My heart is so heavy this evening. Although I am retired from teaching, I keep in close touch with former colleagues and friends from my teaching days. What I am hearing about education and the way it is being forced to be taught, is breaking my heart. What I hear about the joy being gone from teaching is breaking my heart. Seeing wonderful, creative teachers who are so burnt out, they are leaving teaching in droves - that breaks my heart.
I'd like to blame it all on Covid, but I just can't. Covid really did a number on our schools. But the other things that are happening in education have nothing to do with Covid.
My great grandson - 4 - got sick at school the other day, and mom had to go get him. When he realized he had to go home, he burst into tears - sobbing that he wanted to stay in school. He cried all over again after their doctor appointment because he thought he'd get to go back to school. He LOVES school. My questions - wouldn't it be a wonderful thing if students loved school so much - they'd cry if they had to miss? I remember one of my students in who was absent from school one day. Her mom was a teacher in our building, came down to tell me she was sick. The kicker? Her daughter was livid that she had to miss school because she had so much fun and joy in my class. That's a fifth grader - who loved school so much that she was upset that she couldn't be at school.
So my question is ------ where did the joy go that made kids love to be in school, to learn and explore, to be stimulated with great discussions, to grab a stuffed animal and lie on the floor for 30 minutes of glorious quiet reading, to explore science with real equipment and results?
The joy was taken away little by little by people in power who thought that one person had the right to tell hundreds of teachers (with college teaching degrees) how to teach, what to teach, when to teach, how long to teach and to read lessons out of a teacher's manual. The joy left when the person/s in power began implementing so many tests, that actual active teaching dropped by at least 75%. Tests after tests after tests - it seems like that's the only thing kids do on Friday - take tests.
The joy left when standardized tests became the marker for an entire year of teaching. I've had kids sob when they saw what their test grade was on the end of year standardized test. Great kids who made high grades all year were traumatized when their hard work boiled down to a standardized test score. Kids who were not great test takers but were very successful in class - saw the effort they made all year become worthless according to THE TEST. I remember the 60 plus hours weekly, evenings and weekends that I had to put in so my students would be stimulated and love learning. THEN all that work was compressed into ONE standardized test grade.
Teachers go to college to learn how to teach. They KNOW their students. They KNOW when students need a break. They KNOW how to make lessons interesting and fun. They KNOW how to guide a discussion to the point that their students are at the top of Blooms Taxonomy. But teachers aren't allowed any autonomy anymore. That joy in learning sailed right out the door with rigid rules and exact time limits for teaching subjects, AND for the hundreds of tests the students had to endure in a school year.
We have a real chance to change education for the better at the polls in November. If there are not changes made in Oklahoma, will the last teacher in OK turn out the light in their classroom when they leave the building. 😢
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