Time For A Revolution

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / 2 Comments

There has been a lot of attention given to the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations.  And I think it is great that we are finally standing up to the big corporations that have gotten us into the current economic crisis.  The companies that have decided that profit at the cost of the citizenry of the US is more important.  But one thing that has been ignored in the conversation, Education. Corporate America needs to be reformed, but so does Education.  I would argue that the real reform of our educational system is a more dire need.  A generation of students (if not more) have already lost their chance–have already lost their future.

Education is a huge part of our countries current issues.  We are graduating more students over all (even though my city currently only graduates 48% of students), but fewer of them can read, write and think critically.  Yet in the name of reform, we turn a blind eye.  I have written a lot about education.  This is certainly not all inclusive of everything I have written about education, but it is a big part of it.  I read this op-ed this morning and it resounded with the what Kelly (aka mochamomma) wrote and Nancy Letts wrote recently.  We know what is needed in education.  We know how important early childhood education is.  We know that students, especially young students learn best through curiosity and inquiry.  We know that students learn by teaching each other and that inquiry leads to increased critical thinking.  We know that writing is a tool for thinking and that students should be writing in every class and reading in every class.  We know that homework should be relevant and not just filler.  We know homework should be meaningful.  We know that standardized test play a role, but aren’t a complete measurement of what students know.  We know that problem solving and collaboration are two of the most important skills students need to be ready for college and the workforce, yet our schools focus on skill and drill activities that students do alone for the purpose of filling in a bubble on a test.

Many urban and under-performing schools purchase canned curriculum that tests students every six weeks and offers pacing guides that tell teachers where they need to be–taking the art out of teaching; taking the choice out of teaching.  I would have withered as a public school teacher under these circumstances.  I left the classroom after NCLB, but before the huge accountability push of testing.  I was a great teacher.  I was the kind of teacher I want my students to have.  I knew other great teachers, who knew their students, who knew what their students needed and how students learned.  I worked hard to make sure that my students were getting what they needed and were learning. I didn’t do test prep with my students and mine always scored highest on their standardized tests.  But I can’t take the credit for than anymore than I can take the blame.  A student’s performance on a standardized test is a snapshot of their schooling not one teachers classroom.  I also believe that if we are teaching the way we as trained teachers know we should, then test score are moot.  The problem has become that teachers have lost their autonomy.  Teachers have lost their ability to teach and are not often expected to just deliver the information and move students through the pacing guide decided for them from an outside corporation who doesn’t know the students are even the school.  This is a huge issue.

Teachers need to push back.  Teachers need to take back education.  Teachers need to take back the curriculum and make it theirs and their students’.

Parents need to demand funding for early childhood education.  Parents need to demand early childhood education that isn’t about worksheets and tests.  Parents need to demand that schools do better.  We need to demand that schools do better.  Our students deserve the best education possible.  I want to be able to send my kids to public school in my urban district and know they are getting the best education.  A quality education.  An education that will push them to grow and learn.  An education that will challenge them.  An education that demands that they think and problem solve.  An education that demands they investigate and ask questions.  Right now…I can only buy this type of education for my kids and that isn’t fair to the kids whose parents can’t pay.

We have a hierarchical educational system, as a teacher and educational researcher, I have always believed this.  We have schools that create and educate leaders and schools that create and educate workers.  That isn’t right.  We should have one system that educates everyone to their potential.

I think about an article I read about those is power who were poor students and got poor grades in school.  Yet they are leaders because of where they went to school, not because of what they learned.  Students who go to urban public schools shouldn’t be relegated to the second class.  Yet they are.  It’s wrong and it’s time we took a stand.

Why can’t Bill Gates and the other corporate philanthropists look at what works?  They could easily fund early childhood education for all with the money they are spending on charter schools and other reform initiatives that are really just about testing.   If they really wanted to make a difference they would invest money in colleges of education to allow for more teacher residency programs (programs the mirror the residency programs for doctors).  If they really wanted to make a difference they would ask educators what works.

It’s time for a revolution.  It’s time for change.  Our children deserve it.  Our children need it.

When One Is Missing

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / 2 Comments

This week my husband is out of town.  I travel frequently for work–well not frequently exactly, about 6 times a year.  I know the kids miss me when I am gone, but it isn’t until my husband travels for work that I realize the hole that is left when one of us is gone.  We are a unit.  Team Finley is how we refer to ourselves.  And we are that a team.  My husband is the perfect yin to my yang of parenting styles.  I am the enforcer and he is the laid back one–I am not laid back when it comes to parenting.  I try–but I am the stricter parent.

So, things are hard for me when Bill is gone.  I try to relax more and not be so strict–but it is really really hard.  Super hard.  Yesterday we did have a good day.  No one yelled (okay, I didn’t yell).  We watched a movie–The Nightmare Before Christmas which the kids loved.  I mean LOVED.

Then bedtime came.  We brushed our teeth and read stories.  Noah went to sleep easily as always, but Zoë not so much.  She cried for daddy.  It broke my heart.  I carried her down to my room and put her in my bed and she cried and cried and cried.  I didn’t handle it the best–but I did what I could.  She cried for daddy and I told her daddy wasn’t here and that when she was ready for me to lay with her I would.

