As you probably know by now, I work in a middle school. I do spend two hours at the high school in the district, but I am actually realizing that high schoolers are far more mature (!) than their middle school counterparts.
One of the things I've noticed in my observation of middle schoolers is that they don't know how to argue properly. When they have a disagreement, whether it be scholarly (used tongue-in-cheek here) or personal, the argument automatically becomes an attack on the other person's beliefs/customs/opinions/whatever. So I began to take a little more notice, and I saw that not only do middle schoolers not know how to argue properly, most adults don't know how either.
What happened to the art of spirited debate? I like to think of myself as a pretty open-minded person. I love to talk to people whose views differ drastically from mine and get their perspective on issues that I find interesting or important. We don't have to agree on these things. I have several friends and acquaintances who are devout Christians - if you've read my previous posts, you know that I am NOT a devout Christian. But that's okay. My friends and I are able to carry on a decent conversation whether we agree with each other or not. Once we air out our differences, we may revisit them, or we may not. But I don't get all huffy if they say they went to church all weekend and started a prayer chain for someone, and they don't seem to get all huffy if I let my Hindu goddess tattoo hang out and talk about the benefits of Eastern religions. We respectfully acknowledge each other's points of view, and then move on.
Kids (and adults) don't know how to do this, and no one is teaching them. Come to think of it, I don't know who taught me; I guess it was my parents. My parents are (Dad) and were (Ma) very liberal in some ways, conservative in others, but they always patiently answered my questions and my brother's questions, and I guess I assumed that all people grew up in a house where they were encouraged to be curious, if not expected to be curious. This is not to say that my brother and I ruled the roost; we most certainly did not. But there was a healthy dose of respect for each other coming from all sides.
The kids at school will automatically begin name calling once a disagreement has been established. I think this is partly due to the fact that some of the kids aren't that bright and name-calling is their defense mechanism. I am convinced that any child in the world would rather be the 'bully' than the 'stupid kid'. No one wants to be thought of as dumb. Yet they seemingly do nothing to advance their knowledge or skills. But maybe that's because they're in ninth grade, and that's just what ninth graders do. ;o)
Back to the adults, though, and teachable moments. Last year, we were in math class. We were discussing the number line (yes, in eighth grade) and how when you get to zero, the numbers go 'backwards'. We discussed the calendar, and the years BC/BCE and AD/CE. One of the kids I was working with asked why the years began to go backwards; why did we have BC and AD? (I can't get into this PC BCE/CE crap.) I said, "Well, Jesus was born in the year 1, and so our calendar is based on the year of His birth." Now, whether you are Christian or not, whether you believe Jesus was the Son of God or not, this is a fact - our calendar is based on the year of Jesus' birth. I looked up to see the teacher gesticulating wildly - stop! no religion in math class! Danger! Danger!
What?
It's what it is. It's not like when the child asked me the question, I said, "That's the year that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was born, and if you don't believe it, then you are going straight to hell you little heathen!" I gave the student a fact-based answer. Now, we do have a very diverse student body; many of our students are Muslim. But does that mean that we ignore all things religion-related? Religion is part of history; it has shaped countries and economies and civilization, and it is unavoidable. There is a difference between teaching religion in historical context, and teaching religious dogma, and this teacher (who has been a teacher for more than 10 years) did not get this. How disappointing.
I see the avoidance of the teachable moment all the time. Last year, my senior had a government class where some lively debates were held. The teacher was nice and encouraged discussion, but her tolerance of debate was superficial at best. She did not correct the students if they said something blatantly erroneous, I guess out of fear of 'treading on their opinion', or some such nonsense. Is it not the role of a teacher to a) know just a smidge of info outside of your content area and b) correct students when they are wrong? Call me crazy.
