state standards<\/a>, here)? Is it possible to do both in 180 days, the average length of a school year? Is it fair, then, that a school system with an emphasis on technology delivers a different education than a school system with an emphasis on the canning industry, depending on the local community voice?<\/p>\nMuch discourse over public education involves people outside of education, quite often arguing that they know the education system best because they are not directly involved in it. Business folk rail against the public education system, claiming that teachers aren’t doing their jobs, administrators don’t have enough power, and district offices are run poorly (since this is all anecdotal, I don’t have any links for you, but just pop into a conversation about education and see where the participants are coming from). I’ve had several discussions with people who think they are experts on the subject simply because their son\/daughter is attending school. Am I, by virtue of knowing someone who runs a business, an expert on running a business? Then who are experts on educational systems?<\/p>\n
And just as often as those who aren’t in the educational community complain about what has gone wrong, those in the educational community say it’s all working just fine. There are teachers who will say their union is flawless, that test scores are bogus, that graduates really are prepared for life after high school, and that it’s the parents who have fallen down on the job. While some of that may be true, educational community members are too quick to defend the system and any real change is hard to come by. A few years back, I voted against block scheduling at our school and I’ve regretted it since, even though some studies have come out to show that block scheduling isn’t a good idea. I’ve regretted it because I voted for the status quo and I don’t believe the status quo is working. I also voted against it because I honestly didn’t think it was in the best interest of the students, but now that I want to be involved in educational reform, I wish we had done something different here.<\/p>\n
So, look, both parties need to start singing a different tune. How is it possible that an accountant can know more about my job than me? Simply because we’ve all been through high school does not make us all experts. At the same time, I am blind to some things because of the very fact I am a teacher. Those outside the system may, indeed, be better prepared to point out ways it can work better.<\/p>\n
However, it’s not necessarily that easy. The job of “teacher” has as many different definitions as people you ask; everyone thinks it involves different tasks. As a teacher, where can I decide my job begins and ends?<\/p>\n
Is it my job to challenge every kid in the classroom or just the majority of them? Is it my job to teach morals or only content-area knowledge? Is it my job to prepare every student for college, community college, or just to pass the high school exit exam? Should I work overtime every day to prepare for tomorrow or only some days? Should I work weekends, too? Am I expected to always be a teacher or can I cuss when I’m out of the classroom even if I see a student? At one point or other, I’ve been told these things.<\/p>\n
Does an uninformed populace get to decide what teachers should and should not do? Or does it take expertise to put together a school?<\/p>\n
I just came back from an awards ceremony for the Martin Luther King, Jr. contest at our district office. Seeing those kids there, so proud of what they had put together for this contest, obviously so happy to collect money and certificates for their work, it struck me that we need to be in the business of providing more of those opportunities. I have a student who records his own music at home and I suspect he has the hopes of putting out an album. He’s a rapper and words are what he spends a lot of time working on, crafting them in a way. If he’s working on an album, given certain parameters, wouldn’t that be an appropriate project for him throughout the semester? Should I look for individual projects for all of my students? All 165 of them? Some will say yes and others will say no. So what’s a teacher to do?<\/p>\n
Aside<\/strong><\/p>\nHappy birthday, Vanessa!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If a school is in a farming community and those in the community see farming as a terribly important subject, should that school’s focus be on farming as a response to the community’s values? Or should those that have studied education and learned the ins and outs of how education systems work be entrusted with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[50,32],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.toddseal.com\/rodin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}