Who remembers being a kid in school and watching the hands of the clock move ever so slowly to the time for lunch or recess or dismissal?  We’ve outgrown that kind of thing, right?  I bet none of us as adults watches the hands of the clock (or the numbers slowly change on a digital clock) for a break time, lunch or end of the work day.  There’s something inside me that rebels a little each day as I look at the clock and think, okay, I only have 2 hours left or just one more class.  What am I looking forward to?  Most days I have no great plans, nowhere I really have to dash to other than to go home.  As I get older, I have no real desire for time to go faster, so why am I watching the clock so intently?

Maybe it’s just that way in education.  Pretty much every minute of my day is scheduled for me as in where I go, who I see, and what I have to do.  Even my bathroom breaks have to be scheduled which means my body clock has to be managed.  I tell myself that my exhaustion at the end of the day is a good tired, but is it really?  And if I feel this way, imagine how my students feel.

And again, it’s not that I don’t like what I do.  I CHOSE this life.  I just don’t like that it is so structured.  But isn’t that what education is all about these days?  More and more structure?  It’s because we’re just convinced that kids need more structure in order to learn, especially as they get older.  It’s so they can learn to play the game.  The same game the rest of us are playing and, let’s face it, most of us hate.

I’ve said for years that behaviorally, kids have really changed.  But what if they haven’t actually changed, they’re just beginning to express the rebellion we’ve all felt for years and never expressed?  What if the covert rebellion we had as kids has turned into a overt rebellion for kids today?

This is what I do to my kids everyday.  They have to ask to use the bathroom.  They have to ask to get a drink.  They can only talk when they raise a hand.  They have to participate in an activity that I have meticulously planned.  They must sit in a certain spot, move in a certain way.  As a free spirit, I hate that, and yet, day after day, I ask my students to do exactly as I ask, when I ask it.

There was a part of me, as my own kids were growing up, that understood when all three of my boys did not want to play the game.  They gave legitimate, well thought out reasons as to why they thought “the game” was silly.  In my heart I understood, but being a member of the education community, how would it look if my own children did not “succeed” by playing the game?  The game is played for accountability reasons, not for real learning.  It’s not meant to be logical, it’s meant to be an easy way for others to see that some learning must be taking place because somebody received an “A”, which for some reason is better than a “B”.  Is it because it comes first in the alphabet?  If so, playing the game in elementary school is confusing because getting a “4” is the best as compared to a “1”.  And here I have parents who ask what their kids needs to “do” to get a “4” in music.  My rubrics tell me, but I’ll be honest, I would rather not play the game and let the kids just experience music.  I can see where they can improve and help them get there, but why must I assign a number or letter to the learning?

I have tried for as long as I can remember to play the game because playing it successfully has brought me recognition from others.  Good grades brought praise.  Managing my classroom well and seemingly keeping my students engaged has labeled me a good teacher and as a professional, I have made sure that I have been accountable to parents and administration by assessing to the best of my ability and assigning grades. But the truth is, I can make them sit in the seat, but I can’t control what’s going on in their heads.  If students are playing the game well enough, how do I really know if they’re learning or just doing enough to do well on an assessment?  It’s all a false sense of control on our part as teachers and as parents.  We do our structured job, in our structured environment, with a structured curriculum, all of it based on research of course, that justifies the structure.

If all of that research is true, then why are we rebelling inside?  Is it immaturity or is there something within us that wants to learn and explore in a different way?  That part of us that wants to go look outside when it starts to snow or just start dancing when we hear music.  That impulsivity that leads to real learning because we WANT to know.  The impulsivity that leads to asking questions and finding answers.  And for teachers, not always sticking to the structure created for them, but having the ability to stop for a moment for genuine curiosity that might be slightly off the structured path.

It’s a shame my own overt rebellion is just now taking place.  Maybe I can do something for my students so that they’re not having to rebel covertly anymore.