I also see the inability to argue at the adult level. One of my favorite places at the middle school is room 200. It's where teachers gather during their prep periods or lunches to eat, check email, make copies, get advice, gossip, complain, and do what most adults do. There are many interesting personalities that one can find in room 200 at any given moment. A couple of weeks ago, when it came out that the US government is revisiting the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy on homosexuals in the military, a discussion was begun in room 200. I attempted to have a reasonable, mature conversation with a teacher regarding this topic, but it was out of the question. Not only could I barely get a word in edge-wise, when I did, I was immediately struck down. The person I was having the 'debate' with is not someone I particularly like on a superficial level, so I was especially eager to engage him to see if there was something more to him that I was missing.
There wasn't.
I felt it was made relatively clear that I was wrong because I am younger than he is, I'm not officially a teacher, and I'm not a male. What made the debate especially interesting was when a sub joined the conversation. I love the sub - he's a 70-something gay guy from Louisiana who speaks about five languages. He has greasy dyed hair, clothes that don't fit properly, and is one of the most fascinating people I've ever met. When he joined the conversation, the tone suddenly shifted and the first teacher toned it down a bit, I assume because the sub is gay and we were discussing gays in the military. Finally, someone who could trump the first guy!
I could ramble on and on, as I am wont to do, but I'll wrap it up for now. In the mean time, let's argue!
2.08.2010
The Problem(s) with American Education
I'm not a teacher yet, but I hope to be within the next year. The job I've held for the past four and a half years is one that has had me working in middle schools and high schools, interacting with all sorts of children.
The first district I worked was interesting; the high school was located in an upper-middle class area where many of the students had nicer cars than the teachers, yet the teachers earned far lower than their peers in comparable districts. Many of the kids were very entitled and it was clear that the parents and students got their way. I felt the administration was weak. Rules were not enforced as they should have been, and many of the students were pretty snotty. The faculty were somewhat uptight, but dedicated and hard-working.
For the past year and a half, I've working in a much larger, much more diverse school district. It is one of the largest suburban districts in Pennsylvania, with over 1,000 students per grade. I spend most of my day at one of the three middle schools and two hours in the middle of the day at the high school. The middle school in which I work is located in a blue-collar area with a large immigrant population. Many of the students come from broken homes, unemployment is relatively high among their parents, and substance abuse is more common in this district than the last, both in the students and their parents.
The nature of my job puts me in special education classes some of the time. Up until about two years ago, I felt I wanted to be a special education teacher. However, having experienced the inefficacy of most special education programs, I have decided to put my degrees to use and become a French teacher. I am currently attending a state university to obtain my teaching certificate.
Overall, there are a lot of problems with the American education system, at least based on my limited experience in Southeastern Pennsylvania, and these problems occur at all levels. Allow me to outline them for you!
1. Teacher Education Programs
I have been attending classes at night for the past two and a half years. In that time, I have taken approximately six to seven classes and have maintained a 4.0 GPA at the graduate level. Of those classes, approximately two of them have been useful: Educational Technology and Techniques of Second Language Teaching. The rest have been a waste of my time, money, and mental effort. I have learned (multiple times) about Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences Theory, but I have not learned how to write an effective lesson plan. I have learned how to calculate the standard deviation of test scores among my classes (which can be done with one keystroke in MS Excel), yet I have learned no classroom management techniques. I know about the history of American education, Freud and his views of adolescence, moral development theory, cognitive development theory, social development theory, and yet no one has told me what to do when you encounter an angry teenager who disrupts the class repeatedly with cursing and spitballs because his dad got drunk and beat him up over the weekend and he has a reading-based learning disability that no one has diagnosed or addressed.
Philip Beauchemin, a teacher at Overbrook High School in Philadelphia, wrote a letter to the editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer a few months ago, and it was brilliant. He talks about how 'bad schools' generally have the worst teachers, and that was true at Overbrook until they got a batch of young teachers in under the Teach for America program. Here is what he says:
Couldn't have said it better myself, Mr. Beauchemin.
2. Tenure
This may seem contradictory, as I want to become a teacher, and one would think that I would be all for tenure; after all, who doesn't love job security? But I see tenured teachers day in and day out, and trust me, it's not pretty. I'm not saying all tenured teachers are bad; they are not. However, it is easy to go along, never updating your lesson plans, losing the drive to be creative year after year when you know that unless you commit some act of gross negligence, your job is relatively safe. Teachers should have to perform to certain standards just as employees do in any other profession. If they don't perform to those standards, then those teachers need to be shown the door and a more qualified person needs to replace them. That being said, I am also against merit pay, which leads to my next point.
