When I read the two tweets above today, I ached with memories related to my experiences as an educator. Since retiring almost three years ago, I have reflected often about my teaching career. On the upside, I loved the opportunity to work with students, families, and colleagues daily to impart a love of learning and help students to achieve a positive self concept, solid knowledge/skill/conceptual foundation, and a desire to live positive lives true to themselves.
As most teachers would understand, I learned as much from students, colleagues, and families as they learned from me. I truly strived to be a dedicated member of a learning community; and this commitment and work brought me great satisfaction, positive challenge, and good living.
The greatest anguish I experienced as an educator was the backwards, oppressive administrative systems in place that demeaned educators, students, and families--these systems often acted like a self-serving layer of fat in the school system. As a layer of fat, it often seemed like many administrators worked with and for each other's ambition rather than focus on the students, teachers, and families' best interests and abilities. To simply discuss and forward a new idea took hours and hours and hours of teachers' advocacy. Often ideas from the front lines of education were ridiculed and ignored.
In the face of this treatment, I sought support outside of the school system, and those arenas of support, in many ways, empowered my voice, ideas, and ability to advocate for some good changes, but in general, I wasn't heard or supported that often. While the administrative team worked diligently with one another seemingly for newsworthy efforts; teachers, students, and families did what they could to provide a positive education.
The lack of support from administrative personnel and school committees at the helm was almost always frustrating. Too often those leaders didn't understand or seem to care about what was really happening in the classrooms or with the students; and too often educators' ideas and efforts were dismissed. This dismissal creates an oppressive work environment where the true issues preventing excellence in education are too often not considered.
Schools are stuck because the leadership systems related to schools are outdated in countless ways. There are too many leaders and not enough people working directly with students, and those working directly with students do not have access to the time, money, or decision making capacity to truly improve what's happening in schools. This old fashion and, in many ways, patriarchal system has to change for schools to improve.
Sadly, big money and business has their eyes on schools because there's little overhead, the clients (children) have no voice, and there's clearly room for improvement. These self-serving business people know schools are ripe for reform and realize there's money to be made. They can and will easily infiltrate public schools if the public doesn't wake up and create humane, positive reform sooner than later. That reform has to relook at the systems of decision making, leadership, spending money, and programming in order to modernize schools in ways that create opportunity for all students in positive, equitable, modern ways.
Almost every teacher in a classroom has chosen education because they want to care for and empower students in positive ways. Teachers are committed and thanks to many efforts to improve teacher education, most teachers today, especially in Massachusetts, are well prepared to do a great job. The administrative teams and school committees are mostly stuck in backwards, unskilled patterns that are inefficient and wasteful.
How can this change?
First, it's important to short list the priorities for every school. The first priority should be that every child is served with positivity in ways that make them want to come to school every day. Anything that is impeding a child's good service or desire to come to school should be a first priority for change in schools.
Next, schools should focus on the social/emotional needs of students. Too many students are not getting support in that area. To do this, schools will have to rethink their days, staffing, and programming. In too many schools, there simply isn't enough skilled direct teaching/counseling staff to support the needs and potential students bring to school every day. Every teacher knows that.
And, schools have to get rid of the wasteful processes that simply take a lot of time and do no good. For example, often administrators will pilot new programming that usually ends up in the dumpster. New programming efforts are typically a waste of time, money, and staffing. There are much more efficient ways to develop programming. Too many administrators and school committees rely on outdated processes for reform. For starters, these administrators have to rethink how they listen to and work with educators--they have to get rid of the notion that educators are simply the slaves of administrators and instead begin treating educators as the skilled professionals they are.
Massachusetts spent a long time on creating positive standards for education. If those standards are used as guides, and then teams of teachers work together to teach the standards in ways that pique students' interest, there will be a lot of good learning. I do think some standardized testing is needed, but now, the testing in place takes up too much time, staffing, and money--instead that testing should be greatly streamlined with efficient results that educators and administrators may use right away to review and revise teaching efforts. The MCAS results in Massachusetts take too long to receive and often those results are manipulated by administrators rather than analyzed accurately by teachers and used to truly improve programming.
Schools are stuck because the systems in place for leadership, decision making, spending money, prioritizing, and community building are outdated and inefficient. There's room for great improvement here, improvement that should aim to create a population of students who are well educated in positive, life affirming ways that inspire them to live good lives and contribute to the greater society too. We can do this.