I am a firm believer in free education for all; however, there are many things about public education that I would change. Unfortunately, as a teacher in the system, I can only control my classroom. I choose to provide a firm foundation in literature, writing, and grammar to my freshmen classes. I build upon that foundation in my junior classes, and I pride myself with teaching ethical, unbiased journalism to my newspaper students. I teach my classes with compassion and humor; I set high expectations, but give them the skills to achieve those expectations.
To some extent, I fear my choices in the classroom will someday become limited because of the direction I see public education going. In an attempt to fix what is wrong, Federal and State Education Departments have put initiatives in place that will only serve to continue the downward spiral of our public-education system. These initiatives are not the only problems. I admit, we have teachers who shouldn’t be teaching; we have students who have given up and/or only care about the grade, not the learning; and we have parents who are contributing to the problem through their misdirected attacks on schools and teachers.
First, rest assured that I love teaching. I know I am doing what I was created to do. Every year I get letters and emails from current and former students who tell me how I have changed their lives for the better. I have former students graduating from college telling me they are going to become teachers because I motivated them to make a difference. However, for the first time in 9 years, I’ve considered doing something else. If things don’t change, I may have to, and it will break my heart to leave the profession I love. So many things have made it hard to stay optimistic about teaching. State tests have become more important than actual learning. Budget cuts have forced an increase in class size. Students are becoming more and more disrespectful. Teachers have been on a pay freeze for four years in my district, with no end in sight. Teachers are frustrated and feel under-valued. Administrators’ hands are tied to make school-based decisions by superintendents who are not connected to the school in a tangible way. Parents participate in teacher bashing and go as high up the chain of command as they need to go until they are heard, rather than contribute to the education of their own children. Students want to be spoon-fed information, rather than to think for themselves. We don’t have enough hours in the day to teach the important elements of our subjects because our time is spent making sure students will do well on a state test that doesn’t affect students, but could cost teachers their jobs.
For those who are not in the classroom, it may appear that these problems are separate issues; however, for those of us in the classroom, we see that all of these things are interconnected, a chain-reaction in essence: The emphasis on state tests has stolen the funding from the classrooms; students get lost in the crowd in bigger class sizes, making them act out or become invisible; discipline, not education, becomes a primary concern for administrators, but removing students from the school costs the state more money in the long run, necessitating more budget cuts; parents are assuming teachers are to blame for students’ failing grades or discipline problems, so they attack the teachers and administrators; students are becoming enabled by their parents and the system by telling the students it’s the teacher’s fault; teachers then have to find alternate ways of teaching to reach the non-performing students, rather than teaching and challenging the students who want more, thus lowering the education for the top students. All of this will then result in lower test scores, which will start a more vicious cycle.
We need to stop the cycle. Public education needs a complete reformation at all levels with all concerned parties before any real improvements can be made.
We may then ask, “Isn’t that what The No Child Left Behind act was supposed to do—reform education?” Yes, it was. No Child Left Behind actually sounds great on paper. What a great idea to make sure every child gets the education he or she deserves to become successful adults! I know I want that for my students. I don’t know one parent who wouldn’t want that for his or her child. I certainly don’t want my children to get left behind. I want my children to learn to read and write. I want them to understand math and science concepts. I want them to know our country’s and world’s history. They should be able to find everything on a map and appreciate the beauty of our world. I want them to be productive, healthy members of society. That’s what No Child Left Behind was supposed to support. Sign me up!
But of course this idea came from people in offices, not in classrooms, so they had no idea how to implement their idea. I believe that’s how the catch phrase Failure Is Not an Option was introduced; it was a way to guarantee that No Child was Left Behind. Once again this is a great concept—on paper. If we raise our standards and expectations, and we all agree to teach the most important skills and concepts to our students, there is no way they can fail, right?
Wrong. What the people in offices fail to realize is that the problems in public education do not begin and end with teachers. We are part of the classroom equation, but only a third of the equation: Students and parents make up the other two parts. Students fail constantly, and not because teachers have failed them, but because they refuse to do the work. How can I force a child to do his work when I spend, at the most, five hours a week with him—and not just with him, but with 20-30 other students in the five-hour time frame who also have motivation issues? I could have the best student/teacher relationship with a student: he never causes trouble or is disrespectful in my classroom; he listens and participates in intelligent ways during class. I could teach literature in a captivating way, give the best grammar instruction known to humanity, and present step-by-step essay instruction that produces organized, thoughtful writing; but when that student needs to show me that he understood everything I taught him by writing that essay, he won’t do it. He must receive a zero for that assignment. How does this student’s failure begin and end with me?
