Yesterday I became a bit charged about the copious amount of public talking heads suggesting that they were aware of magic bullets to solve our nation's education system. Particularly I have found it troubling that certain figures suggest things like vouchers, eliminating teacher's unions, increasing the standards on test and various other very superficial solutions in isolation will fix our education system. I'll tell you why all this doesn't really mean much.
My mother a Vet in the Education game teaches 5th grade. She has a student that is a math wiz. His math teacher can't stand him so he can't get instruction, even though he is a math wiz. Lets look at all the problems.
No. 1 the teacher she needs to be provided more support and more accountability. Simply getting rid of here does what? Leave the students with a substitute teacher... not a good idea. Now if indeed through a concerted effort to attempt to get her to adopt a more favorable mentality towards educating all of her students then yes she must go. But first you have to try to improve the situation that you have.
No. 2 the math wiz has anger issues. My mother is the first one in his early education career to attempt to get this child counseling. He has a history of anger and bad behavior, but no accommodations for him have been made. He will not simply just do better, he needs to be shown better(notice I didn't say anything about any pills, dont have time to address that here). Since we can't blame the parents(Hell the parents maybe doing the best they can and probably could use some help making their best better). Why has he not been referred to counseling for his anger or talked with a counselor for the 6 years he has been in school? It may have something to do with the fact that the school my Mom teaches at shares 1 guidance counselor with other local schools. Seriously A P freaking S ONE counselor for a school that is clearly smack dab in the middle of one of Atlanta's toughest neighborhoods? How do you justify that?
This is the problem. These children need help they need real calculated and informed help. The school I am speaking of deals with a myriad of behavior problems on a daily basis. I am sure it is not the only school in America that has this issue. How are we empowering these schools to deal with these issues that ultimately lead to a math wiz learning all his math in my mother's science class(not a favorable situation)? Is it buy getting rid of teacher unions? How about higher test scores? Oh! I got it a voucher to another school with the same problems? Are these suggestions inherently bad of course not they all have a role, but what are these Magic bullets doing to get the math wiz back in in his math class?? Freaking nothing thats what.
So what do you do? You get connected to a school and you find a glaring problem and you bug the hell out of your lawmakers until that gets changed. Or even better you start or find a program to address the issue. You get your friends together you march outside city halls doors. You let people know that Atlanta Public Schools only funds one counselor to be on site at local elementary schools for 2 maybe 3 days out the week. You start asking questions about how do we get the school day extended. You ask teachers about what kind of professional development they would benefit from, then you fight for it. You get the school system to go year round so these students never stop learning. The successful schools already do these things in some form or fashion. Then you see student's gradually improving. This is a process it will be long, it will be hard, but most importantly it is possible and worth it.
So what will you do walk away from this blog like you never read it or will you get involved. Will you click the link below and get the information of your local lawmakers and fax them your grievances until you get change? Or will you go back to thinking about how busy you are and forget we are losing little math wiz's everyday. Your move I'm out to get to this grind of changing the world.
Peace,
P
Link to US Lawmakers, Shout to Chanda for the info:
No comments:
Post a Comment