Education

An Industrial Model

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / 1 Comment

School is the most influential institution in modern society. There are many ways to design an organization that promotes learning and the present industrial model of schooling (emphasis mine)  is not one of them. There are some exciting counter examples, but they haven’t spread. The community, cultural institutions and business have to be involved. We need a broader base of change.

In the eyes of a child, the future is alive. Maybe children need to step forward as leaders.–Peter Senge

The industrial model is a model that I would argue has never worked very well, but it certainly does not work now and hasn’t for a long time.  I have been thinking a lot about this in my work and as I begin to think more deeply regarding my dissertation research (which I am getting ready to start writing–finally!).  This industrial model is something I have taken a stance on before and it really speaks to the idea that those in power–the ones who make the decisions–limit the knowledge given to our public school students.  Walk through an average public school and an average independent school and you will be shocked by the differences.  You will be shocked by the perceptions of the teachers and the type of tasks students are given.  Often in our public schools (I know this is a generalization, but I have been in enough public schools to know it is often the norm) we see students seated quietly in desks, receiving information from teachers and then spitting the info back.  I think this expectation of “teaching” is what made it really easy for me not to return to the classroom when I left to stay home with my children.  I believe this expectation is what leads to so much teacher turnover in our urban districts and within the first 5 years of teaching.

I fought constantly against the idea that it was my job to impart all of my knowledge into the brains of my students only to have them tell it back to me in a formulaic essay of 5 paragraphs and one page. There is no thinking required.  It sends the message that either a) we don’t think your ideas are good enough and b) the teacher is the only one with the answer.

This is why standardized testing is such a problem, it narrows even further who holds the answers and implies that there is actually only one right answer.  Now in math it might be true that there is only one right answer–but there are many ways to come to that answer.

School should be about learning and the industrial model that is so prevalent in our nation is not about learning.  The standardized tests don’t measure learning.  Teachers often are not encouraged to have classrooms that are student-centered.  I still remember one day when I was observed by the assistant superintendent and my principal.  We were having a deep discussion about a theme in Tess of the d’urbervilles.  The students were leading the discussion, I was just moderating a bit and keep them in the same topic space.  It was a great learning moment for students as they were making connections to their own lives and experiences and problem solving.  They then went on to write about the state of women’s rights and discuss how it effects their own life and future.  These were some of the most powerful essays I ever had as a teacher, because they were authentic and while they were about a book, they were much more about the students.

The assistant sup left and told my principal she would come back later when I was teaching something.

That right there is the a huge part of the problem.  My principal told the assistant sup that what I was doing was teaching and he was sorry she didn’t see it.  (That principal didn’t last long in my district).

If students are going to learn how to create their own meanings and their own knowledge they have to be given a space to do that.  All students (pre-school through college) are capable of doing great things and creating their own knowledge and meaning.  If our education system focused more on teaching skills (as opposed to such a content focus) especially in the younger grades, we would see students begin to create their own learning opportunities and develop an understanding that what they know, think, and are curious about matters.

I understand the flip side with accountability and the ever growing focus on test scores and schools feeling the need to keep kids in school for 8+ hours a day to try to make up the learning gap.  I think this focus on remediation is slightly misguided, especially in our early grades.  Students can learn all of their subjects/skills in a meaningful interdisciplinary way.

I keep coming back to the idea of “meaningful.”  School should be meaningful.  Learning should be meaningful.  And the industrial model we have makes learning meaningless.  Learning something to “pass” a test has little value and meaning to kids who are curious about the world.

I certainly do not have all the answers, but I do know that our educational system has to change.  Yet, we continue to do more of the same for more and longer days and wonder why are students aren’t doing better.  We are perplexed when companies claim they can’t find workers they need.  An industrial model of education, prepares kids for an industrial society.  Last time I checked, industry is not a major employer in our country any more.

We have to change our inputs to get different outputs.  I see it at my kids school–where the learning is theme based and the students determine the theme together with the teachers based on class interests.   But this approach takes seasoned administrators, teachers who are able to relinquish control and a belief that what the students can contribute is important.

That is the crux.  The industrial model places the most importance on the output.  In other models, it is the student that is most important.  Until we start talking about students, nothing is going to change.

Thankful That I Have Options

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / Leave a comment

Today is one of those days where it just hits me: how lucky I am to have found the school I have for my kids.  The amazing things they get to do make me wish I was in elementary school again.

On a walking field trip last week, Zoë’s class picked up pumpkins and other gourds to observe and study in class.  Yesterday, the kids decided they wanted to bake one of the pumpkins.  Then today, the class decided to use the cooked pumpkin to make a pumpkin pie.  So, one of the teachers made a quick trip to the store for supplies and they make a fresh pumpkin pie.