3. Accountability
Some people think that teachers should receive merit pay based on the performance of their students. That is a really, really bad idea. Obviously, a teacher should be effective at imparting their knowledge to their students, and they should be effective at assessing their students to determine if they (the teachers) have taught effectively. However, one thing I've learned in many of my useless classes is this: correlation does not indicate causation. If a group of children is doing poorly in school, many factors need to be examined. Do these children have learning disabilities? What is their home life like? Do they get enough sleep? Do they get enough to eat? Do they feel safe, both at school and at home? Do they have rotten teachers? If a group of students is doing poorly, it is not automatically the fault of the teacher.
Teachers need to be accountable for their actions, but students and parents/guardians do as well. Day in and day out, I see students in ninth grade come to class with no books, no paper, and NOTHING TO WRITE WITH. How is this possible? While I work in a tougher area, it's not like these kids are destitute - they just don't give a shit. There are no consequences for their actions, or in this case, inactions. But the teachers have their hands tied - if they fail the unprepared, lazy students, it then becomes the teachers' problem, not the students' problem. And how do you make a teenager care? How do you look at a 6'2" 15-year-old who wants to drop out next year and join the military and say, "You really need to read Romeo and Juliet, and it's also important for you to know Algebra and Physics." But somehow, we need to find a way, and parents/guardians need to help.
Ignorance begets ignorance. Parents who don't give a shit about education raise children who don't give a shit about education. Many of these kids are so ignorant to the way life is, but then again, I think all 15-year-olds are to a certain degree. But when your parents don't force you to come to school on time, don't ask how your homework is coming along, don't take your phone and computer away when your grades suck, don't ground you when you are an ass, then you have entitled, unmotivated kids who will cheat and lie in order to get a D and go on to the next grade, having never learned a damn thing. And a teacher will have gained 8,000 more gray hairs in the process. It's never to early to teach a person to be responsible for their actions.
4. Special Education
Ah, special education - the bane of many teachers' careers. IEPs are the work of the devil. There is a very fine line between providing a learning-disabled child with much-needed help, and enabling a lazy child to get away with whatever they want. I have seen many kids with IEPs (individual education plans) get away with murder. They get extended time to take tests. They can take the test wherever they like. They have no deadlines to obey. They call the shots. And they learn nothing. How does this serve the student? If you require nothing of the student, you will get nothing in return. Are special education programs and IEPs necessary? Yes; but they need to be properly implemented, and that rarely happens.
5. One Size Fits All
Every few years, a new trend comes along in education. Whole Language. Everyday Math. Whatever. Trends do not fit students. Teachers are supposed to be experts at individualized instruction (teaching each student what they need to know in a way they understand), yet they are supposed to use these curricula that are developed by grad students at universities and textbook companies who have never set foot inside a real classroom to see how real kids learn. One approach for thirty kids at a time? I think not. There is a general 'feeling' that one gets for each class, in my experience. I think a good teacher needs to tune into that feeling and use it to teach their students. Some classes are more visual; some more auditory. Others may be more tactile, and yet others may require instruction on all three levels in order to really understand what is being taught. This is difficult on the teacher, but not impossible, and I think it comes naturally to good teachers. Good teachers seize on their students' strengths and use that to their advantage in the classroom. See that kid who doodles all the time? Have him or her make backdrops for a skit. The kid that won't shut up? They can read out loud. The kid that won't sit still? They can hand out and collect assignments. I've seen it work.
I could go on and on and on, but it's getting late, I'm tired, and I have to go to work at school tomorrow. Despite all my misgivings about the American education system, I still want to be a teacher, because I feel like I am going into the profession with my eyes wide open. Will I make a difference? I certainly hope so. Will I inspire a generation of kids to move to a francophone country and study the language and literature for the rest of their lives? Doubtful. But if they go to Paris one day and successfully find their way from the airport to their hotel, and they can make reservations at a nice restaurant, and they look back on their trip and it was great because they were able to communicate fairly well with the French in their native tongue, then I will consider that a job well done on my part. What more could I ask for?
