Teachers Are Learners, Too

   How do we know it’s only schools that are the problem?   Why have schools become the political football?  When will we begin to see that schools (no matter how good) cannot build on an insecure, unstable foundation now provided by society and home? 
  Yes, we teachers and schools need to continue to improve, but no amount of money and training can make up for what is not appropriately provided by the other meaningful components of the total picture we call education.
  Until we begin to behave as though we believe that ALL of us (parents, schools, community, businesses, etc.) are responsible for educating our young people, we can test ourselves silly, throw money at various endeavors of schools, criticize teachers who don’t care, and still “miss the mark”.

I recently received an e-mail (from Edward Fields, CEO at HotChalk.com–http://www.hotchalk.com/), part of which invited the audience to “inform me on what you’d change about teaching in general”.  So I took some license with the “teaching” AND the “general” and wrote what follows:

1. We educators need to behave as though we believe that high stakes testing is not the only reality for which we need to prepare our students–we MUST prepare them for success in the 21st Century.
2. Parents need to send their students to school ”ready to learn”.  For that to happen, parents must teach their children the morality (broadly also including  — besides all the forever important right & wrong stuff — work ethic) required for their success as individuals and as members of “teams”.  
3.  Parents and grandparents must behave as though they KNOW that they and we are preparing students for a very different work world than that for which they/we were prepared.  Stop it with the “If it is good enough for Noah, it is good enough for me”!
4. Government (legislators, et al) must join us by funding education that is “best for kids” with NO thought about what is “best for MY re-election.”