Solascriptura, in response to Dan Reed’s September 6th opinion piece about integrating schools, wrote: “The schools have not changed, the students have.” And Solascriptura is right. The biggest problem with school performance is not that they are not integrated enough; it’s that students are changing and the system is not.
Just last Thursday, I was sitting in Rosh Hashanah services and my Rabbi addressed this issue of change. He said, “change is coming as we are not going to like it…the synagogue we inherited will not be the same as the one we leave to our children.” He mentioned changes that have happened through the history of Judaism, like taking down the wall between the men and the women, that some believe will send us straight to hell. But the truth is that if these changes hadn’t happened, the religion would be even smaller than it is today – it would be in even greater danger of dying out.
We can’t stop the change from happening; it’s inevitable. And we need to think the same way about our schools; if we want to reach the larger number of our students rather than just the traditionally-minded minority, then something has to change. Those invested in the traditions may not like the changes, they will no doubt write jeremiad upon jeremiad decrying the downfall of American education, but the truth is that the kids are changing and so school must also change to meet their needs. My thesis advisor at The College of William and Mary’s Graduate School of Education, John Moore, told us over and over: “you have to teach the students you have, not the students you want.” This statement has never been more true than it is right now.
In his book, Creating Innovators, Harvard professor of education Tony Wagner posits that the biggest change is that “this generation comes in [to the workforce] wanting to have an immediate impact” (21); they do not care about bonuses or traditional business models. They are doers – they don’t plan to enter the workplace at the bottom; if they do, they tend to leave those jobs quickly and search for something more suited to their passions and which gives their work and their lives purpose. Wagner concludes, then, that the value of education for modern students lies in “hands-on projects where students have to solve a real world problem and demonstrate mastery…; learning to draw on academic content from multiple disciplines to solve a problem; learning to work in teams” (52).
Most of my lower income students require this more practical value of their education. For the lower performing students in my classrooms, there is a shared feeling of failure. And we’re not talking about the good kind of failure that pushes you to try again, try harder, the kind of failure that innovative companies like to see – “fail early and often.” This is the kind of failure that bears down on the soul of the students and stifles their creativity, their passion, and thus, their schooling. They don’t see themselves as co-creators of knowledge. They don’t understand how their own cultural currency fits into the schema of the traditional classroom. In “The Skin that We Speak”, Lisa Delpit relates a story about teaching students who loved hair braiding to think of math and science and literature in the context of what they love best. Her students were more engaged and empowered by learning because of this context – and they were learning the same stuff as everyone else, only they were probably learning it better because it had value to them and because they could connect one content area to the other.
Syreeta Gates, a young innovator presented in Tony Wagner’s book, says it best: “in high school, they tell you to work hard at what you’re bad at. But for me, it was so important to discover what I was good at and to find my passion…knowing your passion, you move with purpose, and when you move with purpose, everything makes sense” (125). If we consider that this statement about finding passion bringing purpose to our lives is true for all people, and especially those traditionally less successful in our current classroom culture, then it is clear that classroom structures and practices need to change. We need to give students the freedom to find their passions and to consequently move through their formative education with purpose.
As Dan Reed mentioned in his article “Those ‘great’ Montgomery County schools? They were once. Maybe they can be again”, students in the “W” schools typically score higher on state and other standardized tests, and they certainly have their parents to thank – not for taking school more seriously than other immigrant or low income parents (many parents of low income students whom I have encountered in my last 14 years of teaching care deeply about their child’s education and future success), but for introducing them to and immersing them in the culture of the traditional classroom, one Wagner points out in his book is modeled on Charles Eliot’s work from Harvard back in 1869 in which the teacher lectures and the students listen, take notes, and memorize the information for tests and essays.
This “sage on the stage” model of teaching has been accepted and practiced since Eliot’s time, and while it may have worked in his time, our slow decline in test scores and school performance is proving to us that his model is becoming increasingly obsolete. Yes, it’s easy to blame the parents for their student’s failures – they don’t take education seriously enough or they don’t give their children enough academic support at home; it sure does allow us teachers to feel better about all the hard work we’re doing in the classroom – and most teachers do work incredibly hard. But the truth is that it is our own failure to change our approach to teaching and learning that is failing our students.
The system as it exists makes the outlier teacher the enemy. The standardizing of curriculum and instruction has its roots in good intentions, and there are good reasons for keeping things the way they are. But in practice, all it really does is empower the traditional teacher and marginalize and stifle any teacher who wants to try something different and new. In my school, the leadership talks about giving students across classes a “shared experience” (the translation of which is that every teacher teaches the same thing the same way). The lecturer prevails, and the teacher who tries to give students authentic experience with text and with problem solving, and who allows for failure as a path to success, is pressured into conforming to the same model that has dominated our schools since Eliot’s time at Harvard – or is pushed out of teaching altogether. We have lost many innovative teachers to this pressure and the effect has been devastating to our students and to our entire school system.
In today’s world, students must be considered co-creators of knowledge. If we want all students to find success, we must empower all of them – underrepresented, immigrant, low-income, as well – to have a voice and to know that their voice has value. They have to know that we are listening, they have to follow their passion as a way to contextualize their learning and mold and shape their own purpose, and they have to be comfortable learning from their many inevitable failures on the way to that goal. That is what will change our schools and our future.