If we look at this child’s home life, we may see this situation: He is failing all seven classes, yet he has a smart phone, a new car, and can stay out all night with his friends. If the parents aren’t providing a home geared towards learning, how can I be blamed for this? The reality of the situation is that I and other teachers are constantly blamed by parents for this type of student’s failures. Failure Is Not an Option has made teachers scapegoats and victims of unwarranted teacher-bashing tirades. There is no provision made for students who won’t work and parents who underestimate their role in their child’s success.
The fact remains that children can and will fail, but that doesn’t have to be the end of the story.
One proposal I have to begin my Education Reformation is to make a change to the government initiative: Never Give Up, Even-after-Failure Option. Imagine the paradigm shift, which could lead to dramatic results. Students fail, but are encouraged to try, try again. They try until they get it right and can finally move on. Children would learn and move at their own speed. After a failure that is treated like a life-lesson, students would be motivated to work harder. If they don’t they stay where they are until they learn the necessary skills. It may take a day, a week, a month, or possibly a year to master the concepts, but they will master them. I know some may be worried about a child’s self-esteem if he is held back too many times. Could it be any worse than a child who is passed along and never learns to read and write or add and subtract? I know what they become when they reach my classroom in high school: They are drug addicts, discipline problems, or both. With 63% of inmates classified as illiterate, we can see the not-so-bright future for these children. I couldn’t imagine a more destructive reality that would lower someone’s self-esteem.
Never Give Up, Even-after-Failure Option will allow students to fail, but learn from their mistakes. Truly, our best lessons in life come after failure. Failure teaches us perseverance. Failure helps us become better and stronger people. Failure can push us to become the people we were created to be. Teaching our children how to fail will help them remove the fear surrounding failure. This skill will give students more confidence than anything else. Think of all the great people who have succeeded after failures: Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team; J.K. Rowling received a number of rejection letters for Harry Potter; Lee Iacocca was fired by Henry Ford; Thomas Edison made over 1000 unsuccessful attempts at inventing the light bulb; and Winston Churchill failed the sixth grade. Their failures made them exceptional people. This is the kind of drive I want my students to have; this perseverance will teach and strengthen our children. Failure is an option, and it can be a beautiful thing.
Look for my next post where I explain what this could look like in schools.
Please add your thoughts, questions, and concerns in the comment section.
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Looking forward to the next installment. And couldn’t agree more.
Thanks, Erin. I’m glad you agree. I worry how some people will take what I’m suggesting, not that I have power to change anything 🙂
I disagree. You putting this out there means change. You have followers, you have people who are reading this even as I am typing my reply.
The change begins in our hearts, it trickles down to our own children and, for those of us who have answered the call, in our classrooms.
Sandy, you have a way of lighting a fire under my feet! Thank you!
Your opinions are just and I agree 100% Can’t wait to read your next post.
Faris, I can’t tell you how much it means to me that you commented on my blog 🙂 Thank you for your support!
I agree with you that students shouldn’t be just moved along when they don’t have the skills that they should have for that grade level. Its a strange thing that all of these kids are grouped together just because they were born in the same year. One thing that concerns me though is that self-esteem. Studies have shown that kids who are held back a year usually end up doing worse because it makes them feel like they aren’t great at school, so why try? I think a big problem is students thinking that they just aren’t good at something and so they don’t try. When you sit down and talk to these students who just don’t do the writing, even when everything has been set up perfectly they say to you “I just can’t do it; I’m not a writer.” I’ve done the same thing with Math. That is the plight of the teacher. How do you undo that?
I mean I wonder how a school like the one you teach at would fair if it was in NY and the students had to take a Regents in order to recieve a diploma. I wonder if the students would become more disciplined because their graduation depended on those skills or if things would stay about the same, or get worse. I’m just asking questions I really don’t know the answers.
