Dandelions in the Sidewalk

My Dear Progeny,

Yesterday, we attended your freshman orientation for high school! How are you in high school? It doesn’t seem that long ago that I took you to kindergarten registration.

Sometimes, high school will feel like the best times of your life and sometimes it will feel like the worst times of your life. You’ll be right both times. Looking back on my own high school years, I can remember times when my friends and I laughed so hard we couldn’t breathe. I also remember times when I cried so hard, I couldn’t breathe. I’m glad I made it out with friends I still have to this day, but I also regret some of the ones I lost through my words and actions. I regret not taking advantage of more learning opportunities. I regret some of the ways I spent my time. As every parent does, I want to save you from some of the regrets I have in my life, knowing full well you won’t listen. It’s ok. You’re in high school. This is the time when you’ll test the limits and when you’ll need to make your own mistakes… even if they’re ones your mom made 30 years ago. Some lessons just need to be learned by making a mess of things on your own. That’s ok. Your dad and I will be here for you when you make the mistakes, and we’ll help you clean up the messes… just don’t be surprised if we roll our eyes now and then. So, here’s some advice from your mom as you enter high school:

Learn what they’re teaching. I was a great student… on paper, but I didn’t learn a thing. I memorized information, regurgitated it on tests, and forgot it the next day. Don’t do that. I wish I remembered the books I read and the facts I learned. You’re so much smarter than I am, and you will be able to do so much more than I will ever do, but you’ll need to know some basic information and have some basic skills to be able to do that. So, even if it’s something that doesn’t interest you or you don’t like your teacher, learn the information. Take advantage of any learning opportunity that comes your way. You’re getting an opportunity to receive a quality education and that doesn’t happen everywhere in the world, so take advantage of any opportunities to learn.

Enjoy time with your friends. I found my tribe in high school. I hope you find your tribe as well. I hope you make friends whose company you’ll still enjoy 25 years out of high school. But don’t worry if you don’t find your tribe right away, many of your friendships will change as you go through high school (and life in general). You’ll have some friends who will stay your friends, you may not necessarily have smooth sailing all the time, but you’ll stay friends even after you’ve had a difficulty. You’ll have some friends who will move on to other friends and leave you behind… and that’s ok. Be there for them, love them, but don’t force your company on them when they’ve found someone else with whom to spend their time. You’ll find that sometimes you’ll be the one who wants to move on, and that’s ok too. Just always be kind and loving, speak gently, and care for everyone. Deep friendships are more important than popularity, don’t worry if people laugh at you for being friends with someone. Be a good friend. Don’t tell your friends’ secrets to the other kids, be willing to try something new that interests a friend, be willing to listen, be someone others can trust.

Don’t waste your years worrying about boys. It’s natural to begin to think about dating and crushes and for that to take up more of your mental space than it did in middle school, but don’t let it take over. You’ll have crushes and hopefully there will be boys who have crushes on you, but don’t spend so much time and energy thinking about it that you miss out on fun with your friends or opportunities for learning. The chances are that you won’t marry anyone you date in high school so when break-ups come, as they inevitably will, try to deal with them with grace. Whether you’re the one being dumped or you’re the one doing the dumping, be kind, don’t talk about him to other people, try to stay friends (unless he did something truly terrible), and try to remember that it’s just high school. Though I joke to you about not dating until you have a house and a master’s degree, I know that the dating relationships you have in your teen years will help you learn about yourself and maybe even result in life-long friendships, just don’t let that be the focus of your time.

Speaking of dating, never feel pressured to date someone you don’t like or to do anything you don’t want to do when you date someone. Don’t try to be someone you aren’t to try to get a boy to like you. If a boy is already dating another girl, he is off limits, even if you really really like him- put yourself in the other girl’s shoes and imagine what your feelings would be in her situation. And another thing about boys: high school boys, in general, are stupid. They do dumb things; they don’t always think through things. But they have hearts and can be sweet. If a boy likes you, he’s already shown that he has a good heart and good taste, so if you don’t like him back, be gentle with him and respect his feelings and yours. You don’t have to like him back, but you shouldn’t be mean to him either. Please come to me when you are confused or have questions. Believe it or not, I dated before I met your dad, I had crushes on boys who didn’t like me back, and there were boys who had crushes on me when I didn’t like them back, there were things I did well, and things I did really really badly, so the chances are good I might have something to offer. You don’t have to try to navigate all this alone.

Gossip works like currency in high school. Don’t gossip. It’s mean. You will likely be the subject of gossip. If so, try to ignore it if it’s harmless and if it isn’t harmless tell us or tell an adult at school. Don’t tell the other kids anything you wouldn’t want the whole school to know and never tell anyone the secrets other kids have told you (unless they or someone else is being harmed in which case tell us or an adult at school immediately). Be the person no one comes to with gossip because they know you won’t listen to it or pass it on.

Here’s some general advice:

Try new things. I know that’s hard for you, but this is a good time of life to explore new foods, new interests, new activities, and new adventures. Obviously, don’t do dangerous, illegal, or mean things, but try to expand your world.

Take pictures. My friends and I met last month and said we wished we had more pictures of us hanging out together when we were in high school. You have the advantage of a phone in your pocket everywhere you go. Take pictures, and not just goofy ones, take nice ones too.

Remember the good times and try to forget the bad times while remembering the lessons you learned in those bad times.

Give yourself grace. You’ll get bad grades, you’ll say the wrong thing, you’ll do something embarrassing, you’ll fall short. It’s ok!

Be aware of social media. Your dad and I were fortunate enough to go to high school before everyone had a camera in their pocket and a way to share what was on that camera with anyone in the world, so we didn’t have to live with the reality that the things we did could follow us forever. You do. Be aware of what you say, how you say it, where you say it, and to whom you say it.

