PUT DOWN THE TEXTBOOK AND WALK AWAY!

It's 4:00 am on a Saturday and I woke up at 3:00 am and started thinking about my school. I haven't written in a while, so I thought I would share some updates and thoughts. 

I am the Dean of Students this year at a school with about 98% free and reduced lunch---education folks understand this as a really broke school! I LOVE my job and I LOVE my students and I love my co-Dean. The teachers are awesome, but they are learning the hard way how to teach our kiddos. 

If you read my posts, you know that I believe kids shouldn't sit in a desk all day and listen to a teacher drone on and this philosophy is proven by how teaching practices are utilized at my school. Is this a race issue? NOPE!! Is it a socioeconomic/cultural issue? ABSOLUTELY!!

We have a huge percentage of new teachers or at least teachers who are new to our building. There is one teacher who has been at our school for 13 years and the librarian has been there since the doors opened. Another teacher has been there for 7. After that, the most tenured teacher has about 3 years. The rest of the faculty is brand spankin' new, at least to the building. 

Our kids are tough. They have seen more and been through more in 10 years than I have in 32. Many are diagnosed with ADHD/ADD, ED (emotionally disturbed), SLD (specific learning disability, or with some sort of speech/language delay. These kids are sometimes on meds and sometimes not. Many of the meds are narcotics (often opiates) so when a child stops taking the medication abruptly, he/she experiences withdrawals. The  average 5th grader has a second grade reading level and the average 8th grader has a fourth grade reading level. Almost every child that I see in my office has at least one biological parent who is in jail or one parent who he/she has not seen for a while. Many live with grandparents or other relatives. Some are homeless, some live at the Salvation Army. On our side of town, the project housing has been removed and replaced Hope VI housing, but trailer parks are rampant and dismal. The Section 8 apartments have a porn shop at the entrance and it is used as a landmark to describe where to turn into the complex when visiting students' homes. Our kids come to school with torn clothing that is often stained and wrinkled. On Thursday of this past week, I had a young lady who came to school with a shirt that smelled so badly, that I gave her one of our extra shirts and took her shirt home to wash. After two washes on hot/cold, it smelled just as bad and the armpits were just as black, so I threw it away. On Monday, she will have a replacement shirt.

So, am I asking for sympathy? HECK NO! What I am asking for is a willingness to take in the information I just gave you and recognize that we have severe problems in our schools. There is such a huge disconnect between teachers and students as well. White, female, middle-upper middle class teachers who desperately just want to convey content knowledge to their students and see them succeed. Our kids know way too much to sit in a desk all day and willingly listen to someone drone on about antecedents, World War II, plant cells, and equations. They know that this information is pointless for the direction they are heading. So instead, they find better things to do with their time during the day such as:

• Fight
• Argue
• Throw paper
• Wander around the room without purpose
• Tackle each other in the hallway
• Rap/sing/talk loudly during inappropriate times
• Sleep

So what is the answer? How do teachers get to do what they love while also motivating kids to join the party? QUIT PROFESSING! Put down the text books people and walk away! You know the saying "You can't fully love someone else until you love yourself"? I would argue you can't fully love academic subjects until you love yourself. Our kids have to be taught a new way. The job of the inner-city teacher is to hit the ground hard each year showing kids how to behave and working with kids to develop new strategies to communicate with their peers and adults, thrive in a professional environment, be a wage-earning citizen, get out of poverty, and take care of themselves. Don't laugh, it's true. Ask any inner-city school teacher. Even if they have never thought about it before, I guarantee they will now!

So what about the abysmal test scores and poor reading levels? That will come. That can be part of this learning adventure students will go on each year. The definition of insanity is "Trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Well then, schools are insane! The awesome part is though, schools don't need medication to cure the insanity, just a little rehab. I never cared what someone said about where I was in my curriculum and after a while, no one had to because these (stupid) test scores showed that my kids had very good comprehension in Social Studies. 

If you are a teacher and you are reading this, give it a shot this coming week. Put down the curriculum pacing guide and start getting to know your kids. Earn their trust and respect. Show care and concern for them (do NOT confuse that with sympathy!) by asking how their weekend went. Push the desks against the walls and do some real teaching by showing them how to work together, how to listen to you, how to answer questions, how to follow the rules at school. You will get to the curriculum and I can promise that when those (stupid) test scores come out later on next year, you will see a massive change for the better! 

Are You Getting What You are Paying For?

I love our little abode over hear on the Eastside and while I wish we could stay in it forever, the fact of the matter is, we are just getting too crunched in this small space. We can probably stay in it for another 2-3 years before I go nuts.  I am up this morning as the kids are with their grandparents at their beautiful farm in Kentucky (Read: I have some quiet time!), perusing houses for sale in the areas of Nashville where I would love to live. To get a fully renovated or new house in one of these desired areas, with the appropriate (not too big) square footage, enough bedrooms for all, including extra guest/play space, and a nice FLAT yard, it will run us at the very very low end, about $300,000. While that may be chump change to some of you, it's no laughing matter for my family. So, what if we bite the bullet and purchase a house that puts us in a safe, happy, urban neighborhood for a price that may be a little steep, but ensures us a home where we will surely create happy family memories.....what are the next steps (or really first) to consider? Always on my mind: "where will my children go to school?"

