If our federal, state, and local governments along with individual school boards would just let teachers do what they know how to do, perhaps that would be the saving grace for our children and the future of this country. Teachers and administrators need to be held accountable, but not micromanaged to the point where they no longer have any autonomy to just teach. So how do we put this all together? How do we give schools the freedom to teach in a creative way and utilize teacher talents as they should be used without smothering them with expectations that are far from attainable? Well, that my friends is the hard part. Once again, I am working to take on this task. It is one I believe is vitally important. When the day comes that I can spend the majority of my time working on this very issue, which I hope is very soon, then I believe I can develop an answer. I only wish those people who are making our big decisions would do the same. Our children are different. We are all different. We can't expect all children to understand and learn the same information in the same way or be able to answer standardized questions and expect standardized answers and call that being ready for college or the real world. Children must be challenged and prepared, but there is not just one way to go about this. Let's all open our eyes to what's going on and start asking the right questions and answering the tough ones. It's not that simple, but it can be done!

Getting Our Hands Dirty

"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand." Chinese Proverb

Why are we not teaching this way? I love this proverb because it's so very true. Raise your hand if you can remember anything from any class where you sat and listened to a teacher drone on about what you are supposed to be learning? Now raise your hand if you remember cutting open that dead frog, worm, rat, pig heart, etc.? I am willing to bet that the larger (much larger) majority of you raised your hands for the latter.

There is an awesome piece of research entitled Agricultural Education in an Elementary School: An Ethnographic Study of a School Garden. In the article it states "If there is any hope for reinvigorating our system of science education I believe it will be found not by increased teacher accountability, not with more rigorous scientific curricula, but rather through our sense of wonder...at the heart of scientific inquiry is good old-fashioned slack-jawed wonder." (Thorp, 356). The researchers basically spent time wondering how a school garden could enhance learning and what they walked away understanding is that school gardens work because kids are literally and figuratively getting their hands dirty. Science, social studies, reading, language arts, math, the arts of all genres, P.E., even computers can be taught through a school garden attached curriculum.

How does this work?

How about this: When I come to school in the morning, I go into a cafeteria that is serving fresh blackberries that I picked yesterday after my math class spent time using measurements to determine how far apart and how deep the blackberry bushes had to be planted to thrive. We were also assigned to bring in blackberry recipes that used fractions and we were adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing those fractions and other numbers as we worked to decide how much of a recipe we needed to make to feed a particular number of people. I also am going to eat eggs fresh out of the hen house and in science we learned the reproductive process of the Avian species and the incubation period of the egg. I will also be eating bread from wheat we grew while learning about Ancient Mesopotamia. We also blogged about what we learned in an effort to enhance our critical thinking skills, writing skills, and further advancing our computer skills and utilizing important technology skills. We took a field trip to the local grain mill and saw our wheat transform right before our eyes. We made the bread using measurements and fractions as well.

I could continue on with this scenario, but hopefully you get where I am going. Not only have I learned in a hands on way, but I learned responsibility as I worked to keep the garden thriving so I could eat. My sustainability now depends on my actions in sustaining the garden. When all is said and done I am proud and have experienced success in a way that I never have before! In addition to all of this I had people from the local community come in a out of school helping our teachers teach us. We learned from a local farmer how to build and plant our garden and from the local gardening club the best way to maintain our garden. We had a attorney come in to teach us about agricultural law and how that relates to things we are studying in social studies. We had a local chef donate her time to help us create awesome menus for the food that we were preparing and how to determine how much we needed to feed our crowd of students (math in action!).

Is this a lot of work? Yes. Is it worth it to create more thriving schools? Absolutely! Teachers and administrators can't to this on their own. The community has resources and need to have a better understanding of what goes on in our schools. Local businesses have a stake in education because the people we graduate will one day be their workers, colleagues, and competition. If we can get kids out of their seats, get more of the community involved, and help teachers and administrators become more proactive, we can save our public education system. It's time to get our hands dirty!