Epilogue

"We should start our own school."

How many teachers have had that conversation with colleagues either in earnest or in jest? My hand is raised as I type. Masters of our own classroom, maybe it's not such a big leap to be sure that we could run a whole school. And in those classrooms, what is it that we do? We take a prescribed curriculum and find, adapt, or create the lessons and activities we need to meet the needs of our students. Well, that's what the best of us do, anyway.

Usually the toughest part of that task is reconciling the demands of those who define what our students must know and do with the people our students are. It's a teaching cliche that accountability predicated on standardized testing contradicts all we know of true individualized instruction, and so there will be some children left behind. Standardized means, by definition, that some square pegs are gonna have to squeeze into those round holes.

A couple of years ago, Ruth moved to the next state over, and enrolled her boys in a Sudbury School there, and she joined the staff last year. I like the concept of these schools, and the student I mentioned in my last post probably would approve as well-- they help you to learn what you need to know when you want to know it. In other words, they change the hole, not the peg. BUT... (and you had to know this was coming), I'm conflicted about the elitism of such a school, and I'm disappointed that people who support this idea don't do so from within the structure of public schools so that more children would benefit.

Obviously the easiest way to make the curriculum relevant is to ask the students what they want to learn, like the Sudbury schools do. That's how adults learn, right? You decide you want to knit or snowboard or speak Italian, and you make it happen. The teacher is secondary to your will to learn. But such an approach with children sets aside all standardization whatsoever, and where will we find our well-educated citizens then? You know, the ones that have those minimum skills and knowledge and who will carry us all into the future? The ones that have a good work ethic and understand that sometimes you have to do things you don't want to do? Who's going to teach the kids that lesson?

Last November, at the end of an ideal Thanksgiving weekend, I found myself embroiled in a bitter argument about what we should reasonably expect from students. My point, and perhaps I wasn't clear-- it had been a long weekend, and I was tired-- was, that for students who are already alienated from the status quo for one reason or another, insisting that they comply with assignments that they consider irrelevant, and punishing them when they don't, is counterproductive. We all learn best when we want to know, and so the task for a teacher is finding what the students want to know, and framing your instruction in terms of that, if possible.

But look-- here we are back at the round hole again. What should we do? Focus on changing the hole or changing the peg? Maybe I'll just keep working on both.