I go back and forth about how and where I want my children to be educated. If you have read my past posts, you know I believe in a new way of teaching and learning which includes non-traditional models such as Waldorf and even homeschooling. So, let's propose I move into my new, beautiful dream home in East Nashville. What comes with my sticker price on the house? Another $6,000 to $32,0000 a year for K-12 learning, times 2 children, depending on where we decide to send them to school. Why? Because the public schools simply aren't cutting it! "Why not move to the 'burbs?" you ask. Well, I have many reasons for this, among them is the fact that it is just as expensive, if not more, to move to the 'burbs and it comes with a whole host of other issues in relationship to schooling and community that I don't want to deal with.

The whole point is, we aren't getting what we are paying for. Yes, I am lucky that I have choices. If we have to, we will stay in our smaller house and send our kiddos to a private school or hope we get accepted through the lottery to a "good enough" public school. Or, if we just have to have the space, we will move way down down into the "affordable" suburban area and I will grin and bear it, so they can at least go to public schools that traditionally churn out more college-goers.

But there are other folks who don't have choices. I understand that this lack of choices is often created by poor past choices. However, if we are going to end this cycle of poor choices which lead to lack of education and poverty, we have to start with the schools. Every child, regardless of their parents' lack of quality decision-making, deserves an amazing public school. Why do we even have schools if they are just there for the sake of being there? Does Wal-Mart just keep stores open because they feel badly that if they close down, people in the area won't have a place to shop? Of course not! So why do schools operate this way? I am not suggesting we operate on Wal-Mart's model,  but what I am suggesting is that we stop taking our money and throwing it away to live where we don't want to, or to pay for private school if it is in fact what we do not want. Private schools are awesome, if that is what you want for your child. However, private schools should not be the only quality choice. 

Your tax dollars are going toward funding public schools, and for some of you, the very public schools you are opting out of only to pay ridiculous tuition rates that you simply are struggling to afford all at the sake of your child gaining a proper education so he/she can go on to college as prepared as possible. Let's put our imagination caps for a second. What if you take that money over to the school in your neighborhood where your children are zoned ask them, "what can you do with this?" Let's imagine that your child's $16,000 tuition for kindergarten was donated to your neighborhood school for a program that helps bring in resources to the school to ensure that each kindergarten child who needs one has a mentor that will stay with that child through elementary school and perhaps even beyond. Or what if that money was put to good use for a classroom assistant or two that could help the teacher manage the classroom more efficiently. What if that $16,000 went toward helping form a parent mentoring group, bringing in local experts who could guide parents who live in poverty toward getting out of poverty and off of welfare in whatever way best suits each individual?

How does sharing this $16,000 help you and your child? It helps by ensuring that your children gain access to a free, quality, public education, giving teachers help to do what they know how to do and are trained to do: TEACH. It helps to ensure that people that live in your neighborhood are learning what they need to do to come out of poverty and develop into tax paying, productive citizens. It helps ensure that your neighborhood is safer and more beautiful than it was before. 

Would this take time? Of course, but if done in the right way, it could lead to an urban revolution where public schools are thriving, children are learning, teachers are teaching, and neighborhoods are filled with people of different races and classes, working together to build each other up. Why keep throwing your tax dollars away on poor public schools and a broken welfare system, when you could donate a little time, effort, and that high dollar tuition toward bringing up the very neighborhood you live in? 

So now back to reality. Of course I do not suggest that it is right for people who can afford private school to give their child's tuition away for the sake of another child who cannot afford it. The point is to ask you to reflect on how much money you are doling out just to avoid a very real problem that, if not addressed with the sense of urgency it deserves, will continue to haunt many generations to come. I am guilty of considering doing the same. Culling our resources both human and monetary, could in fact lead to greater problem solving than what is currently happening. Look at your neighborhood schools. Are they sufficient enough for your child to attend or are you going to take on a mortgage you can't afford or a second job to pay for tuition just so your child can go to a quality school? If you are going to increase your blood, sweat, and tears output for private school tuition or a house near a better school district, why not utilize that same blood, sweat, and tears, to organize your neighborhood to demand change for its public schools? Let's demand that we get better return for what we are paying for!

Tools

"What is your personal philosophy of education?" is often the first  question posed to me in interviews. Here is my current answer:


I believe that all children can learn if given the right tools. That means: all children can learn if the way we administer those tools changes. The current tools aren’t working!


I just spoke with a young guy who is opening a KIPP Academy charter school in Memphis. What an amazing person! You could just hear is passion for education and his anger with what the current state of public education (especially in Memphis) is doing for our kids. I constantly go back and forth with my feelings about charter schools, but this guy made me a believer (at least for today!)! He essentially said that without competition, no one will work hard to find solutions to problems that arise. How true. He compared the schools to the U.S.P.S. before FedEx came along and completely blew the way shipping was done out of the water. Before FedEx came around, the U.S.P.S. had no reason to ship any faster, who would know the difference right? WRONG! FedEx shows up, everyone is a naysayer and laughs in their faces, and we all know what happened next.


