If I had one educational reform...

The corollary to moving to a customer-service model of doing education is matching the pace of education to the child.

If I had only one educational reform, it would be to remove the expectation that a child should be graduated from high school by age 18 or even 19.  Let's go ahead and provide twelve years of education, but let's folks take it when they're ready.  Mostly this would mean letting a child start school at age 8 or 9, but this could also mean that we give them some time off when their cognitive development doesn't seem to be matching pace with their classmates, or when disruptions that life brings, like illness or a death in the family, can stall their studies for a year.

Notice I'm not saying we change one other thing about the way we do school.

  

This means we could say to the middle schooler who's just too cool for school to come back some year when s/he's ready to do the work.  I proposed this to a middle school administrator once, who asked me what would happen to all the kids on the street.  I told him that his job was to run his school, and that the parents should be looking after their kids.  I think this shows how far the state has become the parent, and how well we've prepared teachers to think they must be the ones to raise the child.

I see huge variation in the abilities of high schoolers.  We could slow down the pace of school for some high schoolers to half the course load for a year or two.  They would finish in 5 to 8 years, but we wouldn't have to dumb down the curriculum for them.

It might mean that a well-prepared child educated completely at home, or perhaps at the parents' expense at a private school, who shows up for college, passing entrance exams and placement tests, gets his or her college paid for all the way through their doctoral degree.

Here's what this might affect:

1.  Many kids fail in school not because their teachers or the schools aren't doing their jobs, but because their families are so disrupted that they can't do any homework at home.  When these kids come home they might have to take care of younger siblings while mom works, dad is absent, or perhaps one or both parents are involved in substance abuse.  If there's yelling and screaming going on at home, you really can't expect kids to get much homework done.  These kids need some educational space, perhaps the opportunity to get a job which would give them a little power over their lives and some other adults who would be happy to advocate for them.  Let them take half the course load as well, and you give them a chance to succeed.

2.  It could mean that schools could set entrance requirements, something that makes a whole lot more sense to me than exit requirements, like the state 'standardized' tests that were the result of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act.  Parents might actually have to help get their child ready to learn and participate in the child's education, rather than handing them off to the state to babysit while they go earn an income.  It would mean that we wouldn't be doing potty training in kindergarten. 

3.  If we start education later, it can also mean that we can get the job done in less time, as well as less expense for the state.  The child who is cognitively ready for school can do it quickly.  As proof, I offer the fact that we offer the most very basic remedial classes at our local community college, including levels of math that begin with adding and subtracting with whole numbers.  Two quarters later, the student is ready for high school algebra.  Hmm.  K-8 education finished in less than one year.  Why DO we want kids in school at age 5?

This reform wouldn't cost a single penny, but it would allow many more students to get a quality high school education, and would allow the best to achieve the highest levels.

The Industrial Manufacturing, Conveyor Belt model of modern education

What's wrong with most classroom settings, particularly public education settings, is that they use the industrial manufacturing, conveyor belt method of teaching, when they SHOULD be using the customer service model, as in What do you need?  How can we help you?

Kids learn to walk on the very day that God has ordained that will happen.  As a parent you can do absolutely nothing to hurry that day along.  For some, it's 8 or 9 months.  For others, it's 14 or 15 months.  The last is almost twice the age of the first.  Why in the world do we expect them all to be ready for school at 5 years of age?

If you're a parent reading this, and you have one of those kids for whom it makes your stomach knot to think of sending them to school for the first time next fall, then let me assure you as a college instructor:

We like them a little older than 18 when they get here, thank you very much!

That isn't to say an 18 year old can't be ready for college.  Some 16 year olds are ready.  But my observation is that the older students are much better students.  They've been out in the world, sometimes all around the world, and the experience they bring back to the classroom, the maturity, the insight, greatly enriches their education AND the education of the students around them.  And me.  Even in a math class.  Most 18 year olds need to go see the world before college.  Colleges love older students, too.

But perhaps you've read the brain studies that say the human brain is just finishing it's formation by 18-22 years of age, which is why an intensive learning setting is so good for them.  To which I ask, Why do you think they must be in a classroom to learn?

Perhaps you're afraid  your child won't be successful if they don't graduate by 18.  Kids aren't cars.  If a car falls off the assembly line, we can just junk it.  But an assembly line is the wrong model for a kid.  You can't junk a human being.  They require careful craftsmanship in the hands of a capable craftsman.  And would a car that has been twisted into an approximate shape after a manufacturing error be a good one to drive?  As a teacher of adults, I can tell you that I spend a lot of time trying to correct those errors.  It's sometimes easier if the student stepped off the conveyor belt before the damage was done, rather than "complete" high school with an imperfect understanding.

Let's go back to that 5 year old.  Frankly, I don't think 5-year olds ought to be in school anyway.  Kids need to be with their parents until they're about 8.  It doesn't hurt them to stay with their parents until they're about 21.  This notion that we must send them to school has totally overwhelmed the truth that as parents, we need to find the best instructor for that particular child, whoever that is!  Early on, it's US, the parents.  You'll know when you need to get help, because the child will be asking questions for which you don't have answers.