The first district I worked was interesting; the high school was located in an upper-middle class area where many of the students had nicer cars than the teachers, yet the teachers earned far lower than their peers in comparable districts. Many of the kids were very entitled and it was clear that the parents and students got their way. I felt the administration was weak. Rules were not enforced as they should have been, and many of the students were pretty snotty. The faculty were somewhat uptight, but dedicated and hard-working.
For the past year and a half, I've working in a much larger, much more diverse school district. It is one of the largest suburban districts in Pennsylvania, with over 1,000 students per grade. I spend most of my day at one of the three middle schools and two hours in the middle of the day at the high school. The middle school in which I work is located in a blue-collar area with a large immigrant population. Many of the students come from broken homes, unemployment is relatively high among their parents, and substance abuse is more common in this district than the last, both in the students and their parents.
The nature of my job puts me in special education classes some of the time. Up until about two years ago, I felt I wanted to be a special education teacher. However, having experienced the inefficacy of most special education programs, I have decided to put my degrees to use and become a French teacher. I am currently attending a state university to obtain my teaching certificate.
Overall, there are a lot of problems with the American education system, at least based on my limited experience in Southeastern Pennsylvania, and these problems occur at all levels. Allow me to outline them for you!
1. Teacher Education Programs
I have been attending classes at night for the past two and a half years. In that time, I have taken approximately six to seven classes and have maintained a 4.0 GPA at the graduate level. Of those classes, approximately two of them have been useful: Educational Technology and Techniques of Second Language Teaching. The rest have been a waste of my time, money, and mental effort. I have learned (multiple times) about Howard Gardner's Multiple Intelligences Theory, but I have not learned how to write an effective lesson plan. I have learned how to calculate the standard deviation of test scores among my classes (which can be done with one keystroke in MS Excel), yet I have learned no classroom management techniques. I know about the history of American education, Freud and his views of adolescence, moral development theory, cognitive development theory, social development theory, and yet no one has told me what to do when you encounter an angry teenager who disrupts the class repeatedly with cursing and spitballs because his dad got drunk and beat him up over the weekend and he has a reading-based learning disability that no one has diagnosed or addressed.
Philip Beauchemin, a teacher at Overbrook High School in Philadelphia, wrote a letter to the editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer a few months ago, and it was brilliant. He talks about how 'bad schools' generally have the worst teachers, and that was true at Overbrook until they got a batch of young teachers in under the Teach for America program. Here is what he says:
So, what's going on here? These young teachers had degrees in something real - history, English, math, science, etc. - instead of the usual degrees in secondary education. In other words, they actually were smart and knew something - and their students soon realized and respected that. There remains, nonetheless, this stubbornly held belief in college education departments, as well as in each new Philadelphia School District administration, that good teaching is some magical product that percolates from constantly updated "data" and can be imparted to teachers by way of professors, mentors, experts, and constantly rotating nomenclature. What an expensive and distracting myth that has been. ... [G]ood teachers are born of talent and intelligence, not made by methodology or the hugely wasteful and overfunded staff development that seems to obsess our present school administrators, just as it did their predecessors. The condiments keep changing, but the baloney remains the same.
Couldn't have said it better myself, Mr. Beauchemin.
2. Tenure
This may seem contradictory, as I want to become a teacher, and one would think that I would be all for tenure; after all, who doesn't love job security? But I see tenured teachers day in and day out, and trust me, it's not pretty. I'm not saying all tenured teachers are bad; they are not. However, it is easy to go along, never updating your lesson plans, losing the drive to be creative year after year when you know that unless you commit some act of gross negligence, your job is relatively safe. Teachers should have to perform to certain standards just as employees do in any other profession. If they don't perform to those standards, then those teachers need to be shown the door and a more qualified person needs to replace them. That being said, I am also against merit pay, which leads to my next point.