This analogy helped me to further think about how I view the current traditional public school system. There are a ton of people who are too scared to change the system and figure no one will really know the difference anyway (because there isn't much of a "different" way of doing things to really compare to anyway) so why not just keep doing the same thing. I want to be the person that everyone laughs at, the FedEx of education if you will. Quite honestly, I have already been laughed at a few times and perhaps even some of you readers out there have even laughed at me. I am ok with that because I believe change is the answer and I believe I have a pretty good idea of how to make that change!


I invite you to look at Sweden and Finland and what they have done to change the face of education in their respective countries. In addition, if you haven't checked out Sir Ken Robbinson his TED conference or the RSA Animate, please don't wait another second. Here, I will make it easy for you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U


Sir Ken and these other countries are calling for and responding to the need for creativity in teaching and learning and they aren't talking about more Smart Boards and LCD projectors either! They are talking about personalized learning, innovative architecture that promotes individualized and collaborative learning opportunities. The big point of changing how we do education is that we cannot just sit kids in desks and force uninteresting information down their throats and hope that they will figure out how to solve the country's problems when they turn 22. We have to prepare our youngsters to think strategically, problem solve, work in community and be independent thinkers as well. We have to motivate this type of learning by revolutionizing our tools and throwing out the old rusty ones!

How Education Reform Will Save the U.S. (or bring it to its demise)

Longer school days! Longer school year! Better teacher training! More testing! More social programs! More charter schools! Vouchers! School choice!

Sound familiar? If not, you have not been paying attention to the ed reform debate going on in our country. If it does, don't all of these demands sound awesome? Keep kids in the school building longer and they will have less time to get into trouble; have a longer school year and kids will retain more information; fix teacher education programs so teachers will have more knowledge; more testing.....I won't even touch that one; give kids services they need so they can focus on learning; create schools that aren't unionized so teachers have more freedoms and administrators can hire, fire, and pay what they want/can; give kids options for private schools even when their parents cannot afford it; open the opportunity for people to pick whatever "best" school they can get their kiddos into.

I could have listed a multitude of other demands that are coming from ed reform organizations and some politicians and government officials, especially the one on teacher evaluation systems (but that's another blog for another day). Most of these ideals for reform sound great on paper, but when these ideals are made into reality, what does that mean for schools? When the school day goes until 5:00pm instead of 3:00pm, what are schools doing with that extra time? If school last an extra few weeks into the summer, how is learning being enhanced? When students receive health care and other services via the school with the intention of that child having all his/her needs met, is that child really succeeding at a higher rate than before? Are institutions and alternative teacher training organizations really changing and enhancing previous models, and if so, how are they doing that?

I agree that many of the typical reform demands are wonderful. But what do they look like when actually implemented? I argue that public education institutions in the U.S. can either be game changers for the better or for the worse depending on how we go about instituting reform demands. We need to be more specific when making demands for change. How we reform our schools will ultimately determine the direction our economy will go, how the welfare system and cycle of poverty will be affected, and overall, how powerful the United States will remain (or not). Without education, we are nothing, right? RIGHT!!

Let's take teacher training for instance. I hold a M.A. in Teaching. You know what I learned that I actually utilized in the classroom from my $60,000 degree? Pretty much zilch. Because I love learning I enjoyed my classes and discovering new information or writing about what I had learned, but very little actually prepared me for the classroom. So when reformers and government officials demand better teacher training programs, what is it that they want? I personally believe teachers in training should only be in a seminar an hour a week and the rest of the time needs to be spent in several different classrooms in urban, suburban and rural environments (so as to truly know where he/she would serve best) and also with administrators. Shadowing needs to be a major part of the process, data interpretation skill development, and also practice teaching. When a new teacher walks into a classroom on the first day of school, he/she needs to be armed with an understanding of how to actually do the job, not just philosophical B.S.

When it comes to the longer school day, let's have students become a part of the school process by learning how to be responsible and caring for the school. In those last two hours of the day, instead of furthering test prep, why can't kids help the cafeteria staff prep food (ideally from the garden or freshly delivered from the farm-to-school program) for the next day's meals? Why can't a kid clean desks or sweep the floor, not as punishment, but as an opportunity to understand that he/she is a part of the school and as a result needs to help maintain it? Crew and other programs for kids to be able to sit and talk about their problems, successes, failures, and concerns could be implemented during this time as well. What about exercise. After serving a long day in the classroom, implement a time for yoga and meditation (trust me, it works and kids love it! I used to do it in my classroom. Ask a classroom of 7th graders to "Om" and they will laugh at first. Give it about 2 minutes and the whole class is silent and thoughtful!).

The point is, with reform demands, we must be specific! The way we go about implementing reform will not only make or break public education as we know it, it will determine the future of our country as a whole. I personally do not have the funds to move to another country and I am actually quite happy here in the U.S. I don't want to be forced out because we are an impoverished nation with no jobs and poor education. I just hope that our decision-makers will listen and reformists will be more specific with demands lest we further the crisis!