Why School?

With a luxuriously long break, I wasn't quite ready to go back on Monday. But once I was standing in my classroom, I realized how much I had missed my students.

But goodness are they tired. Nearly every high schooler has a story about how they stayed up until two or three in the morning before sleeping until noon or later. Their behavior has also been great so far this week. I wonder if it has something to do with the fact that they've been able to sleep on a cycle that is much more beneficial to the teenaged body's wiring.

The school at which I work is fairly progressive and starts comparatively early, but many schools start buses as early as 5:45 a.m. All of this thinking about student health, sleep schedules, and what could be done about that made me think about something larger: Who is school for?

At the beginning of every term, we free write about school. I ask students why they come to school and would they come if it weren't a legal requirement to do so. The answers surprise me. Many don't realize that compulsory attendance laws exist. Most often, I hear that a student would come two or three days a week to check in and see friends. Most surprising, however, is the answer "Of course I would come to school! You need an education to get anywhere in life, duh. And you are a crazy teacher lady for even asking this question. Plus, my mom would probably make me."

I'm not surprised that students think this way. I surprised at the diversity of students providing that answer. All my students, at some point in the day (though not all points), want to learn. They want to be better. They want to know things. But I'm not sure society knows what we want to teach them.

I want to teach my students to be curious and excited about learning. I also want to teach them skills that will make them critical consumers. I don't know if I'm trying to make them good workers, but I want them to find jobs that they are passionate about and able to obtain and keep.

Is this why we invest billions of dollars in education every year? And if it is, why are we not sending more students to college (who can complete the coursework)? Why is youth unemployment so high? I try to stay away from the hand-wringing about how our schools are failing our kids. I think there are successes across the country every day, but if the acrimony in our public sphere continues to exist, I do have to wonder just what we're teaching future citizens.

I think school as an institution needs some direction. We need to let kids know why they come to school every day. We need to not take for granted that they would like to learn to read, write, and arrange blocks. We need to start early on letting kids know why society has decided to compel them to go to school for several hours, five days a week, nine months a year, for thirteen years. Then, they just might stick around. And they might learn something.


I know there's a lot of history regarding immigrant assimilation and child labor laws that led to our current system. So, my question isn't why do we have school. Why should we have school? What do you think?

Happy Break!

This holiday season I'm grateful for you, dear readers. You've helped me improve my teaching practice and thinking about the ways in which larger policy issues affect our classroom. I'm also thankful for my wonderful students who encourage each other to come to class, work hard, and breathe when things get too crazy.

Whatever you're celebrating, I hope you're a little healthier, happier, and wiser than you were at this point last year. I also hope you get some rest and hugs from people who love you regardless of your position on bathroom passes.

Signing off till 2013,
Ms. T.

Fall Reading Adventures: Son

Yes, yes, it's nearly the winter solstice. So, that means there's time for one more fall reading adventure! For my birthday, I received the last novel in The Giver series. I didn't even realize there was a last novel in that series till I came across it at this wonderful bookshop in Norfolk.

But it's great. Son is told from the point-of-view of Gabe's birthmother. Gabe is the baby who spurs the main character, Jonas, to action in The Giver. I found it really interesting to learn more about the dystopic community that started my life-long obsession with dystopic fiction.


When my students saw Son on my what I'm reading board, we had a walk down memory lane. The Giver was the last required book some of my students finished reading and the last required title a lot of them actually loved. We talked, in classes of all levels, about the nature of the community, if it was good that the citizens didn't have to feel pain, and what other places in the world were like.

The prose here didn't excite me like The Giver. Maybe I'm more discerning that I was at nine. May Lois Lowry, like me, wanted to get to the end so that we know things end up okay for the people we love but questionable for the world in general. Who knows? This book would make a great enrichment project for classes reading books like 1984 or Brave New World. Son could also make a great selection in a dystopic fiction literature circle. 

