If there is such a thing as left brain/right brain thinking, I am definitely all right brain.  Things like math and numbers in general don’t come easily to me and quite frankly I consider them a necessary evil.  For my degree program, I never had to take a math class (I tested out of it, believe it or not) and I focused on the humanities side of things – psychology, sociology, philosophy.  Those things that I believe really help in terms of understanding people, and most importantly for me, young people.

Imagine my shock and horror when I begin to realize that we are reducing everything related to educating children to numbers!  Not that all numbers are bad of course, as they can keep us informed of progress made or not made, which is obviously important in education, but I’m talking about numbers being used in place of great teacher preparation,  good old fashioned instincts and most importantly, getting to know our students as people.  Now, I’m not an expert by any means here and some of these may not be exact, but let me just share some observations from my right brain point of view.

In my state it costs @$12,000 to educate one child per year.  So, if I’m calculating correctly, with @380 students at my school only, it costs $4,560,000 per year.  I understand that this includes many things; teacher salaries and benefits, equipment, technology, building, maintenance, administration, etc. but it does boggle the mind.  Legislators and educators think long and hard as to what it costs to educate a child.  However, in New York it’s closer to $20,000 per child and in Utah it’s only $6500.  Yes, cost of living and everything comes into play here and other things I know I’m not considering, but is the child in Utah getting $13,500 less education than the child in New York?  Just asking.

But let’s not focus on numbers strictly in monetary terms, and here’s where I might get some kick-back from some of my younger colleagues who have known nothing except depending on the numbers.  In terms of improving classroom management, we no longer think in terms of consequences matching actions, therefore leaving out any room for creativity and real lesson learning.  What we do is keep track of numbers.  How many times is a child in a safe seat, in which classes, at what time of day and for what reasons?  Then we have to analyze the data; does the child act up more before lunch because the student is getting hungry, or after lunch because they are getting sleepy?  Is it because they don’t like the teacher or struggle with the subject? And we have to keep track of the ratio in terms of giving positive reinforcement to negative.  Is constructive criticism considered negative?  If it’s approached the right way and is conveyed as a method to improve oneself, couldn’t it be construed as positive?  And there are levels for everything as in Tiers 1, 2 and 3.  How many kids should be in each tier?  How many kids in a classroom is the best for learning at what age?  How many minutes should they have of math and reading as compared to everything else?  How many minutes of recess do we let them have in order to get in all the minutes of math and reading that are required?

We use numbers to set goals for children.  Pursue a higher quiz score here, complete a certain number of papers there.  High school students achieving a certain magical number on their ACT/SAT.  Achievement test information is all conveyed through numbers – percentiles to see just how this kid measures up to all other kids in different academic areas.  Graduation rates are all numbers so let’s compare how high our district rates are to others.  Is the graduation rate or test score any real indication of how well they’ll do in college, trade school or life in general or is it just something to mark off of the list for academia?

Numbers allow us to reduce our students and their families to clients.  As teachers I feel we’ve been reduced to working on a scripted assembly line to produce a promised product by following the numbers from our research based educational system.  Again, I want to say that all numbers aren’t bad, but when it is all we use to evaluate how well a child is progressing as an educated human being I have some issues with that.  And I’m all about fairness in our system, but fair does not mean equal, and numbers can restrict our kids to receiving equal treatment but not necessarily fair.

I want to understand the “why” a student is struggling just as much as any other teacher,  but I want to do it through thoughtful observation, by getting to know the child and asking questions; by encouraging them to trust me enough to ask ME questions and to talk about their struggles.  Thinking more qualitative than quantitative. Then we can work together to progress to not only where this individual child is meant to be but who they are meant to be.  After all, they are not numbers.  They are my “kids”, not my clients.

My dream is that every child has equal access to a well rounded education where we can measure individual progress and not always compare that progress to others in the name of accountability.  Where we measure EQ as well as IQ. Where we spend time helping them learn to be cooperative, collaborative and creative using their strengths, not just academically but as human beings, beyond the numbers.