The Purpose of the American School System

I'm not and I am speaking of the purpose of education. Today, because of the political focus on education that has charged the American school system with negative energy bent on serving those seeking votes to secure their jobs, we are subjugated to talk of the purpose of the American school system apart from the purpose of education. When we talk of the purpose of the American school system, we are talking of our schools serving the corporate imperative, preparing students to be good citizens--which today varies according to which extreme you are enlisted to defend. When we talk of the purpose of education, we ignore the political structures and the corporate imperative, we ignore the economic status of the United States and the comparisons of state and national standardized, norm-referenced tests designed to classify every child based on a choice between A, B, C, or D. When we talk about the purpose of education, we have to talk about the human factor, the factor of one child, of one future with or without hope, for that is what education gives--HOPE!

Kids come into our schools with their minds bent and twisted by television and Facebook and video games and churches and politicians and moms and dads. I say bent and twisted as opposed to shaped because some of their minds have no discernible shape. Like a garden left unto itself, their minds have grown wild. Their minds have hundreds of bent and twisted branches all gnarled together--largely green, but with scars where one branch rubs against the other in the wind. Largely green, but faded underneath and showing signs of illness and weakness and decay. Suffering from the lack of care. Suffering from freedom that ignores responsibility. The kids come to our schools in this condition and our schools are charged by the corporate imperative to clean up those gardens, to make them all healthy and productive--to produce fruit from acidic soil and the undergrowth.

The best teachers know that they cannot serve the standardized tests. They cannot serve the corporate imperative. They serve their students. And they do this by caring first about the child. These teachers know that what they have to do is give this child the hope that he can grow straight and strong and be fruitful. People only learn when they have hope. I saw a poster that said something to the fact that wonder and awe were the foundation of learning. Yes, but hope is the foundation of wonder and awe. Without hope, one does not care to wonder and one cannot be in awe. To the hopeless, the awesome is one more reminder that he doesn't stand a chance.

The purpose of the American School System is to serve the corporate imperative. But the purpose of education is to give every child enduring hope. If a child has hope, then he will wonder and be in awe. A child with hope will have a reason to learn and want to learn. And we have never been able to stop a child from learning who wanted to learn. A child who wants to learn no longer needs his teacher, and that is the mark of a great teacher--When a child can learn without dependency on his teacher, the teacher has done his or her job well and deserves all the awards. If a child has a reason to learn, we don't have to worry about the corporate imperative, the corporate tests, measuring and comparing the status of the U.S. against any other country. When a child has a reason to learn, she will learn in spite of corporate America. She will learn in spite of No Child Left Behind. She will learn in spite of Democrats and Republicans and Tea Baggers.

Teachers have to give some attention to the expeditiously evil standardized, norm-referenced, corporate-sating tests. But I urge teachers to work first and foremost from the desire to give every child hope. Every child. Especially those who are most bent and twisted and have the least hope. Give every child hope.

The Crisis of Confidence

Some years ago I sat in the cafeteria of the school I was teaching in to listen to a person present information about brain research relative to teaching. I consciously remember very little about the presentation; the concept of brain research relative to teaching was new and foreign to me. I am still barely knowledgeable about brain research as it relates to the educative process. However, I came away with one important idea that day: the crisis of competence.

As I already stated, I do not suggest that I know much about the brain, but I recall that the crisis of competence created a reaction within the amygdala, a portion of the brain responsible for the creation and storage of emotional memories. The most important emotional memories may well be those associated with fear, resulting in fear behavior. It is our memories of the things we fear that promote our survival. Certainly, when we are young and mistakenly touch a pan that has been used for cooking and receive a burn, we remember that a pan that has been on the stove may be hot and that we should use caution. But the reality is that we now fear the hot pan and that emotional memory is stored and retrieved when needed to keep us from burning ourselves over and over again. It is a survival skill.

At this point it is important to address then what the individual perceives as necessary to his or her survival, for it is not only that which threatens our physical health that may be perceived as a threat to our survival, but our emotional health is also threatened from time to time and is also important to our survival. Another way of saying this is that we have to feel good about who we are. We have to have a good sense of self worth. Those who lack a strong sense of self worth become targets for ridicule and perhaps more, making their survival tenuous on a daily basis.