This all happened while Noah’s first grade class was on a field trip to the schools 28 (or so) acre extended class to help plot out the future orchard and find the sugar maple trees the class will be tapping for fresh maple syrup later this winter.

All of this is led by the interest of the students.  All of their learning is ground in experience.  I could not be happier that my kids get to learn in this type of environment.  That they not only learn but they do.  They don’t only learn how maple syrup comes from trees, they get to tap trees and collect it.

I think about this amazing education (that we are able to pay for) and I think why aren’t more schools like this?  Why don’t more schools valuing doing and experience?  Why aren’t more schools harnessing the interest of kids to deliver curriculum?

I am thankful that I can afford this type of education.  But I think everyone should get an education this good–it doesn’t have to be exactly like the one my kids get–but the quality should be the same.   Every kids should have not just access to–but should have a quality education experience.  Every kid should be taught to think and to create and to experience learning.  So, while my kids are lucky, I will continue to work to ensure all kids have access to a quality education.  Because education is a fundamental right. I can’t be happy just because my kids are getting a first class education.  My kids and their school as a whole are a small piece of the population.  Just because I know my kids are being served well doesn’t mean I can just sit back and not worry about the 10s of thousands in my own city not being served.

We are all in this together.  We have to ensure that every kids is being educated.  We have to pull together and not stand for a system that doesn’t education a huge % of the future work force.

I don’t exactly know how we do this, but I do know that I am lucky to work in education and get to see the potential in the new options that are being created for kids who are being served the least.

It’s easy to turn our back when we are fine.  But until everyone is “fine,” we have a lot of work to do.

 

 

 

At What Cost

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / Leave a comment

My days are spent entrenched in the world of education.  It has been the world I have worked in for the past 10 years.  And with kids who are school-aged, education is something that consumes much of my thoughts.

I think one of the things that is missing in the current conversation regarding education is one about learning.  We are focused so singularly on test scores and whether or not students can read or do math at grade level.  This has caused to to lose sight of whether or not students can think and apply what they have learned.

This really became apparent to me during a conversation I was having with someone regarding a high performing charter high school network that takes students in 9th grade (who are several grade levels behind) and gets them up to reading at grade level before they graduate.  Now don’t get me wrong, I think that this is great and admirable.  It is important that students get the basic skills, but I have to ask “At what cost?”

At what cost is this happening?  When we focus so intently on getting kids to score proficient on a test or be reading at the appropriate lexile level, we have to be cutting corners somewhere else.  I think this is apparent that much of what is getting cut is what so often happens in private schools and high performing affluent districts–the actual exploration and application of learning.

Another clear cost is that early childhood and kindergarten education have become less about play and more about “test” prep.  Kids spend more time sitting in desks, receiving direct instruction in academic subjects at younger and younger ages, as opposed to learning through exploration, play and collaboration.

I know that we are at a time in our country where we have throngs of students who are starting their school years behind. I also know that as we look at achievement data and control for factors of low-income, that our schools are doing fairly well.  Yet we as a country are failing those who are poor and it is these same poor kids and families who continue to be undereducated.  Instead of engaging in meaningful conversations (that would expose them to more vocabulary then they might get at home), they sit in isolation and complete worksheets labeled with “test prep” on them.

All of this is to say that we need to focus on what students should be getting from school and what they should be getting is an education.  They should learn social skills, problem solving, and collaboration.  They need to learn character, conflict resolution and confidence.  These can’t be taught through direct instruction or worksheets.  This is also not to say that students don’t need their basic skills–but those can be (and should be) taught in a way that engages students completely.

School should be fun and engaging.  School needs to be more about the students and what they need and how they best learn based on their age and developmental level.  We need to re-think how we educate and testing isn’t educating.

 

 

 

It Is Not The Test’s Fault

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / Leave a comment

I was reading something yesterday that really struck me.  Education has become just as polarizing as birth control, abortion, and every other partisan issue in this country.  This perplexes me.  Education should be the least divisive issue in our country.  Who could possible be against educating kids?  Kids, you say? In case we have all forgotten, education is about KIDS.  Not adults, not corporations,  not bottom lines, not test scores.  IT IS ABOUT KIDS.

I am also tired of us blaming NCLB (which I think is wrong and doesn’t work) and the test.  The test doesn’t come into our classrooms and dictate what is taught.  The test doesn’t determine what type of curriculum the administration buys for its students.  The test measures what the student knows and in theory has been taught by their teacher(s).  The test does not dictate what is taught.  People do.  People, not the test, make these decisions.  I am just really tired of the test being blamed.  So, often it is the decisions made by administrators and teachers that dictate a students performance on the test.  I am tired of the test being the scape goat.  When I was teaching high school (at the implementation of NCLB), I was responsible for what my students learned.  I was responsible for their learning.  Were there some students who made the decision to not learn?  Yes.  Was I ever tempted to let that be an excuse to make my job easier?  Yes.  Did I?  No.  I was on them constantly.  Ethically it was my job to teach EVERY SINGLE KID IN MY CLASS.  Every. Kids.

