Seven Obvious Things in Education that are Ignored

I found just the title of this article very interesting.  It got me thinking about my list of things in education that I feel are ignored.  And I'll list those after I list the seven things from the article -

1.  Children do not learn well when they are under stress.  
2.  Tests, and high stakes attached to them, are very poor levers for increasing learning.
3.  It takes time to learn to be an excellent teacher.
4.  Programs . . . that deliver smaller class sizes and time for teachers to collaborate together . . . yield much stronger results.
5.  When unemployment levels are high, and opportunities are few, students struggle to see the purpose in their education.
6.  The people in charge of education policy in this country are dangerously out of touch with these obvious things.
7.  Teachers, parents and students need to take a visible, public stand to turn education policy in a better direction.


Okay, there's a macro look at the things that are ignored.  I'll off a micro look from my little perspective from room 211.

1.  It's tough for students to learn when they are not there.  A colleague of mine kept all the emails he received in April (and that's just one month) asking students be excused from class to attend some other function or competition.  He had 26 messages!  How many school days are there even in April?

It's great to say we need rigor and higher standards and all that stuff.  But it's quite something else to practice what we preach.  Regardless, all that great talk about "Brutal Facts" doesn't amount to much when spring rolls around and students miss for . . . prom decorating, rehearsals, spring sports, trips, and personal reasons (tanning for prom, work, shopping trips, family vacations - and those are just the reasons I was given this spring).

2.  We need to get serious about technology.  I can't tell you how often my kids - and I'll freely admit that I teach the best of the best in our school - were frustrated by our firewall blocking all the cool stuff we wanted to do - blogs, wikis, youtube, dropbox, scribd, iTunes music store - and that doesn't include what the firewall does to basic searches - said "why do we have to go home to really learn?"  I know our tech guy tried to unblock blogs and dropbox and a few other things, but it never happened.  There were a ton of opportunities lost because of that.

I just don't see how I can have little trouble coordinating an interview and career project with Digi Key where 20 kids are put through their hiring process, given a tour, and tested, but I can't have those same 20 kids create their own blogs or upload a video they created to youtube.

3.  The value of education.  I saw the lights go on in my College Comp kids' eyes all the time when I talked about the value of education.  But that didn't happen often enough in my general classes.  In my Lit and Lang 11 class, I had at least half a dozen kids explain to me that they couldn't get their home work completed because of work.  I think it's just odd how I never got that excuse from my College Comp kids.  And it's not like the latter didn't have to work too.  They just realized the importance of an education.  I don't know how to stress the value of education to every student.  I blame part of it on the assinnine law that doesn't allow us to fail anyone in middle school.  There are students who come here totally unprepared to even be average.  Where are they going to fit in the 'real world'?

4.  Our main purpose is to enrich the academic lives of children.  Everything else - sports, socializing, interpersonal skills . . . - is below that.  But that doesn't happen.  IF the main purpose of our school was to enrich the academic lives of children, we wouldn't have 26 emails asking for kids to miss class.  We wouldn't have faculty interviewed about the highlights of their careers and have them talk right away about sports related events.

5.  We don't need more testing.  I know this is indicative of a larger obsession - ushered in by NCLB and  fueled further by RTTT - of testing, but I'll put the best things I did in class this year (the final research paper in College Comp I and the multi-genre research paper and career project in College Comp II) against any high stakes test our kids take.  You simply can't measure all that my kids learned in those three examples on a simple bubble test.

6.  We are putting together a phenomenal staff.  I know we have lost some great, great assets to our faculty via retirement these last two years, but from what I hear and have seen, the new additions are coming in with great passion and dedication.  I love coming to work and being part of this team.

7.  Teachers need to step up every year.  Gone are the days of doing the same things over and over every year.  Today's learners won't stand for that.  Nor will the technology.  Teachers need to practice what we preach and grow and learn every day.