So,  I’ve been rolling this last one around in my head for a long time, and I’m still not sure I can say exactly what I need to in a concise manner, but I’m sure as heck gonna try.

There have been  a lot of ideas proposed about how to fix education, and most of the creators of these ideas don’t bother to get real, meaningful feedback from teachers.  (NB:  When politicians say they’ve asked us about these things, they usually mean that they told us about what they had already decided or that they solicited feedback from retired teachers or folks who haven’t been in the classroom since spiral perms were cute.)

As someone who spends a lot of time in the classroom, I see education as an intersection of three major components:  curriculum, students, and teachers.  These areas are where we need to focus effective reform.  Forget budgets and county offices and parent organizations—at the end of the day, their purpose is to support the work students and teachers are doing.  This doesn’t mean they aren’t important.  This doesn’t mean teachers don’t love them.  But if you have to prioritize, students, teachers, and the curriculum are the three largest pieces of the public education puzzle. 

I’ll start with curriculum.  My big complaint about it is this:  it’s often not relevant to real life, particularly for students who are not going to university.  Somewhere along the line, we decided to push things like algebra and research paper writing instead of skills like reading comprehension and financial literacy.  Many schools have removed or reduced hands-on electives from their courses of study, grievous sins in a world that still needs plumbers, electricians, masons, chefs, and childcare workers.  While we should certainly prepare our students for a competitive future, we do them a disservice when we try to convince them that a university degree is the only way to make an adult life for themselves.  And there are parts of me that become pretty close to enraged by the fact that our culture denigrates working with one’s hands.  Who do you think does your hair, unclogs your sink, and wires your homes, America?  By and large, people who chose not to attend university.  And when the toilet is flooding all over the bathroom floor, you bet  they possess valuable knowledge your BA in Art History didn’t provide.  Curriculum needs to be relevant for all kids, not just the college-bound.

Curriculum also should be easy to understand.  It should be written in the plainest, clearest, language possible.  Students should have ready access to it and be able to understand it—even elementary school students.  I once sat through a staff development where we had to re-write our curriculum standards into kid-friendly language.  Why isn’t the curriculum already kid-friendly?  They’re the people who have to master it.

The second part of this (extremely simplified) equation is students.  In America, we do a beautiful, admirable, noble thing.  We educate every single child we can get our hands on—for free.  Any classroom teacher knows we educate a fair percentage of them against their will.  Unlike countries like South Korea (where I currently teach), the American classroom is beautifully, miraculously, hopelessly heterogeneous.  We teach kids of all races, creeds, ethnicities, linguistic backgrounds, ability levels, political leanings, socioeconomic status, hair color…….. you name it.   This is not an easy thing to do, and many countries with far more homogenous populations have written completely inclusive, completely free public education off as a waste of effort. 

Like many people, I believe that free, public education is one of the most awesome things about our country.  I think if there is any place where we can begin to break down our prejudices about race, religion, and class, it’s in the public school classroom, where children who are fundamentally different still sit down at the same table.   That said, educational policymakers (and teachers and parents and school support people) have to commit themselves every day to doing what is IN THE TRUE BEST INTEREST of each one of these students.  And, we have to realize that those actions may be different for every kid.  Some students need more challenging material.  Some need extra help.  Some need firm, fair discipline.  Some need basic life skills training.  Some need the school to provide support parents don’t give them at home.  Some need less emotional intervention and could care less about confiding in a school staff member.  Most are somewhere in between.  What I’m saying is this:  we have to treat kids differently, but we have to treat them equitably as well.  And, as a nation, our track record on equity is less than stellar.  Lots of parents don’t trust schools to act in their children’s best interest anymore.  Some parents and students feel persecuted, profiled, and hounded by schools—and rightfully so.  If we are going to reach every child, schools have to treat students as individuals—differently.  But we need our students and communities to trust us to do this. 

Which brings me to teachers.  It seems like the educational debate either vilifies or canonizes teachers, and I’m gonna tell y’all this.  We’re just people.  We are not perfect.  We have gaps in our knowledge, feelings that get bruised, and our own set of issues and feelings regarding how you feel about us and our profession.  We are hopelessly flawed, just like you are.  But at our best, we come in every day and try to be perfect for your kid.  Because we know that what we do matters.

For education to be reformed, repaired, renewed….whatever you wanna call it….we have to have a community who believes our teachers are trustworthy, and we have to have teachers who are worthy of that confidence.  We should seek to put the best people possible in our classrooms, the most caring, competent, hardworking men and women we can find.  We need to pay them well, provide them with fair benefits, and give them the tools they need to succeed.  Then, we need to trust them to do their jobs, without dictating one size fits all lesson plans or pacing or meaningless tests and paperwork.   

Tenure is a concept that has been vilified unnecessarily in the media and in NC legislature lately.  All tenure really does is protect good teachers from being summarily dismissed without evidence or a hearing.  Career status teachers can still be fired—and should be—if they aren’t doing their jobs and fail to respond to administrative interventions.   The reason tenure protects lackluster educators is because their bosses don’t document poor teaching when they see it.  I have taught at schools where (a very small number of) teachers arrived late, missed excessive amounts of days, or showed too many movies.  Everyone in the building—including the administrators—knows who these people are.  And if a teacher is a problem, it’s the administrator’s responsibility to document this behavior, discuss it with the teacher in question, and form a plan to resolve the issue.  If the teacher is unable to perform to standard, he or she should be dismissed.  Slacker teachers make those of us who work our butts off day in and day out look bad.   And it’s our bosses’ job to record inefficiency and put a stop to it.  Tenure doesn’t prevent administrators from doing that; laziness or lack of time does that.  One of a school administrator’s primary jobs should be overseeing his or her employees, but county meetings, state initiatives, and other minutiae often prevent them from doing that, which is unfortunate.

So, these are just some ideas about how we could improve education and really help our students.  Obviously, there are many more parts—parents, communities, extracurriculars, universities, etc.—that contribute to a successful, vibrant school system.  We have got to get all these people on the same page at the same table if we’re going to improve American education.  One group vilifying another won’t work. We have to get this right.  When teachers and schools aren’t working properly, our country doesn’t lose time or money; it loses the potential of its children, a far more precious commodity.