Children at kindergarten readiness night. Columbia, PA. May 2012
At the first school district I ever covered as a reporter, the first half hour of board meetings was spent recognizing Students of the Month. For each student, a favorite teacher or administrator read a page about their character, accomplishments and passions. Photos were taken of the students, their families were applauded by the board, and then the packed room would empty out. A couple of teachers, one resident/concerned taxpayer, and I were the few who stuck around to observe the regular business of running a school district.
Here’s the thing, though. Supporting students isthe business of schools, and the Students of the Month practice (which, admittedly, I found somewhat tedious as a freelancer who was paid the same amount whether the meeting lasted one hour or four) was just one indication that the school board members were there because of their commitment to educating children.
Another example: A friend of mine works with that school board’s president, who recently won a civic leadership award. According to my friend, when he was asked to submit a photo and bio for the award, the board president’s immediate response was to contact the elementary school principal so that the photo could be taken with the kids. This didn’t surprise me, because “It’s all about the kids” was a phrase he’d said to me in many an interview. A stock answer? Perhaps. But for him it wasn’t just a PR line—he meant it, and that always showed up in his and the rest of the board’s actions.
I hear a lot about “responsibility to the taxpayers” at school board meetings these days, but “It’s all about the kids” is a sentiment I haven’t heard once since I stopped covering Columbia last year.
I’m not a tech geek by any means. I couldn’t build a computer or code a website, but if a friend or co-worker has a tech. question I’m usually capable of answering it. The secret is not that I have all the answers, but that I know it’s possible to find them online. For example, a few months ago, an organization I work with wanted to upload a news clip about one of their events to their website. All they had was the news station’s produced DVD, not a disc with the raw video files. The director asked me if I could help them. I said sure, despite not having a clue how to do it. I took the disc home, spent an hour or so searching and downloading the right program to rip the files from the DVD and convert them to a usable format, and voilà, within day I had a new user-friendly disc to return to the organization.
It’s not news that the Internet has made gads of libraries worth of information accessible at our fingertips, but how many of us use it for more than just absorbing information — reading the news or blogs, finding recipes, figuring what else that actress has appeared in, etc.? I used to use the Internet mostly in these ways, and then I spent six months teaching digital storytelling in India. My co-fellow and I taught photography and video skills to more than 60 high school students with no in-country organizational support, let alone tech support. That’s when I learned to resolve tech problems (which we had plenty of!) through relentless Google searches.
Chances are if you’re having a problem or if you simply want to learn how to do something new, someone else has written or made a video about it online. The Photoshop techniques I deploy to edit portraits, for instance, I learned from YouTube tutorials. Yes, the picking-and-choosing specific skills that I need in the moment makes my knowledge of the program a bit like Swiss cheese, but it sure beats spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars to take a Photoshop course. And teaching yourself, while a slower and more frustrating process at times, can be a big confidence booster.
What about you? What problems do you solve using the Internet? Is there a skill you want to learn but aren’t sure where to start your search? Let me know in the comments!
Me and some students at Andhra Pradesh Residential School in Nalgonda, India. Photo taken by another student. December 2010
Five children with nose bleeds, others with nausea, frequent bathroom trips, one student pounding on the desk and shouting “I’m going to fail!”, another sleeping refusing to take the test…This is the scene a local elementary school principal painted of a standardized test week in his report to the school board last month.
I was surprised that the principal shared these details at a public meeting. Despite the power of the high-stakes testing model in the U.S., I believe most people think we’re testing kids too much. No one sees the effects more than those who work in schools, but many teachers are scared to say that publicly. And administrators…they not only can’t say it publicly, they actually have to espouse the values of the system (in order to motivate teachers and students to participate in it and thereby perpetuate it). So even in this vivid scene described by the principal, the message was not a clear condemnation of the testing culture and how it hinders a learning culture, but a foreshadowing of possible low scores and a pre-emptive explanation.
I don’t know what that principal’s opinions on high-stakes tests are. Very few who are critical would be willing to say so to their local reporter. And I have to assume there are plenty of administrators who have either drunk the kool-aid about corporate education reform or just aren’t prone to questioning orders. You can tell which ones they are from the slideshows they bring the board, full of charts and jargon comparing every three month interval of student scores in math and reading.
But even those administrators are compelled to admit that the mandate of No Child Left Behind — that 100% percent of students reaching math and reading proficiency by 2014 isn’t going to happen. (I’m not making assumptions here, I’ve heard them say it.) But no one talks about the obvious next question…so then what? So far, the most extreme consequences faced by schools that consistently missed required test targets have been closure, total administrative overhaul or take-over by charter school companies. What will happen in a year, when all of America’s schools are unable to make the required goals?
In his most recent TED talk on education, Sir Ken Robinson (see video below) says that tests aren’t inherently bad, which is true. Assessment in its most basic definition is a way of measuring outcomes. We could envision many ways of assessing learning, with the multiple choice and essay tests that dominate schools now being just one of them. But there’s something wrong when test results become the goal, instead of the learning goal being what’s measured by test results. There’s something wrong when tests become so important that other subjects and skills are excluded from school. And there’s something wrong when the way teachers teach is driven by whatever can earn massive corporations more money. Robinson nailed it about the flaws of the testing culture in his talk, but he neglected this root cause that is driving education policy.
I navigate a swampland when it comes to public education. As a local reporter, I must wade through the muck and tell a story about what’s happening in schools today. Too often, I see articles that just report the test scores and accompanying labels given to schools. The labels are jargon like “Corrective Action I” but mostly get read by the public and “failing” or “not failing.” These articles are like reporting that schools are sinking without pointing out that they’re built on a swamp in the first place. I see the swamp. And I see pockets of resistance— teachers boycotting tests, students walking out—but none of these actions are happening here. So in my own stories, I try to describe the swamp and the conditions that create it, but without local sources to call a swamp a swamp, eventually I hit that journalistic wall of “editorializing.” And I have no idea whether people reading my articles even absorb the context I’m trying to provide.
The author of today’s poems, Jake, is the one who inspired this week of haiku, as he’s been spinning dozens of these succinct pieces in recent weeks. Here are a couple of my favorites.