Accepting that the individual needs a strong sense of self worth to survive and that the amygdala stores memories of the things that create fear--cause to be concerned about one's survival, it is reasonable to establish that an individual's self-worth may be threatened from time to time, causing the amygdala to send an alert through the brain, calling for the individual to move into survival mode. Moving into survival mode generally means that the individual resorts back to the skills that are most comfortable and most protective. During a physical attack, the body bends more toward a fetal position, protecting vital organs, and the individual may look for ways to strike out in defense. During an emotional attack, the individual again bends inward and looks to strike out. The bending inward is seeking that which is most comforting and protective, providing the stance to launch the counter-attack. These emotional attacks create in the individual the crisis of competence: sensing that the self is under attack, the individual's confidence is challenged, perhaps weakened. Therefore, the individual seeks that which is more familiar, that in which he or she has greater confidence, so that he or she may return to security, to survival.

When the teacher encounters a crisis of confidence in the classroom, he or she resorts back to the most comfortable methods of teaching or of classroom management, which tend to be those methods that were used when the teachers were students, teaching as they had been taught. And this is where teaching often falters. What the skilled educator must do is create a high degree of confidence in his teaching methods so that even when experiencing a crisis of confidence, he or she can continue to pursue the method chosen rather than resort to survival mode.

More on confidence and the crisis of confidence to come later.

The Last Five Minutes

In my last post--Lesson Design and Classroom Management, June 14, 2009--I stated that teachers need to find ways to engage students during the last five minutes of class as much as students are engaged in learning throughout the class period. When faced with finding something to engage students during that time, all teachers are initially over-whelmed with the task and uncertain as to what to do. Perhaps this blog can serve as a forum for teachers to begin posting ideas as comments. If it happens, I will then compile the suggestions into a later blog for easier access.

Thinking about the last five minutes and considering what I would have students do, I came up with the following, which is directly related to teaching grammar--as I was an English teacher. I believe the basic idea could be applied to other disciplines:

As I enter the last five minutes of class, I turn on the overhead projector or pull off a sheet of paper that had been concealing the task as written on the board or hand the assignment to students, copied onto a half sheet of paper. The assignment contains two sentences; for instance, "Larry asked that I keep the information between he and I." and "Larry asked that I keep the information between him and me." The assignment states that one of the sentences is correct. Students are to determine which sentence is correct and write a single paragraph (100-300 words) explaining their reasoning. The assignment is due as they leave.

This would certainly cause a bit of hysteria at first, but as students became accustom to this, they would engage immediately and be able to complete the task successfully. The writing is important. It is through the writing that the teacher is able to assess the reasoning skills of the student. I suggest that this would be used no more than twice a week, but that it would definitely be used at least once every week for the entire semester.

What are your ideas?

Weighing Teacher Effectiveness

As I began to think more about the topic of determining whether a teacher was effective, I noticed that I have accumulated a few books on the subject. And I know that I've read through some of them, because they have my characteristic underlining, squiggling, asterisks, check marks, and sidebar notations. Some of the books I have are:
Fiore, D. J. & Whitaker, T. (2005). Six types of teachers: Recruiting, retaining and mentoring the best. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education.
Stronge, J. H. (2002). Qualities of effective teachers. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Tucker, P.D. & Stronge, J. H. (2005) Linking teacher evaluation and student learning. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

I am certain there is much in each of these books and many other texts that can help us to measure the effectiveness of a teacher. However, I believe there is a simpler method of determining a teacher's effectiveness, at least on a personal level. At the end of the day, every teacher needs to answer one important question:

"Was I the type of teacher that I would want my own children to have?

When I think about the type of teacher I wanted my children to have, I wanted someone who forgave my children when they made mistakes but held them accountable to the reasonable consequences of their actions.

I wanted someone who called my children to attention when they misbehaved but did not scream at them, belittle them, or destroy their self-confidence in the process.

I wanted someone who encouraged my children to take chances and to learn on their own, to experience that mistakes are part of the learning process. I did not want someone who declared that the only right answers were the ones she held in the back of the teacher's edition of the textbook.

I wanted someone who had compassion, who saw my child as a child even when he was seventeen, who listened more than she spoke, who looked for ways to make my child successful even when he struggled.

And if I, as a teacher, can meet the expectations of what I wanted for my own children when I was working with the children of other parents, then I know that I am a good teacher.

Dr. Daggett of the International Center for Leadership in Education speaks of rigor, relevance, and relationships as key to improving the quality of education. I agree. However, I suggest that relationships come first. Because kids really do not care about what you know, until they know that you care.