Finally, know you are not alone. Every adult you know has lived through high school. You have parents who, despite being 1,000 years old, love you and have experienced this already. You have cousins, aunts and uncles who are cooler than your parents. You have grandparents who watched your parents do all the stupid things they told them not to do. You have an entire school full of adults whose job it is to help you grow, learn, and succeed. You have a church family who loves you and wants to see you grow into the person God is calling you to be. You have a God who made you exactly as you are and has a beautiful plan for your life. If you need someone or if one of your friends needs someone, we will all be there for you ready to love you, to listen to you, and to help you. You can come to us for advice, or just to have someone listen to you when you need to vent.

Have fun. Be safe. Be kind. Be respectful. Learn as much as you can. And enjoy the next four years.

Love,

Mom

Bugs ‘n Plugs and I celebrated our 17th anniversary yesterday. The story of how we met is pretty great… if I do say so myself. We both had an interest in a series of books and met on an online forum where we talked about them. We each liked what the other had to say and started talking through private messages, which led to AOL Instant Messenger conversations, which led to virtual dates where we rented a video, pushed play at the same time and talked over AIM, which led to meeting in person, which led to getting engaged three months after meeting in person, which led to our wedding a year later. And the rest is history.

Except it’s not. “The rest” is the most beautiful part of the story.

Jewelry commercials would have us believe that married life is about sitting in front of warm fires on snowy days in our Lands End flannel shirts sipping coffee in our perfectly clean home while our beautiful children lie serenely on our Pottery Barn rug coloring in the lines in their coloring books. It’s like the way diaper commercials want you to think that having a baby is a beautiful, soft-focus mix of adorable little toes and little baby laughs and cuddles and they forget to mention the screaming and the spit up and the sleepless nights and the poop. So. Much. Poop. It’s not real. But we’ve all been conditioned to expect these things. Maybe that’s part of the reason families have a hard time sticking together.

Life is messy. Life is unpredictable. Life is hard.

In the 17 years we have been married we have experienced major financial setbacks: multiple years when our expenses went up but our income didn’t (even some years when our income went down), buying a house about five minutes before the bubble burst on the housing market, making us “underwater” in our mortgage the first 11 years we owned it, said house requiring repairs always at the worst moments, and other things. In the 17 years we have been married we have experienced illness: I had preeclampsia during my pregnancy with The Progeny and had to be on bed rest for the last weeks of it, Bugs ‘n Plugs had surgery on his knee after our first dog knocked him down the stairs, Bugs ‘n Plugs had kidney cancer removed, he almost died with a pulmonary embolism, and I had a surgery go wrong leading to a much longer and more complicated recovery. In the 17 years we have been married we have experienced heartbreak: his grandpa died, my dad died, my grandma died, our first dog died. In our 17 years we have had stressful times at our jobs, we have had stressful times with The Progeny, and we have had stressful times with the dogs, the house, the cars… pretty much everything.

Life is messy. Life is nothing like the jewelry commercials. But when life gets messy, we know we have each other’s back. We pray for each other. We seek God’s wisdom together. We support each other. We make each other laugh. We forbear each other (we both have about a million weird quirks that we could let drive us completely crazy, but we don’t). We find happiness together sitting on the couch watching bad TV or making meals together or planning a secret outing to the Planetarium with The Progeny. Those wedding vows are no joke. They’re tough stuff. And it’s tough to face sometimes. But when we face it all together, we end up stronger than we were before.

Our marriage isn’t perfect because we’re not perfect, but we accept our imperfection, look to God to help us with what we can’t do, and we move on together. I love our story. I love how we met and how things worked out on our wedding day. But “the rest” is not history. “The rest” is where the story started. I’m glad that for the rest of our lives we’ll be blessed with each other’s company, humor, caring, reason, and love.

We are truly blessed.

Today was Father’s Day. As someone who has already lost my dad, I suppose I could have been sad today, but I chose not to be sad and here’s why:

My dad loved us so well during his life that I have never felt there was anything that went unsaid. This is not to say that I don’t think about him and miss him. I think of him daily, I often wish he could be here to share in the things that go on in our lives, and I frequently wish I could talk to him when I’m wondering about something, but I don’t feel like we missed out on loving one another during his life.

I chose not to be sad today because I feel like I live the love Dad gave us every day. Though he’s not physically present guiding me anymore, the things I learned from him remain with me. He still lives when I try to find small ways to try to make other people’s lives better, through the encouragement I try to give to those around me, through the sense of humor with which I try to face frustrating situations, through the determination to see things through, and through the caring and respect I try to show to strangers and friends alike…and I still arrive at least 20 minutes early to everything.

There is also the hope that comes from faith that one day I’ll see him again when we are all together with our Heavenly Father.

So, I chose not to be sad today. Instead, I decided to be grateful for all that my dad was. I’ll always miss my dad and wish he could be here, but I’ll also always be grateful for the love he showed during his life.