These programs like NCLB and Race to the Top affect the funding of the schools that need it most. I totally agree with you that it is not just a teacher problem. I once read an essay about education and it painted the teacher as a figure in society that is generally detested and belittled. It seems as if one half of parents think that teachers are not educated enough, they just have their jobs because they aren’t good enough to actually DO their content area so they just teach it. These parents treat teachers like the teachers don’t know what they are doing, so therefore their kid doesn’t have to listen to them. Then you have some blue-collar parents who think that the teachers are over-educated and therefore can’t understand their way of life, therefore, their kid doesn’t have to listen to that teacher either. How are teachers supposed to be respected in that dynamic? Would a good teacher, such as yourself, consider doing something else? How could you not?! You could probably do something that will gain you more respect, more money, and greatly reduce the stress you deal with on a day-to-day basis. That sounds like a sweet deal that no one could fault you for. Then society loses another brilliant teacher because we (society as a whole) don’t know how to value that profession. If we don’t change our ways collectively our children will suffer, and our society will crumble.
This coming from a student who barely graduated from high school. Education is the key, parents need to value it. They need to give that love of learning to their children they need to let their kids know that their education comes first. I think at the end of the day its a community problem. We need to stop separating ourselves and trying to blame each other. We are all to blame because we all tend to band with others who are like us. You have the education people and then you have the kids and parents. It has created this great rift. I’m in a wierd position because I’m kind of in the middle of it all and I see this wall that teachers have built up and that parents and kids have built up and I understand both sides a bit.
My son had a meeting with the district so he could be accepted into the special education program again for the next school year since he goes to a preschool dealing with children with delays. I went to this meeting last year but this year I went to the meeting again with the same administrators present as the year before, only this time I introduced myself as a college student in the education program who wanted to log this as a professional meeting for my field work ours. I noticed that they were friendlier with me this year and walked me through the process more car”other” but this year I was welcomed into club with open arms. Of course from an outside perspective it is easy to be a bit angry that educators are casting out parents and of course there are more extreme examples of this out there. Parents don’t feel included in their child’s education and some of them just don’t know how to be. They don’t know what questions to ask or how to be involved in this very complicated education system. You have parents blocking teachers off and teachers forming a comradery with other teachers because they feel persecuted by society. I think we need to find a way to come together somehow. We need to tear down these walls. We need to let parents into our club and parents need to WANT to be in the club. I mean right now all we have are parents blaming teachers and teachers blaming parents. Its like a divorced couple who can’t get over their differences and the child is suffering. What this country needs is couples therapy or something, we, need to see that this is an issue and we need to work things out for the kids.
I’m sorry this was sooooo long 😛 I enjoy discussing this stuff. This is a conversation that everyone should be having. As a country, let’s not talk about Snooki anymore, lets talk about education. 🙂 Thank you for starting this type of discussion.
I always love reading what you have to say, Jessie. I plan on addressing some of your concerns in my next post. Open up the discussion more. You’re right. We need to stop talking about things that don’t matter, and figure out a way to change the things that do. Thanks for being a loyal reader of my blog!
The image is strong. A young girl is roller-skating on the sidewalk. She picks up speed so much so that she doesn’t know what to do. Arms begin flailing, a cry of panic chokes in her throat and without ceremony, without the know-how, she falls on a pretty sore butt. I can’t tell you how many times I fell that day before my dad casually strolled out and asked me, “Sandy Kay, what on earth are you doing?” I wanted to scream, “Falling on my butt, that’s what!” I pathetically answered with an “I don’t know.” At 11 or 12, I learned this invaluable Benjamin Franklin quote. Dad asks me, “Do you know what the definition of insanity is?” I didn’t even feel that his question deserved a response, so my response was a pout, I’m sure. “It’s doing the same think over and over again and expecting a different result. Change what you are doing and you’ll get better. Guess what? That weird over-sized eraser on the toe of a skate comes in handy for stopping!” I couldn’t believe it! Who knew? Success came after the sore butt (and a slightly bruised ego).
We need to change what we are doing after failure. That’s where we are making our biggest mistakes.
Yes, education needs a change and it does begin with these kinds of ideas. Part of me is screaming this this is wrong. “Failure is an option, and it can be a beautiful thing.” What?!?! Are you insane? But here’s where the educational system screwed up. No, failure all by itself is not acceptable. No teacher in his or her right mind would agree with the notion as it stands alone. But here’s the kicker, folks . . . It’s not even the failure that’s important; what happens after is what matters. We must learn from our failure. We are human; we are flawed; failure for 99% of us is inevitable.
A small portion of what needs to happen for education to shift from No Child Left Behind to Never Give Up, Even-after-Failure is that we as a society would have to recognize that we are flawed. And that, my friend, is a tall mountain to climb.
I too am looking forward to your next post.
You just made me cry! You need to be a guest blogger on my site as well. What you just wrote was beautiful 🙂