One of the more divisive issues that pops every year at about this time is Daylight Savings Time. In November most of America “Falls Back,” setting clocks back an hour, and in March we “Spring Forward,” or push that plus sign once on our oven and microwave clocks. The reason for doing it hails back to a time when America was mostly an agrarian society, but we still do it today even though most people couldn’t grow a vegetable without looking up a how-to video on YouTube.
I’m pretty much on the fence about this one. I recognize it for the anachronistic practice it is, but I don’t mind getting an extra hour of sleep in November. Equally, I am only mildly annoyed by losing it again in March. Plenty of people get worked up about it, but for me it ranks right up there with being ticked off about whose picture is on the syrup bottle or the box of rice. There are much more important things we should be focusing on.
November is also the time of year when teachers often have their first major in-service, or training day. We are far enough into the school year that we can start evaluating what’s working and what’s not and start to make some course corrections. My particular job is highly specialized and largely outside of the scope of most of what goes on, which gives me an opportunity to sit back and think about the utter absurdity of our current system.
In many ways, teachers are trapped in a Chinese finger puzzle. On one end you have fairy tale state and federal standards you’re required to aspire to, on the other you have students and parents for whom those standards may or may not be realistically attainable. The standards are based largely on the idea that every kid in America is essentially the same, the reality is very few meet that notion of “sameness.”
To put it another way, (and this dawned on me at 2:30 in the morning, for some reason, and has me sitting at my keyboard instead of getting much-needed sleep) the expectation is that teachers and schools will turn out nice, crisp trays of Oreos. Sure, some have Halloween filling, some are mint, some are birthday cake flavored, but they are all the same size, the same shape, and one is pretty much indecipherable from another. That sounds great, but it doesn’t begin to take into account what really walks through the front door of our schools, which more closely resembles Chex Mix.
To give you an idea of what we’re dealing with, here’s a brief look at our recent in-service. We had 30-minutes sessions dealing with a few of the school’s target areas. One was about special education students, who have to have the school environment modified, accommodated or just utterly changed in order to try and make them all Oreo-shaped. Next we have lots of students who don’t speak English fluently, or even at all, and there was a half-hour training on how teachers are accountable for their Oreo-ness. Next up, an attendance analysis session, since a high percentage of our kids can’t get to school on time and thus miss that first session of compression from pretzels into white stuft-ing. Next, a session on the importance of being mental health experts and identifying students who may need help from the counseling department. Finally, we had a session on the importance of differentiation, or assuring the kids are the ones doing the teaching rather than the teachers because some report out of some white privilege university said that’s how it should be done.
Oh! And then there’s the technology we’re all supposed to worship but which never works as it’s supposed to when we need it most. Yeah, that’s fun.
Hmmmm.
That’s a lot, and by the end of the whirlwind session plenty of teachers looked like deer in headlights. The task is simply daunting to the point of near impossibility, and that’s why so many teachers walk away to make more money in less stressful jobs. This, however, creates quite a vicious circle in this process. As experienced teachers walk away, younger and inexperienced teachers are tapped to fill the void. Inexperienced teachers have an even harder time with all those different kinds of Chex walking in their doors, not to mention the pretzels and the NUTS.
I have taught quite a few college writing classes and they were, without a doubt, the most fun and rewarding classes I have ever taught. I wasn’t accountable for the home lives of my students, no one was over my shoulder telling me to use some crazy teaching method that wasn’t right for my class, and if they failed, they failed. Thank you, pay again. At the same time, every single student who came to class every week passed with flying colors. I’m a damn good English teacher, I excel at meeting student needs and if you participate, you’ll enjoy coming to class and you’ll be successful.
How did that translate the year I thought it would be a good idea to teach K-12 English? Ha! After one year of fighting for the needs of my students I dropped the idea altogether and went back to special education. The system is simply set up to fail in many cases. I was overqualified for what the district insisted we do and they fought me when I tried to point out their short-sightedness. Hell, I have a Master’s in English and the lady setting the district curriculum only had a degree in administration! Small wonder there was a disconnect.
Like Daylight Savings Time, this antiquated idea of education, combined with the inane mantra that every kid will get a diploma has resulted in a system that’s turning out something that may look briefly like an Oreo, but quickly falls apart into more or less its original form: Chex Mix. But hey, maybe if we hire a few more administrators and build a few more state-of-the-art football stadiums it will work itself out.
-B
Ishmael's Legacy 