In this final post in the series I’ll address the treatment of teachers and the paralysis of professionalism. To read the earlier posts, click the links:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Teachers are Treated Poorly

It has been said that teaching is not a job, it is a profession, or a calling, or a mission. And whenever teachers are asked to do something difficult, the argument is always “it’s for the kids.” Teachers work long hours. We essentially have two jobs: the one that happens in front of the children all day and the one that happens before they arrive in the morning, after they leave in the afternoon, and at home in front of the TV at night and on weekends. Teachers spend hours at a time without adult interaction, we have schedules that sometimes prevent us from visiting the bathroom with regularity, we have short lunches that are sometimes interrupted by school obligations, and the list goes on. When politicians come up with new ideas, we are the ones required to implement them. We are expected to work with parents who don’t always see us as partners in their children’s education. We are expected to maintain a professional demeanor when a parent is yelling at us (yes, this does happen, with greater frequency than most know). We are expected to maintain a cheerful attitude when students are being disrespectful and defiant. We are expected to know our students’ needs and come up with ways to meet them. We are expected to spend our own money on our classrooms. And, sometimes, we are expected to deal with physical abuse from students. Our evaluations are tied to the performance of children, who are people, not robots. Our jobs are on the line when students sit down to take those tests; a full year of work comes down to how well a student performs on one standardized test on one morning. Our salaries are well below those of other professionals and while the usual argument is that we “have the summers off” that is not entirely true because we are frequently required to attend continuing education opportunities during the summers and most teachers work on preparing for the next school year throughout the summer. We are required to meet recertification requirements in our respective states but funding is not always provided for us to do this and it comes from our own pockets. And when you pick up a newspaper, it is teachers who are blamed when students fail to perform. We are accused of being lazy. We are accused of using excuses when students don’t perform, even if we have expressed concerns. It seems that when it comes to the expectations placed on teachers, we are considered “professional educators” but when it comes to our salary and the way we are treated we are “just teachers.” This dichotomy is not healthy.

What can we do about it? Lobby your politicians to pay teachers a competitive salary. Be active in your student’s school and help teachers where you can. Show some understanding if your call is not returned right away. We can change teacher evaluations so that student growth is not measured only by performance on a test at the end of the year. Speak up when your local school system does something that is not good for teachers. We have to change the culture in our country. Teaching used to be a respected profession but when you look at how teachers are portrayed in popular culture you see one of two things: a “SuperTeacher” who bucks the system, sits on the desk, chews gum in class, and reaches the hard-to-reach students with his or her dedication and heart. Or, they’re portrayed as lazy slouches working against the idealism of their young charges. In reality, most teachers don’t match either of those descriptions. Most teachers are hardworking people who put in extra time and money but have families of their own they go home to who need their love and support (and emotional energy) just as much as the students do. It’s time to change our view of teachers: we are neither saints nor villains; we are human beings who were called to a profession of service to others. It is time to treat us with the respect that deserves.

The Paralysis of Professionalism

In college I learned that I was supposed to be an advocate for my students; I was supposed to engage in developmentally appropriate practice to meet their needs at the right age and stage. I learned about child development and learned about the kinds of activities that matched each stage of development. And then I started working and learned that many of the decisions made in the world of education are made by people who either aren’t familiar with developmental psychology or don’t care about developmental psychology. This leads to unreasonable expectations on young children. These unreasonable expectations are exacerbated when students arrive with learning deficits. However, as a teacher, if you try to point out the inherent bad practice involved in maintaining these unreasonable expectations on students, you are told that you are being unprofessional because you are trying to remove the responsibility of poor student performance from yourself. This is not to say that all poor student performance is linked to developmentally inappropriate standards, however there are some unreasonable expectations on students and teachers are generally not “allowed” to bring up these issues.

Jobs can be frustrating. This is true in teaching as well. It is a stressful job with high expectations, long hours, and difficult tasks. You are always “on.” There is a lot of outside input from people who aren’t professional educators. But teachers have very little opportunity to voice concerns without being told they are unprofessional. When teachers want to bring up concerns about workplace environment, student expectations, student behavior, or developmentally inappropriate practice, they are told that they are being unprofessional and, in the age of accountability, with increasingly complex teacher evaluations, teachers are afraid to be given disciplinary action, or maybe even lose their jobs because they are perceived to be unprofessional. So teachers frequently remain silent despite their concerns.

What can we do about it? Administrators and government officials need to allow teachers to speak their minds without fear of retribution. Society at large needs to listen to teachers. We are the ones who interact with students every day. We are the ones who have been trained to teach students in a way that is consistent with their development.

Our public educational system is broken. Most people want to blame teachers and say they are lazy and are poorly trained, but this is not the case. We have created this problem by asking children to grow too fast and taking away opportunities to play and develop normally. We have asked children to learn things their brains are not ready to learn in the interest of being competitive and rigorous. We have tried to create accountability with standardized testing but have asked teachers to differentiate instruction. Critical thinking is no longer valued in our educational system. We have asked schools to do more with less every year. There are people who have never taught making decisions about education. We have asked schools to compete against each other for money, leaving behind poorer states and school systems. We treat our teachers poorly, and we have taken away their voices but we still expect them to perform miracles because “it’s for the kids.” There are changes to be made but we have to start making these changes now.

To read the previous posts, click the links:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Today, I want to address decision-making and funding. Yes, we’re going to talk about money… again. It’s important to remember that it’s not how much money is spent on education, it’s how money is spent on education. So, here are today’s problems, with some suggestions for how to fix them.

Politicians, Not Educators and Parents, Making Decisions

I started teaching at the same time that No Child Left Behind came out. Standards and demonstrating mastery of those standards became the most important part of education. These changes were brought about by politicians at the federal and state levels. Now we are experiencing Common Core Standards. Politicians are telling teachers what to teach, how to teach it, what constitutes mastery, and they’re tying money to it. If you don’t meet the bureaucratically mandated standard of proficiency, you will lose funding. Politicians, not educators and parents, are making these decisions and the educators are forced to try to adhere to them, regardless of whether it’s what’s best for kids.

I went to college to learn how to do what I do. I graduated with all these great ideas for how I was going to do things in my own classroom. Then I entered the world of public education. I have a lot less control over my classroom than I’d ever imagined I’d have. I am told what to teach and often I’m told how to teach it. Decisions are made for me but I’m still the one responsible for the outcomes.

