Chance Must Make a Decision

What is most important? Rich learning experiences or high test scores?

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Episode 37 (of 49 episodes)

about 2 minutes of reading

From: Chance
Story about Rodney…and Roberta
To: Kerry sent - Gmail at 9:01 PM

Hi Kerry—

Feel free to say whatever you want to my superintendent…….It is good for the people at the top to hear what is going on in the classrooms.

True story:

I recently met Rodney at an event. Many years ago, he was a very talented fourth grade teacher at my school. Rodney was a legend, and I was happy to finally meet him. His unusual ability to connect with 9 & 10 year-olds made him extremely popular. After spending a year with him, his kids were always successful students in just about any educational environment.

Rodney had a way with his students. In his class, they learned to have confidence in themselves. That confidence was transferred to every learning situation in the years after having Rodney for a teacher.

After state mandated testing was instituted, he asked to be transferred to a kindergarten class because he did not want his style of teaching and learning in the classroom to be placed under the scrutiny of standardized test scores.

Everyone was a loser in that story.

Rodney did not enjoy his work with five-year-olds as much as he loved teaching 4th graders. He only lasted a few more years in education. He took a job in a high-tech company. He appreciates not having to compromise his integrity and values on a daily basis.

When I met him at that school event and heard his story, I asked him if we could get together. I asked him if he could help me with this enormous professional decision that is facing me.

Every day I wonder if I should continue to teach in public school, or if I should compromise my values and go to work for Rich? I would earn more money. I could possibly buy a house and replace my old beat-up old car. I would not feel like I was always pushing a boulder up a steep hill.

When we got together, Rodney said he misses the kids and the classroom every single day. He said curiosity is missing in his job. He earns four times the amount of money he earned as a teacher.

He told me that working with rambunctious ten-year-olds was the best job he ever had.

Rodney told me about a young man who had been in one of his fourth-grade classes. That young man was selected as a postdoc in a highly prestigious cardiovascular medicine position at Stanford. When he was in the fourth grade, he first got interested in the heart and the body. It was Rodney who allowed to pursue his passions and intense interest about how blood circulates through the body. He says that because of Rodney, he decided to study the heart for the rest of his life.

I asked Rodney what he thought about public school and democracy. He said that is the hardest part for him. He is not against anyone who does not share his political values, but he does think that voting citizens need to learn about compromise, consensus, communication, and critical thinking when they are in elementary school. He worries that the young kids who are not exposed to democratic principles in their educational experience are the people who are the most vulnerable to believing in conspiracies and not believing in science.

I guess we are all susceptible to being influenced by what we hear in social media? Doesn’t that mean we all need to learn about propaganda and emotional manipulation? The people who want to exploit us hope we do not learn those lessons.

Do you think that people who are taught to question authoritarian structures and are comfortable researching both sides of every question are more likely to understand what government of and by the people actually means?

I am confident that if the whole time a child is in school, all he or she hears is that they are not ‘good enough’ because of their low grades and marginal test scores, then that person is less likely to become a life-long learner. Maybe school actually teaches that child to rebel against government and the rule of law. Just imagine going all of the way through school feeling like a failure because your test scores were not as high as other kids.

Here is another story:

Just last year, another teacher at my school, Roberta, left teaching to join the local police force because she was sick and tired of having no power or authority or control in what she taught and how she interacted with kids… or how she organized her classroom…and she hated being judged and evaluated every year on the scores her students earned on standardized tests. She simply wanted some power in her work. Now she carries a gun.

Nothing is honest or fair about test scores that have so much power over education these days.

Chance