Last fall my school's principal talked about a book called The Global Achievement Gap by Harvard Education professor Tony Wagner. The premise of the book is that there is not only a gap between the level of education received/pursued by middle-class American students and low-income/minority students, but also a gap between what even our best-performing schools are teaching and what the students will actually need to know in order to succeed in the modern world. My principal offered copies of the book to any staff member who was interested and I dutifully lined up for my copy. I'm an English teacher - I never pass up a free book.
Last night I began reading and continued until 1:30 am. This may or may not demonstrate to you the power of this text, but remember that I love sleeping and napping and have an alarm that goes off at 5:40 am on most mornings. I emailed the author at midnight. He responded with a message specific to my comments/concerns at 8 am this morning. I spent the day in a technology training for 9th grade English teachers, learning how to use a tremendous technological resource with my students. Needless to say, I was feeling pretty empowered today.
I feel, like many educators, that I am stuck in a system that doesn't work but I can't change it by myself. In fact, in order to keep my job I must continue to fulfill goals I don't fully believe in. I must prepare my students for multiple choice tests that don't test anything more than their ability to memorize, repeat, and sit still for long periods of time. I have to assign formulaic writing prompts and check off boxes in a rubric that say they've met the most minimum of writing requirements. No one likes it. Not the teachers, the administrators, the parents or the students. But in many ways our hands are tied. Test scores determine money for the district and property values for the community. Test scores determine whether or not my students are accepted to colleges - EVEN IF THE TESTS HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THE SKILLS THAT ARE NECESSARY FOR SUCCESS IN COLLEGE.
I love my students. I love my job. I love going to work every day and working hard to help my students as best I can. There is frustration with the system, the budget, the union, the parents, the kids - but most of the time that is all in the background and my students and their immediate needs are the foreground. It is only occasionally that any of us teachers allow ourselves to let the frustration rise and take hold for a few minutes, before we suppress it again because we have teenagers to tend to and lives to lead. Today I felt like I might see the light in the tunnel. There may be ways to fix the problems - we were getting technology for 9th graders, a Harvard professor has some ideas about better testing systems...
Then, as we were leaving our training and gearing up for the rollout of our new, forward-thinking, technology-based lessons, we were reminded that while we are all excited about this new opportunity, for the next month at least our Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum wants to be sure we realize that the focus should really be on the up-coming state exams in April.
Talk about a needle in the balloon.