What can we do about it? Politicians must be willing to relinquish control to educators and parents. This may be the hardest change yet because it’s really hard to put toothpaste back in the tube. This requires advocating for our children and telling our politicians we want their noses out of our classrooms, regardless of their party affiliation because both sides are guilty of meddling in public education.

Educational Hunger Games

It was infuriating to read that several years ago Congress gave the Department of Education $4.35 billion with no strings attached. And the answer to that was to start a new program called, Race to the Top, which required states to apply for grants to obtain this money. What an incredible missed opportunity. Rather than divide the money equitably among the states and District of Columbia the states were instead required to play some sick Educational Hunger Games, applying for grants to get extra money. This puts poorer states that do not have the money to hire professional grant writers at a disadvantage. A government that is supposedly of the people and for the people should not be using the people’s money to make educators jump through hoops to access the funds needed to educate the people.

What can we do about it? If Congress wants to spend money on education, give it to the states and localities to spend as they see fit. Some will need to update their facilities, some will need to hire new staff, some will need to update their technology, some will need to buy books, etc.. The states and localities have a better idea of what they need than bureaucrats at the Department of Education (many of whom have NO classroom experience). We have to contact our elected officials and tell them we want that money sent back to the schools, not to the Department of Education. Again, funding should go from the littlest kindergartener up and there is a lot of administrative fat that could be trimmed to free up funding.

Tomorrow I’ll address treatment of teachers and professionalism.

Today’s post will focus on the lack of critical thinking and funding. Yep. We’re gonna talk about money!

Click the links to read the previous posts:

Part 1

Part 2

Lack of Critical Thinking

Now, many of you will balk at this as a problem, probably because you’ve been told that Critical Thinking is an important part of the curriculum and that it’s important for students to master it. If you’re a teacher, you’ve been to countless hours of training, telling you how important it is to incorporate Critical Thinking, to incorporate the highest levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy in your lessons. And if you look at the way standards are written, you probably see some of the verbs from higher up on the Taxonomy that would seem to indicate that students are expected to think critically. I, too, have been to professional development about extending students’ thinking but I have found that while it seems to be important on paper, it doesn’t seem to be important in practice.

Teachers go to a lot of professional development about Bloom’s Taxonomy. We are taught how to write the right verbs in our lesson plans and create lessons and activities that push kids up the Taxonomy. It looks really good on paper that principals turn in to their bosses. But the reality is that we are still required to administer standardized tests that don’t always ask questions the way we’ve been told to teach them. Unfortunately, as previously mentioned, our jobs are tied to the scores students earn on these tests and when push comes to shove, we need to teach in a way that will help them pass these tests.

The loss of play in the youngest years is also a contributing factor in this loss of critical thinking. Students are not learning how to solve problems through play and social interaction and they grow up dependent upon adults to solve their problems for them. They didn’t learn to make mistakes in the safe environs of the housekeeping area and they are afraid of making them in the high stakes elementary classrooms.

What can we do about it? We have to allow our students time to play, time to explore, time to have free time to think through problems and come up with ways to solve them. We have to change how we assess student learning. If we want teachers to be allowed to give students the opportunity to think critically, we have to take the pressure off of them to make sure the students perform on standardized tests.

Poorly Allocated Funding

Budget season is always stressful in a school. Waiting to find out if your principal has enough money to keep you on staff, wondering if you’re going to get the crayons and pencils you were hoping to replenish next year, wondering if you’ll get a cost of living raise to cover the additional cost of the new health insurance rates. Every year, schools are being asked to do more with less. People want technology to be integrated into the schools but don’t want to spend the money to buy the technology. People want modern, clean facilities but don’t want to spend the money to keep those buildings up. People want quality teachers but don’t want to spend the money to pay them a salary they can live off of without supplementing. Every year, schools are asked to spin gold out of straw. But there is no magic little man to come in and spin that straw into gold (trust me, if he did exist, he’d be on the payroll). Most of the time, teachers are asked to supplement what school systems can’t. Teachers are already paid less than many professionals and then are asked to spend our own money to buy what is not supplied.

What can we do about it? We have to agree, as a society, that our schools are worth more than what we are currently giving them. This might mean making some hard choices. This means that funding decisions need to be made from the littlest kindergartner on up. Priority should be given to staff and resources that directly impact students which means possibly looking at streamlining administrative positions, a task that could be accomplished easily with less paperwork. It means federal, state, and local governments need to look at how they allocate funds. It means we have to advocate for our students. It means we need to allow schools to find alternative funding options. We cannot continue to expect to get gold from straw.

Tomorrow I’ll address decision-makers and federal dollars (yep! We’re going to talk about money again!).

In the second part of this five part series, I’ll address the need for developmentally appropriate standards and differentiated assessment. Click here to view part 1 where I addressed the need for play in the youngest grades and the need to reintroduce basics and classics. As I mentioned before, I wrote this in 2016 or 2017 when I was still teaching and I have retained the present tense.

Standards are not Developmentally Appropriate

I do not write curriculum. I teach what I’m told to teach. Sometimes, it really doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, but I teach it because I don’t want to lose my job. For example, in my state students learn about ancient cultures in faraway places two years before they begin to learn about history in their state or country. This seems backwards to me because I remember from my developmental psychology class that children develop from the inside out. In other words, they care about themselves, then their family, then their friends, then their community, etc. Even at age seven, for many children if they can’t see it, taste it, touch it, smell it, hear it, or experience it, it doesn’t exist. They don’t really have a great concept of time or space. To them, long ago was when I was a little girl (their grandparents are ancient) and far away is the grocery store on the other side of town. But I dutifully try to illustrate to them what we mean by ancient when it comes time to teach ancient cultures. Why? Because it’s rigorous! We want a rigorous curriculum so that we can say to other states that our seven- and eight-year-olds can identify contributions of ancient cultures while your nine- and ten-year-olds are just beginning to understand! Ha!