If those kids didn’t do well on the test, it was my fault to some degree.  If they didn’t master some skills.  I was accountable.

We also have to remember that many of the teachers who teach the students who need the best teachers are new and inexperienced teachers–TFA or traditionally trained teachers.  I will say from my personal experience  teaching TFA corps members during their first year, that their toolbox of strategies is not nearly as full as it should be or as full as teachers who have gone through the traditional channels.  But most teachers in their first years are only marginally as effective as they could be.  Teaching to the test is much easier if you are a new teacher–as it’s a road map for what to teach and most schools don’t have a good mentoring program in place to help new teachers into the profession.  There is also (most times) not an effective evaluation and feedback protocol in place to help new teachers and support them to develop the skills they need.

I have found that the class I teach for first year TFA corps members becomes a mentoring class where we talk about how to differentiate and how to plan lessons and how to try different ways to teach material and to talk about why we teach certain things and how important they are.  These are the conversations that new teachers need.  It takes approximately 3-5 years for a teacher to become a fully functioning effective teacher (and if they aren’t by the 5 year mark–then maybe they should be encouraged to find a new profession–our kids deserve the best).  The problem education has is that 50% of teachers leave before they hit the 5 year mark.

So we perpetuate low performance with the high amount of new teachers we have to bring in to the profession, especially in our urban schools, and then they leave when they are the cusp of becoming effective teachers, often citing lack of support as one of the reasons for leaving.

Our system is broken on may levels and to say it’s about a test is simplistic.  To say it’s the teacher’s fault is also simplistic.  To say it’s the students fault–is just wrong.  To blame it on poverty or social status is just an excuse to not work twice as hard.

We need to stop making excuses.  We need to come together and realize it’s about the kids.  We don’t have more time to waste with rhetoric.  It’s time for action.

Urban Schools And Slavery

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / 1 Comment

Who knew they had many of the same racial ideals embedded in their systemic structure–keeping people in their appropriate place.

Now before you start getting mad at me, education and urban education are my passion and my daily work.  All of my teaching has happened in urban schools with a majority black population.  My kids are black.  But Jada Williams has said what I have been saying, so honestly, that it breaks my heart to be right.  I cried as I heard her speak of how “teachers actions speak volumes”

I am tired of the achievement gap being about the students.  I am tired of teachers who don’t teach kids.  I am tired of administrators who don’t know what teachers are doing in their classrooms.  I will always be a teacher at heart.  I believe teaching is the most noble and most important profession. I also know it is one of the hardest (it comes in a close second to parenting toddles and teenagers). I am disheartened when I hear the first year teachers I teach (TFA teachers) talk about how students can’t do x or y or z.  I ask “What gives you the right or authority to decide what a student can and cannot do?”

I am not looking to bash teachers.  I love and respect teachers.  I am tired of teachers (some not all–but too many) so clearly not doing their jobs (especially in urban schools). I am tired of administrators who allow teachers to not do their jobs.  Jada’s teacher was offended by her essay and made it impossible for Jada to stay at her school and at her next school. You can read the rest of the story here and here.  Go Read It (then come back…also, just a note–I do not share the same political views that the Frederick Douglass Foundation of NY does–but they have the story).

This story makes me sick. This story epitomizes everything that is wrong with our educational system and our society.  It also highlights that the issues are systemic.  Jada should be applauded for her voice and apologized to for 8 years of being failed by the adults in her schools.  She and every student in America deserves better.  Every. Student. Yes even the poor and minority ones.  EVERY. STUDENT.

It is the little things that we do that send the loudest messages. Messages our students internalize about us and themselves.   Jada (and generations of other minority students) has taken in the rhetoric that she and all black students are deemed “unteachable.”  That just floors me. That makes me sad.  Skin color has no link to IQ or academic potential. Kids are smart and intuitive.  Just listen to Jada read her essay–how can you argue that she can’t learn or is unteachable?  Kids who are called unteachable are usually called that by teachers who can’t and don’t teach.

Students will internalize whatever message gets sent.

Teachers who show movies every day send the message “I don’t think you deserve an education or my time.”  Administrators who allow students to slack off send the message “I don’t think you will amount to anything.”  Student who misbehave in class are sending the message “Your lessons are boring and you aren’t teaching or engaging me.”

Students want to learn.  Students want to be successful.  But students know when teachers don’t want them to be or even worse, don’t care if they are successful.  If you are a teacher–what message do you send to your students?  All of your students.  Think about it.  A teacher is the most important indicator of student success.  So, do everyone a favor–TEACH or get out.  Because Jada and every (especially minority) child in this country, mine included, deserve more.  They deserve everything.