Boy, this lounge is musty. Sorry, folks the teacher’s lounge has been closed for renovations as I have been teaching by proxy (substituting) in various high schools, middle schools, and even intermediate (5th and 6th grade) schools.
I do not accept elementary school assignments; a man has to know his limitations. Obviously, I am most comfortable in a high school ELA classroom, but I love the energy of the middle schoolers and the raw curiosity of their younger peers.
Bored and Overboard
I briefly caught a glimpse of two pieces of social media both highlighting the major issue with education. One was a headline about the school to prison pipeline that noted that, “boredom and the need for basic items.” has led to more teenage crime. The other was a chart underscoring the need to teach pragmatic skills like laundry, investing, and basic car repair.
Both of these pieces tap into the fundamental issue with education; it has not kept up with the times, and students see little practical application in what they’re learning.
I am a humanities teacher, and I believe that all learning is vital, but it is the stretching of the mind and the acquisition of skills that is necessary, not the content. You heard that correctly. I do not see a pressing need for English students to complete a traditional literary analysis every year.
Writing is writing, but writing with a practical purpose is powerful. There was a time, a brief and glorious time, when every discipline fostered writing in their classroom. The students saw value because value was placed on it by the entire school. They could not compartmentalize and detach; they had to see connections and vary their application.
This is the key to fixing education. The fifth graders were curious but not necessarily in what they were learning; by high school, the students bide their time with distraction and avoidance until their block period is over.
Nothing illustrates a lack of engagement like a line of students packing up and waiting for the bell to ring ten minutes before the class is over. I asked some students if there was any particular class that held their interest to keep them in their seats. The answer a resounding, NO!. Out of the mouths of babes.
Winkle in Time
In order to reengage students, the educational system needs a revamping at the foundational level. After Rip Van WInkle awoke from his long slumber, the only aspect of the world he recognized was the schoolhouse, not good.
Educational reform remains a hot button issue and one horse that every government candidate rides. The sad truth is that most of it is lip service, lip service from most who know nothing of the classroom.
Education needs to catch up at a foundational and curricular level, not just in the integration of technology. You can fish with dynamite and get a huge haul, but the product is actually less appetizing. We cannot continue to teach the same content in the same manner and expect better results just because we are tapping into the platforms of digital natives. Reading on a Kindle or on Common Lit or on Actively Learn and answering questions is still reading and learning in a traditional way.
Let’s take a look at education from a rubric perspective:
Content
As previously stated, we have to revisit our content. We have to prepare students for an evolving world not just for college, which on many levels ascribes to content and teaching methods more archaic than the secondary schools themselves. Again. we have to make the content not just accessible but practical.
Teachers espouse differentiation and student choice, but then we assess using standardized methods. In a discipline like ELA, I have seen rubrics and expectations sometimes muddy the water, and often stunt and stilt creativity. Writing has tone, nuance, and personality. Quantified assessments have boxes and points. Ironically, the more you put learning into a box, the fewer points you will earn. Life does not have a rubric, it is unpredictable and at times, unnerving.
Students want to learn personal accounting, how to write letters. how to speak confidently in public, and how to handle stress. They want to understand how to do laundry, how to set a budget, how to set goals and achieve them. That should be the basis of our curriculum.
Practicality mixed with individual student curiosity could potentially light a fire under even the most jaded learner. That said, we also have to look at the learning environment, itself.
Structure
I could write a thesis on the school calendar and the structure of the day, and maybe, I will, but I just want to make two points.
Logistics Should Not Supersede Learning
I was subbing in a social studies class yesterday, and the class was interrupted no less than five times by intercom announcements requesting students to the auditorium to complete student pictures. The pictures were for the yearbook and student id’s.
The latter makes it important. I agree. Safety has become the major concern of school administration, and it should be. The tragedy is that has to be.
One answer to this, is to change the nature of school itself. No more stricture. No more set bell schedules, stifling hallways and routines. Life has structure, but is a structure manipulated by the individual themselves.
The notion of changing the very structure of school is controversial, but we are not in the midst of the industrial revolution. We do not need students, especially high school students, in school for 8 hours a day, five days a week. Since Covid, many of their parents are not even working this schedule.
Freeing up seat time would allow the students to pursue other avenues such as community service, internships and actual paying jobs, especially in the service industry. This change would result in a potentially unforeseen renaissance of the family structure. If teenage children are bringing in revenue, then maybe, one parent can stay home to create some consistency. I would offer that if this was the case, the government could save some of its dollars going to public education and pay for parents to stay home.
The shortening of mandated school hours leads to my second major suggestion:
Eliminate school lunch periods.
No Soup for You
Before you cry blasphemy or get irate, I am not saying we eliminate student lunch. I understand that school lunch may be the only meal someone eats in a day. My brain and my heart could never condone this.
What I am saying is that the way lunch is served should be altered. At one point, in my tenure, we had 5, 45-minute lunch waves. Ridiculous. A school where I proxy has over a thousand more students than my former school, and they feed the entire school, yes, the entire school, at the same time – in 30 minutes. It can be done.
During Covid and half-day professional development, our district food services would provide sack lunches to all of the students as they left to go home around 12:30. Seems like a valid solution.
Another option is to open up the campus, so that the students can patronize local restaurants, not only helping the town’s economy but forming a more close-knit community. *
What I have observed is that, the lunch period is a major interruption to the school day and provides social stressors to many students that are unnecessary. I have also witnessed classes meeting right after lunch that cannot focus and where behavior becomes a problem.
Don’t even ask me about periods that are interrupted by a lunch wave. Jeez.
Creative License
The key to any change is foresight and courage. Teachers are some of the most creative people I know, and they have not only a firm grasp of their content, but on the skills it takes to be successful. It may be time to level the building known as public education, and let some new architects (the students and teachers) help with the blueprint.
*If you are interested in my musings on “open campus,” please leave a comment, and I will explore it.
Until the next time in the lounge,
Love and laughter,
Master P.