You see the same thing across the curriculum. In Language Arts, students haven’t even finished with phonics and sentences and we’re already teaching them about author’s purpose, and inferences. In math, we expect students to compare fractions before they have mastered basic facts or place value. In science, small children are expected to understand the complexities of habitats and ecosystems and be able to identify ways in which living and nonliving things are interdependent on one another. Wow! There sure are a lot of big words that little kids can say! And for an afternoon on a test, they can probably even tell you what it means (ask them again in two weeks). But what is the goal of education? Is it to spout off big words and regurgitate complicated relationships you memorized from a study guide without really understanding? If so, we’re right on target! But if we want our students to be able to draw legitimate conclusions to truly think critically and to really see relationships for themselves and learn to think for themselves, we’re heading down the wrong path.

Just as abandoning the basics and the classics is bad practice, so is trying to force feed children knowledge that is just not within their scope to understand. Social Studies curriculum is an excellent example of this. Years of psychological studies have shown us that our brains develop in predictable patterns and we become ready to process new kinds of information at different stages of development. Our first concern is for ourselves, then our family, then friends, and on out. But Social Studies curriculum is written from the outside in! Why are kids learning world geography before they can name the state or country in which they live? Why are they being asked to identify the contributions of ancient cultures before they understand the contributions of the Founding Fathers? In math, why are we asking children for whom things they can’t see don’t exist to solve for missing addends? Sure, it looks great on paper to say that we teach our kids, A, B, and C by the third grade, but then we wonder why they struggle to demonstrate understanding on a standardized test. They can’t make a meaningful connection to the curriculum because it is not developmentally appropriate.

What can we do about it? Just as we have to advocate for our children to have the basics and classics taught, we also need to advocate to be sure that in the effort to keep things rigorous we don’t lose sight of what’s appropriate. Child psychologists and/or educators who actually work with children need to be part of the discussions when it comes to planning curriculum.

Differentiated Instruction for Standardized Testing

Yep, you read that correctly. Differentiated Instruction is one of those buzz phrases that gets used A LOT in education. And it really does make a lot of sense. You meet kids where they are and you give them what they need to make the progress they need to make. Some students come to you knowing all the stuff, so you have to provide them with opportunities to extend their learning. Some students come to you reading two grade levels below grade level so you have to provide them with opportunities to access the curriculum in a way they can understand while you try to meet their unique needs. Some students come to you right where you need them to be so you have to make sure to make their learning just right so that it’s not too hard or too easy. Some students are visual learners and will need a lot of visual aids to understand what you’re teaching. Some children are kinesthetic learners, so they’re going to need a lot of movement to make meaningful connections. Some students are very artistic and can really grasp a concept if you give them an artistic representation. Teachers are great at differentiating instruction; they go to A LOT of training to learn how to do it. They have small groups and centers and songs and fingerplays and posters. They don’t even have to think about it; they just do it. Once they figure out what everyone needs and how they learn best, they are modifying their plans to meet those needs! And then comes a test and every child, regardless of learning style or level of understanding takes the same test in the same way. And then we tell the teacher she has failed because some of the students have done poorly, or we call her liar when her gradebook shows that the students understood the material but the test did not.

Teachers are forever cautioned against “teaching to the test” but our evaluations (and therefore, our jobs) are tied to these tests so it is really hard not to do that. But most of us are there for the children and want them to grow and learn so we do what we need to do to help our students learn. Sometimes that means they don’t pass a standardized test. Children aren’t standard, people aren’t standard; we are all different; we all have different strengths and weaknesses. But every spring, all across the country, we sit children down in hard, plastic chairs in front of computer screens or bubble sheets that look exactly the same and tell them they all have to pass. They didn’t all learn the information in the same way so why do we expect them to demonstrate it in the same way? I’m not saying that we don’t need some way to measure what students know. How else will you know whether your methods are effective? But, we need to look at HOW we are measuring that.

I was an excellent test taker in school. Give me a bubble sheet and I was good to go! I had the school thing figured out. Now, I don’t remember half of what I learned in school. Why? Because I committed information to short-term memory, regurgitated it on a test and forgot it an hour later. Did I really learn the information? Apparently not. I memorized a lot of stuff really well. The only thing all my tests in high school tested was how good my short-term memory was! Now, our students live in a world of testing. From the time they are in kindergarten they are testing! Some of them have become excellent test takers, even by third grade, like I was in high school. They memorize the things you put on a study guide for them and spit it back out at you on a test. Others can tell me about a time they went to a museum and saw an exhibit that showed something that relates to something they are learning but two days later they will fail a test. What is the purpose of education? I don’t think anyone would say the purpose of education is to pass tests. Tests are meant to be a tool to guide instruction. They should be used to see what students know, what they need to know, which strategies, materials, etc. were effective in teaching and there does need to be some degree of standardization, but if you’re asking a kinesthetic learner to sit in a hard plastic chair, staring at a computer screen for two hours to show what she knows, you’re not going to get a very good representation.

If we had more creative and effective ways of measuring student success (rather than testing), perhaps our students wouldn’t suffer from the anxiety about testing they currently do. Test anxiety and school anxiety are real and are happening at younger and younger ages! First of all, testing in the way it is carried out is not age-appropriate for many of the students who are being tested. Secondly, there is a lot of pressure on very young people to perform well so that they get into a good college or to perform well so their favorite teacher doesn’t get fired or to perform well so that their school doesn’t lose federal funding. If you’re not very good at sitting in a hard plastic chair staring at a computer screen for two hours, it’s just too bad for you.

