Friday, August 10, 2012

Thought-Provoking, Inspiring Post

Another post in the same week? Wow, I'm really unemployed.

In my unemployment, with periods of the teasing possibility of employment, I have had a lot of time to think and make hypothetical decisions. What I mean by that is, at points this summer, I had two schools that were interviewing me and I would think about if I could potentially accept job offers and if both offered me a job, which I would take. (However, despite interviewing, none have offered me any jobs. This post is supposed to be inspiring so I won't dwell on that rejection.)

My first two schools were both charter schools, both for the 6th grade. At one, I would be the 6th grade science teacher. At the other, I would be the 6th grade math/science inclusion (SPED) teacher. Both schools seem great and on a good path, but I leaned towards the first because I didn't really want to be a co-teacher to anyone. I'm a little bit (a lot of bit) on the type A side and I have always had a very specific way of decorating and organizing (and running) my classroom. At the beginning of this summer, I really wanted to focus on working character development into my classroom. I thought of the characteristics most important to me that I envisioned all of my students working to embody and how they would be evaluated on those characteristics. It can be kind of difficult to explain that to another teacher who's had a different plan in their heads. After teaching in PG County, I've come to believe that character education is exceedingly important in schools. Few kids are going to remember how to find the area of a circle, but many more will learn how to properly interact with one another in a positive manner.

I digress - back to my main dilemma. I came into teaching for one reason: Alternative Breaks. As a quick summary, Alternative Breaks is a service organization (that I think is only in colleges) that organizes trips for students that focus on service and awareness of social issues. At my college, we had trips focused on issues such as the justice system, immigration, healthcare, environmental conservation, and urban/rural education. My first year of involvement, I participated in two trips (immigration/border awareness and environmental conservation). I had a lot of fun on these trips, learned a ton about the issues, as well as myself, and met many inspiring people. But, I couldn't get this itching feeling off of me. Alternative Breaks is great, but I couldn't stop thinking about how many social issues there were in the U.S. alone and how we could go about solving them (or at least approaching/formulating a feasible solution).

The following year, I participated in two trips focused on rural education. During these trips, I came to believe that  education was the "magic bullet" to a lot of these social problems. For example, our incarceration rate in the U.S. is pretty ridiculous. In Pennsylvania, 1 in 10 prisoners is a high school dropout. We also spend a lot more on prisoners annually than students. And students that seek more education are less likely to be involved in serious crimes. Because they have other options. Another example is with conservation - if people were properly taught about pollution and if our infrastructure was better integrated in sustainability, then maybe we wouldn't have experienced the hottest month (July 2012) on record.

In short, a solid, well-rounded, holistic education is the closest thing to a societal magic bullet that we'll ever have. This is what, I believe, makes the difference between progress and decline. I left Prince George's County because I didn't feel that we provided our students a well-rounded education by any means. We stressed being able to pass a test and not learning the process and perseverance that it takes to learn the material. Students took the state standardized tests up to four times a year in an attempt to meet that expectation so that they could graduate. Students were pretty much taking the same test over and over and over again, and yet still failed. What does that say about our education system? Not good things. If students knew remotely how to reason, they'd be halfway to passing their tests.

I don't want to preach about the magic of education too much (and how I think that all teachers are magical - not saying myself, remember, I don't yet consider myself to be a "real" teacher), but I guess what I'm trying to say is that we have this powerful tool that if sculpted and supported properly, could alleviate many of our societal issues. But we're not sculpting or supporting. Education cuts are not a new thing. And everyone is running towards raising achievement scores and competition among states to do better than one another. It's really disconcerting. We can do better.

In my mind, if we took the time to sculpt a really good curriculum, filled with humanities, the arts, and character education, we have a powerful tool in our hands. We need to come together to provide our students more than how to calculate x or y. Students need to learn how to work with others, solve problems, think logically, formulate their own opinions, express those opinions clearly, and contribute to society (and that's the short list of life skills). So how do we integrate these components? I'm not sure yet but - I'm working on it - and what I do know is, somehow, we must.

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