Mega Bites and Messages

Our country was founded on equal opportunity. We embarked on a mission where education was free and available for all. We wrestle with issues of church and state, funding, parents wishes, students rights, teacher training and defining what it is we can/should teach. Somewhere in the struggle lies possibilities.

While this is a discussion is ongoing, what has been an unknowable trend has been the large amount of non-educators that seem to be defining what education is and should be. The coming focus and shift to Charter Schools may in the short term show some positive results. But-and here is the rub-who are we leaving behind in the “regular” schools?  Should we peel off the students who have interested, vested parents and create schools just for them?  Without realizing it would we be setting up unequal school systems?

An an educator in a large city district I can assure you there are real problems. Unfortunately, many of the issues urban educators face are issues over which they have very little control. If we really want education to become the great equalizer then we should at the very least look at the real issues teachers in the inner city face.

Student mobility is a HUGE problem. It is not uncommom for students to attend 3-4 different schools during one school year.  This also adds to huge gaps when the child is not in school at all, as they move between homes, parents,and even cities.  A child actually has to be there in order for a teacher to teach them. The loss of a caring teacher to an At Risk student is seen as another rejection. Many of our kids face way to many rejections.

Discipline. My girlfriend teaches Kindergarten and spends at least 50 % of her time explaining school appropriate words and behavior. Most of these 5 year old come to school with vocabularys that would make most of us blush and striking out and hitting someone is natural way to resolve differences.  By the time some of these children reach middle school it is not uncommon for them to have expereinced more fear, loss, and betrayal that most adults experience in a lifetime. 

Materials and Supplies. While Walmart and other run ads  for back to school supplies, most  children in city schools arrive with very little. It is the classroom teachers who out of her own paycheck buys crayons, markers, glue, and even copy paper. While a box of crayon runs around $2.00 just times that by 30 children. Add in socks, backpacks, and stickers and you get the picture that teacher in the inner city is investing a much larger portion of her paycheck in her classroom. A high school friend of mine has taken to buying golf pencils for his classroom because students never have pencils and the ones he buys tend to walk away the last student who borrowed it. Teaching over 100 students a day-he has tried everything to keep enough pencils in the  room so students have something to actually write their assigments with. Golf pencils just don’t seem to walk away as quickly. As city educator make far less than their counterparts in the more affluent subburbs, it becomes harder and harder for teachers to use their salaries to make up the difference.

Paper work- until my own children attended a suburban school I never realized that paper work, reports, data sheets, were not used everywhere. My childrens teachers apparently just keep grade books and grade report cards. They do not have data review sheets, they do not have to track trends. ect. I understand that perhaps more assessment is needed to reteach-but I am hear to tell you-all that paper work- it really good at killing creativity. 

Respect. I have always considered teaching to be a higher calling. Yet as the years have gone by it is very common for  parents to yell at me for giving theur child a B+. There is an entitlement that if I don’t give an A I must justify-justify-justify. The pressure on the poor kid-to have to get A’s in everything. Not to mention the very demeaner of students and parents who challenge. It is okay to vent, yell at and educator-we just stand there and take it.

Note to the new education secretary-education has some very real issues, running away from them and ceate seperate but equal schools is no answer. Blaming the teachers-just not going to work. It is going to take a real discussion with teachers who work with kids to come up with some solutions. There’s a unique idea-how about including us in the discussion.