What can we do about it? This is a change that will not be easily made. The advantages to standardized testing are that it is relatively cheap (compared to my suggestions), easy to roll out and provides a standard measure against which all students (and teachers) can be measured. It keeps the language the same whether you’re on the western side of your state or the eastern side and it makes data really easy to compare and disaggregate so school systems, states, and the federal government really like it. But we know it’s not the best way to do things so we need to change the system. We have to change the way we assess student learning. There have to be different ways to assess student learning just as there are different ways to teach students. First, we would have to determine a standardized way to determine the best way to teach and assess students.  Then, there would have to be a set of agreed-upon standardized ways to assess different learners. This would require a complete overhaul of the whole idea of how we teach and assess students. But if the true purpose of education is to educate children and not to do well on a test, then these are necessary changes.

Tomorrow I’ll address the lack of critical thinking and funding.

Several weeks ago, I explained some of the reasons I left teaching. At the end of that writing, I said that I had some ideas for how to fix education but that it was an essay for another day. Today is that day. I actually wrote this out and sent it to my congressperson in 2016 or 2017. I left teaching at the end of the 2019-2020 school year, so I don’t have first-hand knowledge of what education is like on the inside now, but I would bet most of this still rings true. This is what I wrote while I was still teaching, so I’ve preserved the present tense, and have made only minor editorial changes from what I sent to my congressperson. I will split this into five different posts because it’s a lot to read at one time.

So, here are the first two of the top ten things wrong with public education and how to fix them:

There are countless papers and articles full of studies and statistics about education and what is wrong and right with it. You’re not going to find any of that here. What you’ll find here are merely the observations of an elementary school teacher “in the trenches” so to speak. I am also a mom and a reasonably educated person. I don’t claim to have all the answers and I don’t have any empirical evidence or research to prove that any answers I provide would work, nor do I have any evidence or research to support my perceptions of the problems with education, these are merely the common sense observations of someone close to the issues at hand. So, let’s get started! Here are the top ten problems with education as observed by an educator, in no particular order:

Loss of Play in the Youngest Years

Anyone who has taken any kind of child psychology class knows the importance of play. It is how young children learn and form their ideas about the world. They learn how to get along with one another, they build social understandings and meanings, they find out how to effectively function in society. For children, play is work! And by kindergarten (age 5), you can do that on your own time, we’ve got serious business to attend to here!

When I think back to kindergarten in the 80s, I remember playing the color game with laminated circles on popsicle sticks. I remember banging nails into wood at the woodworking station. I remember putting too much glue on the paper and learning to cut back a little as the year went on. I remember coloring, lots and lots of coloring. I remember the scissors in the nice, neat black wire rack where I found the only pair of green-handled left-handed scissors. I remember playing house and restaurant, and sitting on the floor being read to. I remember snack time, and rest time and lots of running around outside (I liked to wear dresses, so my mom had to put shorts on under my dresses so I could hang upside down). I do not remember taking reading and spelling tests (as my daughter did when she was in kindergarten). Nor do I remember spending large amounts of time working on the nitty gritty of reading, things like phonics and character and setting (all things addressed in my daughter’s kindergarten class). But kindergarten was awesome!

Several years back, I was chatting with a coworker in her kindergarten classroom as she cleaned up at the end of the day. In the corner of the room, buried under some recently completed projects and covered with a layer of dust a few months old, was the kitchen set. She’d been teaching kindergarten a while and lamented that she just didn’t have time for the kids to use the kitchen anymore because it was so hard to fit in all the curriculum they had to get through to have them reading before first grade. She said the only time the kids really had a chance to use the kitchen was during indoor recess. She wanted to have the children playing more but was afraid that if an administrator walked in and found the children at the kitchen area, she’d be called out for not enforcing rigor in her classroom.

What a shame! In the state where I teach, children are required to have only 15 minutes of recess a day. Even five- and six-year-old kindergarteners! FIFTEEN MINUTES! In a six hour school day! We wonder why our children are losing muscle mass and are increasingly obese! But the other part of that is that they have no outlet for their energy. Of course, kindergarten teachers are excellent at providing brain breaks and incorporating movement into their instruction, but there is so little time devoted to free play both inside and outside that when the children come to me in second grade, they still can’t cross the monkey bars! They have to stop and rest during outdoor recess and they can’t get along with each other at indoor recess. Why? Because they have lost the opportunity to play in the youngest years! When I was a child, you learned to get along with other people and you learned how to effectively function in school in the preschool and kindergarten years (and even part of first grade was spent in play). The focus was not on work because the play WAS the work! The discoveries we made by hammering nails into wood and putting too much glue on our papers and making grocery lists of made up letters and scribbles in the housekeeping area were how we learned. We learned to negotiate, to take turns, to develop and follow rules.

In an effort to be sure that we are rigorous enough, that these children will be prepared for the standardized testing three years in their future, we have taken away those opportunities to play. And it’s hurting our children. One of the greatest travesties of education is that we have replaced toys with reading tables in the kindergarten classrooms.

Our children are growing up with poor social and emotional skills and difficulty relating to one another. They have maladaptive behaviors when things don’t go their way… and even when they do! Older grades are spending ever greater amounts of time on interpersonal skills. We’re told to have the children collaborate to help them learn, but they don’t know how. Could it be that the loss of play has made the work of later years more difficult?

What can we do about it? First of all, standards and expectations need to be examined by people who actually know something about how children learn and what appropriate expectations are (that means, the teachers who are actually teaching). When I was in college, we called this Developmentally Appropriate Practice. You don’t hear that phrase in education a lot anymore… probably because very little in education is considered developmentally appropriate. Secondly, teachers in the lower grades need to be freed from the fear that if students are playing it will be considered “off task” behavior by an administrator that might walk in. We also need to allow more time for play and more opportunities to experience different kinds of play. Bring the kitchens and the housekeeping and the dress up back into the kindergarten classrooms! Bring joy back into kindergarten. It may very well be that giving up on rigor at a young age, will lead to a capacity for greater learning and rigor in later grades. The children may be better equipped to deal with one another and more practiced at solving problems, both social and academic, independently. Perhaps if we brought back play in the youngest years of school, we would see a dramatic shift in student satisfaction, student achievement, and student attention!

