A teacher’s year is much like the change of seasons in Nebraska.  No transition at all between school and summer break.  Seriously – one day I’m moving like crazy getting my room taken apart and cleaned up for summer right after I’ve finished teaching, leading the school song for an assembly and doing music for 5th grade graduation and BAM!  I’m at home, sitting on the couch trying to figure out what I want to do and using the bathroom whenever I want to.  It’s quite the adjustment.

I don’t know about other teachers, but it usually takes about a week for me to get adjusted to the new season.  Of course, I have to go in for a day of professional development within the first week, so I can’t really relax yet.  It’s like a great cosmic joke – hey teachers – you’re off for the summer!  Oops – just kidding.  For 28 years I’ve been doing this craziness for one reason and one reason only – I believe in a great public education for every child.

However, after 28 years, I have to say I believe our public education system is at a crossroad.  Public education is something I believe in with my whole heart, but there’s a reason why alternatives are popping up across the country and from a parent point of view, I don’t believe it’s about the money.  I believe that parents are looking for places where their children can be successful, receive a great education, be loved and accepted.  While there are still great things going on in public education today, there are also some very disturbing things happening as well.

First, there seems to be a lack of discipline and consequences for students who struggle with behavior issues.  This is not necessarily a teacher issue, but from where I stand, it’s a cultural issue where we’re not allowed to do those things we need to in order to help children learn to be accountable for their actions.  We’re all about rewarding kids for the least little thing they do, most times for things they should be doing for the sake of doing them, but we’re hesitant to make kids accountable.  This leads to issues in classroom management which ultimately affects student engagement and learning. Not just for the student misbehaving, but for others in the class, something that parents are not happy about.

Teachers are not treated or respected as the professionals they’ve been trained to be.  Those outside the classroom are telling teachers and districts what to teach, who to teach, when to teach, what to assess and when.  There is little leeway for teachers to use their professional judgement to make changes for their individual students.  Instead of us producing well rounded students, we’re doing nothing but focusing on the tested subjects – reading, math and sometimes science.  Those subjects that are the most organic to us as human beings – art, music, physical education – are the first to be cut or reduced.  No wonder parents are looking for alternatives!

Students are expected to be ready for academics the second they walk in the door for Kindergarten.  What used to be taught in Kindergarten is taught in preschool, raising the expectation that kids should be ready to hit the books now.  What if a child doesn’t attend preschool or the parent opts out to let them be a kid?  We’ve stopped taking time to teach kids social skills so they CAN learn in a classroom setting.  Like accountability, students also need to be taught how to be friends, how to share, how to be kind and responsible.  I don’t believe character traits can be arbitrarily thrown in while we’re teaching academics – it needs to be taught before.  Sure, I have kinders who can read really well, but they also still hit someone when they sit on what they perceive to be their dot in the circle. Having well read mathematicians who can’t be kind to others doesn’t make much sense to me.

Emphasis on academics apparently means that there must be MORE academics.  Which means less free time/recess.  Again, recess is a time of learning.  It’s a way for kids to learn how to work together and get along, to think for themselves and problem solve. Things they’ll need for a lifetime.  However, what happens is that recess time is reduced and adults get in the way trying to referee everything, telling them what they can and can’t do instead of letting the kids figure it out for themselves.  But figuring it out takes time and we’ve taken that away from them.  Again, no wonder parents are looking for alternatives.

It’s not like we couldn’t change things.  The problem is that everything is more important than the child.  If we have a longer day so that children could have longer recesses, teachers will have to be paid more and districts won’t/can’t do that.  All the research tells us what’s really important for kids, more recess, more arts, but instead we have to listen to legislators who demand more accountability for teachers which means more testing, more stressed out kids, less time for actually teaching and learning.  We spend more time working on our strategies for teaching than we do teaching kids to learn how to learn.  Isn’t that the goal?  Don’t we want kids to become independent learners?

You know, people don’t look for alternative when things are going well.  Charter and private schools are popping up as options because the public school we love and believe in needs some work.  Just because it’s a publicly funded institution doesn’t mean we can’t work to do what’s best for kids.  I believe in kids and in public schools and I believe we can make things better.