Group Work

First of all, my prayers go out to all those affected by Friday's school shooting. I haven't been able to read about the principal and teachers protecting their students and the kids' families without crying. I hope that in the coming weeks we can have meaningful conversations about what in our culture allows these tragedies to happen and what we can do about them (at home and abroad). Maybe one way to do that is to start using schools as places to build community.

I try to include plenty of group work in our classroom. I've bought into the idea that the 21st Century workplace requires teamwork and that group work is also a great way to build the community that I strive for so much.

But it sure is hard sometimes.

Jane doesn't like to work with John and Paul doesn't like group work at all. Lila will do all the work no matter which group she is in. Then there's that one time Dan, Joanie, and Zach made a beautiful presentation about what to do in the even to of a zombie apocalypse.

I know that a part of group work is not just turning students lose to produce whatever you've assigned but teaching students how to communication, collaborate, and create. Some tactics I've found useful are community meetings about what good groups look like, creating rubrics for group work rather than just the assignment itself, and reflections on what worked and what didn't in the group.

What works for you, teacher friends? For those of you not teaching, what skills about getting along with your co-workers do you wish you'd been explicitly taught?

Names, as always, have been changed.  

Fall Reading Adventures: A Year of Biblical Womanhood

Do you all know about Rachel Held Evans? She blogs about the intersection of feminism and Christianity. Her blog became a book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, in which she spends a year living out Biblical edicts about women. RHE sleeps in a tent when she's on her period, celebrates Passover, and explores how women from Orthodox Judaism to Mennonite communities explore and live out Biblical definitions of womanhood.

Evans concludes that all such definitions of womanhood pick and choose from the parts of the Bible with which its adherents feel most comfortable (very few people expect women to camp out during their periods or marry their rapists). This conclusion means for Evans that she chooses to focus on the strongest thread of the Biblical narrative: liberation.

This is a blog primarily about teaching, so I won't get too spiritual here, but I have to say that A Year of Biblical Womanhood contained some of my favorite non-fiction prose of the year (and this is from a lady who finishes The New Yorker every year). Check it out (and recommend it to all your students who love feminism, exploring spiritual issues, or "stunt" journalism in journal)!

Fishman Prize

Although I look askance at most things with which Michelle Rhee is associated, I want to point out  TNTP's awesome Fishman Prize. Five $25,000 awards go to stellar teachers who then spend their summer writing a lengthy paper about a given educational topic. The application criteria says nothing about value-added or standardized tests. They look for teachers who have "a passion for teaching and a deep commitment to advancing the teaching profession."

We need more programs like this prize. We need to not just celebrate teachers, but also cheerlead for our profession (and, ultimately, our kids). Make it clear that those summers "off" are spent thinking deeply about our practice And we need to, well, show our work. 

Workaholics

Don't worry about your grades so much, I tell my students. Worry about your learning, your growth, your becoming you, and grades will follow. If you focus solely on the grades, you miss out on the richness of learning for the sake of learning. What does it serve you or your family or the world around you if you stay up until 2 a.m. working on a calculus problem set for your umpteenth Advanced Placement class when politics or literature or history is your true love? I believe in well-rounded people and well-rounded educations, but let's set some priorities here, people!

I am such a hypocrite.

Yesterday as I left school, one teacher remarked good-naturedly that hell must have frozen over since I was out of there while the sun still shone. I left the parents uncalled, the papers ungraded, and the administrative forms unfilled out because I am sick. Too many days of going full throttle at school to feeling obligated to have a social life outside of work have left me curled up with my puppy, my hot water bottle, and my copy of Lois Lowry's newest book.

I want to think that the difference between me wrecking myself for school and my kids doing it is that I like what I'm doing. It makes me happy to pour over student data, call parents, and plan grammar mini-lessons. I get the teaching high daily.

But I still don't take very good care of myself. I sleep and I exercise and I try to socialize and do good things in my community. I don't, however, take very much time for myself, nor am I able to be very spontaneous.

So, teacher friends, these are my questions: How do you find a work-life balance when you really, really love your work? How do you help your students see a difference between work they love or need to do and work that is gratuitous? And can anyone bring me some soup?