In the Quest for “Rigor” We Have Abandoned the Basics and the Classics

In the quest for rigor, we are actually dumbing down our kids; we are not helping them reach their fullest potential. Trying to do too much too fast is not rigor, it’s just bad practice. More than once in my career I have uttered, “have these people MET children?” when I have looked at what they were supposed to learn. Yet when I search the curriculum for the basics- grammar, for example- I can’t find it! And what of the classics? When I was in high school, our summer reading lists were long lists of classic books that it was considered essential to have read if you wanted to be considered a well-read and well-educated individual. When I looked at my high school cousins’ list of summer reading books, there was not one book more than ten years old on it! Most of them had to do with “teen issues” and many of the others had to do with “social issues.” I suppose this is considered rigorous, after all there are no Cliff’s Notes on these books so one does have to complete the reading on one’s own but they are missing out on so much! In a conversation with a middle school teacher, she lamented that she wasn’t teaching reading anymore, just vocabulary. It used to be that you learned vocabulary through reading! And what of the lessons learned in the classics? They are lost to this generation of students! But they’ll be able to use some really big words in their college entrance essays! That should impress the college boards!

I can’t speak to all places; I’ve only taught in one state and I am only an expert in the curriculum I teach. But my state is considered to be competitive so I can only imagine that the situation is similar in other states. We are pushing little robots through school who know big words but don’t know how to properly string them together into coherent sentences. They can recite the meaning of interdependence but can’t identify it in nature (or make the connection to other areas where interdependence exists, such as in business). They can identify the contributions of ancient cultures but can’t see how that relates to them or how those contributions led to the modern world. They can barely solve basic math problems because they have had so little time to practice things in an effort to “cram it all in” at a younger and younger age. They can read but they can’t use that skill to connect to the rest of the world through literature.

What can we do about it? We need to advocate for our children. Curriculum is revised regularly, it is important for people who know something about how students learn and who care about what students learn to be involved in the process. We cannot continue to allow government bureaucrats decide that curriculum should be rigorous when it doesn’t make sense! Of course, we want our curriculum to be rigorous; we want to push our kids to the next level but not if that next level doesn’t make sense! We need to write curriculum and standards that are developmentally appropriate and rigorous at the same time. And we need to bring back the basics and the classics! Why do we think throwing these things out or trying to teach them too young or too quickly means creating more rigorous education?! It’s not rigor, it’s bad practice!

Click here to read Part 2 where I address developmentally appropriate standards and differentiated assessment.

A little bit of a disclaimer before you start reading: This was hard to write, it ended up sounding like a journal entry, but I am hoping it helps someone.

Nearly two years ago, I left teaching. Spoiler alert: It wasn’t because of money; I make significantly less money now than I did when I was teaching. So, why did I leave teaching to get on the Work till I Die Retirement Plan? Honestly, I couldn’t cut it. Try as I might, I just couldn’t do it. I failed. I didn’t have the physical, emotional, or spiritual strength to keep doing it. Here’s why:

Though generally compliant and respectful of authority, I found myself increasingly at philosophical odds with practices, policies, and curricula developed by a burgeoning bureaucracy that seemed to have only its own interests in mind. I am not rebellious by nature, but the longer I taught the more resistant I became.

I was becoming increasingly frustrated by policies that seemed not just to allow, but to encourage students to rely on external motivators and actors for their social, emotional, and behavioral growth. I was constantly frustrated by what I perceived to be the emotional crippling of our children.

A natural aversion to strife made functioning in a highly emotional environment physically, emotionally, and spiritually draining for me. My inability to recover from the difficulties of each day exhausted me to a point where I couldn’t function at my best.

Testing. I taught for 19 years and never witnessed any child or teacher benefit from testing. However, I saw a lot of companies get very rich and a lot of politicians get a lot of votes. What I witnessed was a climate of fear. Whether they were consciously aware of it or not, the adults were fearful of losing their jobs and the students were fearful of failing the adults. Assessment that helps teachers find out what their students know, what they’re ready to know, and what they’re not ready to know is practical. Assessment that demonstrates growth and shows areas where continued growth is needed is helpful. Assessment that reveals how students learn is valuable. Testing doesn’t do any of that.

Time. There was never enough of it. In my first year of teaching, I had one meeting a month. It was a staff meeting that happened before school one day each month. There might be an occasional meeting of a committee or something besides that, but generally I was left alone in my room to do what I needed to do (the trouble was that I was a first-year teacher and didn’t know what I needed to do!). In my last year of teaching, I typically spent two or three days a week in meetings during my planning time and usually had two or three other after-school meetings throughout the month and that doesn’t count conferences or phone calls with parents. I was drinking 3-5 cans of soda every night to force myself to stay awake to try to catch up. I would do that for as many nights as my body would allow and then finally crash after 3-4 nights like that. I planned my weekends so that I wasn’t doing something two weekends in a row because that was too much time to give up. The expectations always increased and the time to meet them always decreased.

I was physically assaulted… and told it was my fault. I remember the day I decided it was time to leave teaching. A student kicked me, and I was told it was the result of my inability to properly manage the behavior. I still wonder if that’s true. Perhaps it is. My degree is in English, not Psychology, and the classroom management classes I had in college never addressed extreme behaviors; back then it was simply understood that administration would step in on the rare occasion that there was a student with extreme behaviors. I suppose it is true that I never learned how to “properly manage” a student who ran around the room and then attempted to run out of the room during instruction because I called a group to the table to work with me. In my last few years of teaching I was kicked, hit, and scratched. I didn’t leave because of money, but I certainly wasn’t getting paid enough to be kicked, hit, and scratched.