3. Accountability
Some people think that teachers should receive merit pay based on the performance of their students. That is a really, really bad idea. Obviously, a teacher should be effective at imparting their knowledge to their students, and they should be effective at assessing their students to determine if they (the teachers) have taught effectively. However, one thing I've learned in many of my useless classes is this: correlation does not indicate causation. If a group of children is doing poorly in school, many factors need to be examined. Do these children have learning disabilities? What is their home life like? Do they get enough sleep? Do they get enough to eat? Do they feel safe, both at school and at home? Do they have rotten teachers? If a group of students is doing poorly, it is not automatically the fault of the teacher.
Teachers need to be accountable for their actions, but students and parents/guardians do as well. Day in and day out, I see students in ninth grade come to class with no books, no paper, and NOTHING TO WRITE WITH. How is this possible? While I work in a tougher area, it's not like these kids are destitute - they just don't give a shit. There are no consequences for their actions, or in this case, inactions. But the teachers have their hands tied - if they fail the unprepared, lazy students, it then becomes the teachers' problem, not the students' problem. And how do you make a teenager care? How do you look at a 6'2" 15-year-old who wants to drop out next year and join the military and say, "You really need to read Romeo and Juliet, and it's also important for you to know Algebra and Physics." But somehow, we need to find a way, and parents/guardians need to help.
Ignorance begets ignorance. Parents who don't give a shit about education raise children who don't give a shit about education. Many of these kids are so ignorant to the way life is, but then again, I think all 15-year-olds are to a certain degree. But when your parents don't force you to come to school on time, don't ask how your homework is coming along, don't take your phone and computer away when your grades suck, don't ground you when you are an ass, then you have entitled, unmotivated kids who will cheat and lie in order to get a D and go on to the next grade, having never learned a damn thing. And a teacher will have gained 8,000 more gray hairs in the process. It's never to early to teach a person to be responsible for their actions.
4. Special Education
Ah, special education - the bane of many teachers' careers. IEPs are the work of the devil. There is a very fine line between providing a learning-disabled child with much-needed help, and enabling a lazy child to get away with whatever they want. I have seen many kids with IEPs (individual education plans) get away with murder. They get extended time to take tests. They can take the test wherever they like. They have no deadlines to obey. They call the shots. And they learn nothing. How does this serve the student? If you require nothing of the student, you will get nothing in return. Are special education programs and IEPs necessary? Yes; but they need to be properly implemented, and that rarely happens.
5. One Size Fits All
Every few years, a new trend comes along in education. Whole Language. Everyday Math. Whatever. Trends do not fit students. Teachers are supposed to be experts at individualized instruction (teaching each student what they need to know in a way they understand), yet they are supposed to use these curricula that are developed by grad students at universities and textbook companies who have never set foot inside a real classroom to see how real kids learn. One approach for thirty kids at a time? I think not. There is a general 'feeling' that one gets for each class, in my experience. I think a good teacher needs to tune into that feeling and use it to teach their students. Some classes are more visual; some more auditory. Others may be more tactile, and yet others may require instruction on all three levels in order to really understand what is being taught. This is difficult on the teacher, but not impossible, and I think it comes naturally to good teachers. Good teachers seize on their students' strengths and use that to their advantage in the classroom. See that kid who doodles all the time? Have him or her make backdrops for a skit. The kid that won't shut up? They can read out loud. The kid that won't sit still? They can hand out and collect assignments. I've seen it work.
I could go on and on and on, but it's getting late, I'm tired, and I have to go to work at school tomorrow. Despite all my misgivings about the American education system, I still want to be a teacher, because I feel like I am going into the profession with my eyes wide open. Will I make a difference? I certainly hope so. Will I inspire a generation of kids to move to a francophone country and study the language and literature for the rest of their lives? Doubtful. But if they go to Paris one day and successfully find their way from the airport to their hotel, and they can make reservations at a nice restaurant, and they look back on their trip and it was great because they were able to communicate fairly well with the French in their native tongue, then I will consider that a job well done on my part. What more could I ask for?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