So, she laid by herself in my bed and cried for daddy for about 45 minutes–it felt like an eternity.  She then called for me and said she was ready.  I laid with her and within minutes she was asleep.  It was an important moment for me–I can’t fix everything for them.  I want to, but I can’t.

This morning Noah wanted to know how many days until daddy comes home.  He wanted to play piano and I wasn’t teaching him right–like daddy. I do my best to fill his shoes (as he does mine when I am gone).  But we just get by.

There is a hole, one of us is missing.  We are a team and when one member is gone–the team doesn’t play it’s best.  It does what it needs to to get by—but it isn’t whole.

 

Only Looking At The Suface Leads To A Titanic Failure

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / Leave a comment

Just to warn you–this is a post about education.

The debate about public education is infuriating. Not just because the only voices being heard or those of big corporate money, but because the emphasis is on the “magic bullet,” the “quick fix,” “the answer.”  Education is not something that can be fixed over night–even though it appears that we have totally screwed it up in record time.  There has been a steady decline in the quality of public educations since the passage of NCLB and the flood gates were open to create a free-for-all for textbook and testing companies.

I work in the charter school sector and I see the same problems in this sector that plague our traditional public schools.  There is a great deal of talk, focus, energy and money being thrown at replication of successful models.  This idea of replication screams “corporate” to me.  It screams outputs.  It operates based on the idea that teachers, students and communities are interchangeable.  It looks only at the structure and not at the substance.  No one asks the why or how something works–just what is it that works and lets do that.

That doesn’t work.

I was listening to NPR this morning and on Radio Times they were having a discussion or debate around single-sex schools and classrooms.  And there are some who feel this is beneficial because girls learn different than boys.  But what about the research that supports heterogeneous is better than homogenous.  Yes, the catholic high schools are almost entirely single-sex schools and their students do well–often extremely well.  But what are we missing in this simplification of examining only structure and what we can see?  We miss the how it works and the why it works.  Having a good idea is not enough.  Trying to copy someone else’s success often does not work.    It’s not enough to know the results.  It’s not enough to know the structure or even the culture.  Just because an all girls high school works for some students doesn’t mean it works for all female students.

This is one of the problems with the scale of our educational system and our own countries lack of imagination and innovation.  There is innovation.  But most aren’t willing to take the risk.  Corporate philanthropists aren’t willing to fund innovation.  They want to fund something that has produced results, with little consideration to how those results are achieved.

It is much the same with the rhetoric around teacher training, etc.  We look at outputs.  We look at results with very little consideration as to how the results are achieved.  We look at number and not at what happens in the classroom.  This problem is evident when education reformers cannot list the qualities of a good teacher.  The qualities of a good teacher are as varied as teachers themselves.

There isn’t cookie cutter answer to this problem and as long as we keep looking for one, students lose.  We must stop looking at the surface–we can only see 10% that way.  We need to look under the surface at the other 90%–because that is what really matters.  Until we do that–we’ll keep crashing and sinking.

Random Act Of Cuteness

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / Leave a comment

I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed with life right now…everything is crazy busy and intellectually over stimulating.  I am working on posts surrounding education, homework, etc but wanted something light for today.

Last night on our way home from dance class, Zoë picked up a sweater she had left in the car.  It’s a bit of a hippy sweater–brown crochet tank–with colored flowers and fringe.  It’s cute.  Zoë was holding it up and asked me to look.  I then had to remind her that I was driving and that I can’t look.

“Tell me what it is.”

“My Ho-ka-pon-tas sweater” she said.

I died laughing.  I know she was trying to say Pocahontas sweater, even though I have no idea who might have called it that.  So of course, I had to ask her three more times what kind of sweater it was just to her her say Ho-ka-pon-tas.

I then made her tell her dad when we got home.

Sometimes you just need a laugh and if your kids can’t provide that for you…I don’t know what to say.

 

 

 

102.96 Miles

/ Dawn Kasal-Finley / 1 Comment

So, yesterday my best friend and I rode a century to celebrate my 40th birthday.  We had planned on doing one at the end of August (when I officially turned 40), but schedules, etc., didn’t cooperate.  We set off yesterday am around 7:30 and rode through the streets of our city–to the river–across the river–along the river–took a ferry across the river–rode across and island in the river that forced me to ride 4+miles of hills all going up–took another ferry–rode through farm land and back uphill to our finish line.

It was a great day and I was able to finish 100 miles in under 8 hours (7:58).  This will by no means win me any awards–but I will take it as there were a lot of hills and I am not a fan of hills and I can’t fly up them like others are able to.  I owe much to my amazing best friend–who probably could have finished in about 6 hours–but she is awesome and waits on my slow ass.

I finished with relative ease–except for the wind at miles 90-96 and it was a strong wind and it sucked and it hurt.  I learned that I need to eat more–I really conked at the end.  But when you are riding it’s hard to eat a lot (I burned 6800 calories) when you are working so hard.  But, I’ll remember that for next time.  Yes, next time.  This is not my last century.  Next year my goal is 100 in under 7 hours and 30 minutes.  I know it’s not a huge change from this time–but 30 minutes really matters.

I’m back to eating clean again–I took a break last week, because I was out of town for work and well–really–just lazy.