Just last Thursday, I was sitting in Rosh Hashanah services and my Rabbi addressed this issue of change. He said, “change is coming as we are not going to like it…the synagogue we inherited will not be the same as the one we leave to our children.” He mentioned changes that have happened through the history of Judaism, like taking down the wall between the men and the women, that some believe will send us straight to hell. But the truth is that if these changes hadn’t happened, the religion would be even smaller than it is today – it would be in even greater danger of dying out.
We can’t stop the change from happening; it’s inevitable. And we need to think the same way about our schools; if we want to reach the larger number of our students rather than just the traditionally-minded minority, then something has to change. Those invested in the traditions may not like the changes, they will no doubt write jeremiad upon jeremiad decrying the downfall of American education, but the truth is that the kids are changing and so school must also change to meet their needs. My thesis advisor at The College of William and Mary’s Graduate School of Education, John Moore, told us over and over: “you have to teach the students you have, not the students you want.” This statement has never been more true than it is right now.
In his book, Creating Innovators, Harvard professor of education Tony Wagner posits that the biggest change is that “this generation comes in [to the workforce] wanting to have an immediate impact” (21); they do not care about bonuses or traditional business models. They are doers – they don’t plan to enter the workplace at the bottom; if they do, they tend to leave those jobs quickly and search for something more suited to their passions and which gives their work and their lives purpose. Wagner concludes, then, that the value of education for modern students lies in “hands-on projects where students have to solve a real world problem and demonstrate mastery…; learning to draw on academic content from multiple disciplines to solve a problem; learning to work in teams” (52).
Most of my lower income students require this more practical value of their education. For the lower performing students in my classrooms, there is a shared feeling of failure. And we’re not talking about the good kind of failure that pushes you to try again, try harder, the kind of failure that innovative companies like to see – “fail early and often.” This is the kind of failure that bears down on the soul of the students and stifles their creativity, their passion, and thus, their schooling. They don’t see themselves as co-creators of knowledge. They don’t understand how their own cultural currency fits into the schema of the traditional classroom. In “The Skin that We Speak”, Lisa Delpit relates a story about teaching students who loved hair braiding to think of math and science and literature in the context of what they love best. Her students were more engaged and empowered by learning because of this context – and they were learning the same stuff as everyone else, only they were probably learning it better because it had value to them and because they could connect one content area to the other.
Syreeta Gates, a young innovator presented in Tony Wagner’s book, says it best: “in high school, they tell you to work hard at what you’re bad at. But for me, it was so important to discover what I was good at and to find my passion…knowing your passion, you move with purpose, and when you move with purpose, everything makes sense” (125). If we consider that this statement about finding passion bringing purpose to our lives is true for all people, and especially those traditionally less successful in our current classroom culture, then it is clear that classroom structures and practices need to change. We need to give students the freedom to find their passions and to consequently move through their formative education with purpose.
As Dan Reed mentioned in his article “Those ‘great’ Montgomery County schools? They were once. Maybe they can be again”, students in the “W” schools typically score higher on state and other standardized tests, and they certainly have their parents to thank – not for taking school more seriously than other immigrant or low income parents (many parents of low income students whom I have encountered in my last 14 years of teaching care deeply about their child’s education and future success), but for introducing them to and immersing them in the culture of the traditional classroom, one Wagner points out in his book is modeled on Charles Eliot’s work from Harvard back in 1869 in which the teacher lectures and the students listen, take notes, and memorize the information for tests and essays.
This “sage on the stage” model of teaching has been accepted and practiced since Eliot’s time, and while it may have worked in his time, our slow decline in test scores and school performance is proving to us that his model is becoming increasingly obsolete. Yes, it’s easy to blame the parents for their student’s failures – they don’t take education seriously enough or they don’t give their children enough academic support at home; it sure does allow us teachers to feel better about all the hard work we’re doing in the classroom – and most teachers do work incredibly hard. But the truth is that it is our own failure to change our approach to teaching and learning that is failing our students.
The system as it exists makes the outlier teacher the enemy. The standardizing of curriculum and instruction has its roots in good intentions, and there are good reasons for keeping things the way they are. But in practice, all it really does is empower the traditional teacher and marginalize and stifle any teacher who wants to try something different and new. In my school, the leadership talks about giving students across classes a “shared experience” (the translation of which is that every teacher teaches the same thing the same way). The lecturer prevails, and the teacher who tries to give students authentic experience with text and with problem solving, and who allows for failure as a path to success, is pressured into conforming to the same model that has dominated our schools since Eliot’s time at Harvard – or is pushed out of teaching altogether. We have lost many innovative teachers to this pressure and the effect has been devastating to our students and to our entire school system.
In today’s world, students must be considered co-creators of knowledge. If we want all students to find success, we must empower all of them – underrepresented, immigrant, low-income, as well – to have a voice and to know that their voice has value. They have to know that we are listening, they have to follow their passion as a way to contextualize their learning and mold and shape their own purpose, and they have to be comfortable learning from their many inevitable failures on the way to that goal. That is what will change our schools and our future.