Parents. Most of the parents I’ve had have been great; they’re supportive or at least uninvolved. However, in every year, there were parents who were pushy, rude, mean, or abusive. I have been yelled at and called all the hateful names. All teachers have stories about parents.

An emphasis on “growth-producing feedback” in my last few years of teaching left an apple-polisher like me feeling like I was always failing and never good enough. I felt like the “good teacher” carrot would always be just a little beyond my reach. I hadn’t heard anything positive about what I was doing in at least two years, and it sent me into a spiral of paralyzing self-doubt. I didn’t think any ideas I had were good and I thought every decision I made was wrong. I became too fearful to try anything, so I kept doing things that didn’t seem to be working because someone else had developed them which translated into more “growth-producing feedback.” It spilled into my personal life as well. I felt like I was a liability to everyone around me. I felt like I was a burden to my family and a drain on my friends. I didn’t think I had anything to offer anyone. I felt like a failure in every way I could. I worked so hard at my job and spent so much time learning about how to do it, how could I be so bad at it? And if I was that bad at something I had done so long and in which I had had so much training, how could I be any good at anything else? I was not in a good place. I spent most of the last five years of my teaching career in the deepest depression I’d ever experienced… and I was convinced it was all my fault.

Nearly two years later, I’m still having difficulty writing this, but I hope sharing a little bit of my experience helps someone. I hope that telling why I left teaching helps other teachers who are unhappy realize they are not alone and that it’s not just them. I hope that hearing about my experiences makes those who read it more empathetic toward the teachers in their lives. I hope people who are smarter and better leaders than I am find ways to make changes for the better- the teachers and the kids need it, so does our society. I am disappointed that I failed at something so important, that I couldn’t handle it, and that eats at me. I don’t need sympathy, though. I am truly happy where I am now. My job allows me to openly serve God and his people, and I help people every day. I don’t feel like a liability anymore, I feel like an asset. My strengths are utilized, and I have time to learn new things. I pray for the teachers who haven’t been able to find happiness where they are and haven’t found a better situation for themselves. I’m grateful for the teachers who can do it. I respect them more than I can express in words. I’ll pray that things get better for them because I know they’re great at what they do.

Incidentally, I do have ideas for ways to improve schools, but that’s an essay for another day.

‘Tis the season for comparing,

Fa la la la la, la la la la…

It seems like this time of year, whether consciously or unconsciously, we are constantly comparing ourselves to others. My Facebook feed is resplendent with beautiful trees, amazing light displays, creative cards, perfect family photos, delicious recipes, clever elves, acts of selfless service, and carefully packed packages… all before the second Sunday of Advent. It’s also full of warnings about the environmental impact of real trees… and fake trees, the dangers of holiday foods to pets, the disparity between a typical middle-class Christmas and the poverty experienced by others around the world, too much Jesus, not enough Jesus, and, ironically enough, warnings to stop listening to all of that and enjoy the season.

It’s exhausting.

And it’s really hard not to get sucked into that game. We’re coming up on the second Sunday in Advent and I have a sink full of dishes, I haven’t cleared a space for the tree, I’m not really sure where our outdoor decorations are, and I’ve only just begun shopping. I haven’t sent Christmas cards in probably 10 years, we haven’t had a family portrait done in probably 6 or 7 years, and we’re going to spoil The Progeny a little bit at Christmas. I’m also going to put outfits on our dogs. My house is messy, I elect not to participate in some traditions, and go over the top for others. This is who I am.

It turns out, Jesus is OK with that.

I am blessed with an opportunity to have a little “me” time every day before work. I have keys, so I arrive early before everyone else and have time to be in a beautiful quiet place and play flute for almost an hour. This time is precious to me, and I feel its absence on the days when I don’t get it. In that time, I play for me and for God. I talk to me and to God. Sometimes I play hymns as part of this time and yesterday I turned to one of my favorites: Just As I Am. I love this hymn. It’s a beautiful song of grace! In a world where the messaging is do more, be more, think more, give more, live more, we need to hear that Jesus saved us Just As We Are. We don’t have to do all the things; we don’t have to be all the things because our creator saved us Just As We Are. Just As I Am is not a Christmas hymn, but maybe it would be a good one to play in there with Silent Night and Joy to the World as a reminder that we celebrate the birth of Jesus because he came to save us Just As We Are.

What beautiful grace!

There’s a flip side to that. While that hymn brings me great comfort because it’s a reminder that Jesus accepts me Just As I Am, it’s also pretty convicting because it reminds me that Jesus accepts everyone else Just As They Are. That’s right. Not only does Jesus know every one of the dark blots on my soul and saved me anyway, he knows the dark blots on everyone else’s souls and saved them, too. So, the guy who cut me off in traffic the other day, the person who took 42 items to the 10 items or fewer line in the grocery store, that student’s parent who yelled at me, that boy in high school who didn’t like me back and laughed at me, that kid who made fun of my kid on the bus. Yep. Jesus saved all of them Just As They Are, too. And I would do well to remember that. There’s no one I’ll meet that Jesus didn’t save Just As They Are. That grace should not just comfort me, but it should give me patience and empathy and love for others. It’s good to remember that, especially this time of year when we sometimes don our judgy-pants along with our Christmas plaid.

I love the Christmas hymns, but I think this year, mixed in with my usual favorites, I’ll sing Just As I Am in my head a few times to remind myself that Jesus came for me Just As I Am and he came for all of us Just As We Are.