Spotted at a school I visited in Kampala, Uganda. They get it. We should, too.
Thursdays are my favorite day of the week. I get to spend time in Deal’s fourth grade class to help with writing. I get hugs and singsong accolades before I even step over the threshold. Even my dog isn’t this delighted to see me. Some of the same kids claim to need writing help week after week, but I’m on to them. 😉 I love the overall tenor of the classroom. I love seeing what these kids create. There are some marvelous writers and thinkers in this class. I’m going to have some of them sign their drafts for me so I can say I knew them when. You cannot measure imagination.Â
North Carolina released school grades today. As you can imagine, the news is dismal where you’d expect it to be so. Poor school grades fall in high poverty schools. If you are surprised by this you really should come out from under that rock to get some air. No schoolwide grade adequately captures what I see transpiring in classrooms. I’ve spent a lot of time in classrooms as a volunteer and a tutor. That’s of course changed since my older son Bird started middle school. I’m pretty sure Bird’s social currency would be valued at less than the rupee if I showed up in his social studies class..not that I haven’t threatened to pop in one day with my slideshow of pics from Uganda. But I digress…
I do wonder how much time legislators and policy makers spend in the classroom. Wandering hallways and peeking into classes does not cut it. If you’re carrying a clipboard or an iPad instead of a Dr. Seuss book or a soggy lunchbox, you’re not really rolling up your sleeves and experiencing a school’s climate. Hamming it up with some kids as wanton props in a library for photo opps certainly doesn’t cut it. I’m talking about ditching the suit, sitting crisscross applesauce on the floor, and working with a small group of kids, looking them in the eye, answering their candid questions, and taking to heart what some of these children experience. Poverty. Heartache. Hunger. Homelessness. Hopelessness. Shame. Observing, monitoring, collecting data, blah blah blah. That’s not what I mean. How many people making policy decisions about education are spending a significant amount of time in schools, with children, not administrators? The degrees, designations, and distinctions matter not. I’ve quit saying “I’m just a mom” when I show up to meetings and press conferences. I’ve admittedly felt threatened and small surrounded by people who’ve earned lots of letters after their name. I have a masters degree from a fine school, too. I’ve vowed to stand tall and now approach these events with the mindset of “I’m a mom, dammit.”
My sons’ schools are more than a letter grade. I don’t even think it’s possible, or reasonable, to boil down the “value” and “success” of a school in this manner. A quantitative measurement is incomplete. What’s most telling are the qualitative elements that tell the whole story of a school. From my experience as tutor, volunteer, chaperone, and parent, the real measure of a school is the outlook of its students. Teachers and administrators set the tone, and students follow their cadence. Happy children are noisy children. Sullen children are quiet. The volume of a school speaks volumes. For the record, my sons’ schools both fared quite well. That’s not my point.
When I spend time in my son’s classroom I see kids who are genuinely eager to learn. They work well together and are learning to collaborate and respect each other’s viewpoints. They are eager to learn and share their work. There’s never a shortage of raised hands. Their curiosity is palpable. Their imagination soars. They are building a community of learners with their teacher as the guide. A test will not measure this. The virtues that matter are not simply proficiency and growth. It goes without saying that I expect my sons to learn and grow in school. How they do this is not through rote memorization and bubbling in dots on a test. I realized the education paradigm had changed when my sons started coming home from school clean. At age eight.Â
I want my sons to realize that learning is not finite, ending when the bell rings. Learning is a lifelong pursuit, and curiosity should indeed bulge in explosive ways, not be assuaged and dampened. The beauty and the answers lie in the gray, for the world is not black and white. A letter grade to denote a school’s quality is absurd at best, damaging at worst. Our efforts and intentions are misguided. If anything, we should be grading our legislators.