Don't worry about socializing them.  Kids don't have any trouble finding other kids with whom to socialize.  If you stay in control of their education,  you won't be needing to undo the curriculum of the bus that starts and ends their days, and you won't be having to undo much of the nonsense that passes for curriculum.  You can and should be supervising, and you can and should be welcome in any educational setting in which you place your child.

Most state constitutions in the US have a clause about the education of the young being of paramount importance.  And so we have legislated ourselves into forcing the state to do the job and make the decisions that belong to parents.  We tell ourselves that the state has done the job when the child graduates from high school by age 18, even though the truth of it is that almost 1/3 of students who start high school don't finish.  And that forces the state educators to define what a 9th grader looks like, and a 6th grader, and a kindergartner.  

So we plop them on the conveyor belt at age 5, roll this part flat there, screw this down here, push this in there, until they all look alike at the end.  We're so good at it that they all consent to wearing the oddest hat and the same color gown as all of their other conveyor belt companions, even looking as much alike as possible.  I don't know why we think we've made creative thinkers and capable problem solvers when they all look like that in the end.  Collective sheep, they are, drones for an industrial manufacturing, conveyor belt society.

I invite you to step off the conveyor belt.  If your child has already fallen off the conveyor belt, or if you were one who fell off, then rejoice!  You have an opportunity, and plenty of time as well, to step back, observe, figure out what to do next, and go do it.  Observe, observe, observe.  Be careful not to try to find another conveyor belt to solve the problem.  Maybe you need to let your child rest from the treadmill and not do anything but hike in the woods for a time, or dangle their feet in the lake.  As a long-time educator, I promise you, as long as you turn off the TV and throw out the computerized game machine and don't engage in substance abuse, that it will be ok!  More on what to do instead in a later blog.

I've got 50 year olds in my college classes.  So I assure you, there's plenty of time.

What qualifies me to write this blog?

My birth year is smack in the middle of the baby boomers, which means I started school just after Sputnik.  I grew up in a suburb of Seattle.  I remember pretty fondly of walking the four very short blocks to school for the first six years, then riding a bus for three terrible years at a Gr 7-9 junior high school, then again riding a bus for three decent years at a Gr. 10 - 12 high school.  

Did I get an education out of that?  No.  

Looking back, it was amazing to me how fast the educational desperation generated by Sputnik deteriorated into the liberal morass of the 60's and 70's.  An older sister, five years older than I, got Shakespeare during high school.  They were so happy that my group was reading that our teachers did not care what we read.  I remember asking for a list of materials required to be covered for the class, and was told there weren't any.  Hmm.

Being musically inclined, I started teaching private lessons about age 14 to pay for my own music lessons on piano, guitar, and voice.  That was my first foray into teaching.  I don't think I was very good at it, but I discovered I loved it.  I had a wonderful junior high band director during that time, and an excellent old-school math instructor.  It was the band director who made me think I wanted to do that for a living.

I attended two state universities in Washington state and took five years to graduate, partly because my Boeing engineer father, who was footing the bill, wanted me to NOT focus all of my efforts on music, partly because the math minor had course sequences taught only every other year, which delayed a course sequence I needed to be a music ed major, and partly because switching schools caused me to lose some credits toward graduation.  I tutored math some during this time, and enjoyed that.

I taught for two years in a school district of some 700 students, where I was the only music educator.  I saw every Gr 1-6 student once weekly for general music (get out your Girl Scout songs and have fun singing), and then did bands and choirs on the middle and high school level.  I was awful the first year, as every new teacher is.  The first year of teaching is kind of like doing puberty again - you're very awkward and do everything wrong.  I also moved three times, lost my mother to multiple diseases acquired in a bad blood transfusion (they weren't screening the blood supply when she got that transfusion about 1970), and was nearby when Mt. St. Helens erupted.  Regularly seeing students from every grade, from 1-12, was a huge part of my education about education.  I got a much better feel for what kids at different ages could do.  I also learned that what happened in my classroom wasn't all my fault.  Kids bring in baggage, like everyone else.

The second year followed a summer of continuing education required of educators, and I had a much better year.  I was hooked.

But after the second year, I married my college sweetheart and moved to where he had a business established.  It would be two more years before I had a classroom back again, but I worked in the music field and taught individuals and class guitar.  My next job was in a Gr 6 - 8 middle school teaching bands and choirs in one of those up-river communities in WA ("You know you're a redneck when...") and I did NOT belong there.  Frank Peretti wrote The Oath based on such a community.  I wanted kids to know something about music, just in case there might be some pursuing a career in that field.  The community's attitude was that they wanted their kids to have fun.  My job was a 1-year replacement contract, and I didn't get it back, thank God!

At the end of the summer, after a few interviews, I got a phone call from one of the island communities in WA.  Did I have a job yet?  No, so I went and interviewed the very next day.  I was actually hired on the 3rd day of school to do some K-6 general music, one class of algebra, beginning band, and a band that combined middle and high school.  The islands have a lot of artists in their population, and as an artist in an arts community, I could do no wrong.  I loved my job, and the community loved me, especially after I got a 10-member band to play at a football game.  Half the band was in the team on the field, which consisted of nearly every boy in the high school.  It was a great place and I have many fond memories, even if no one there remembers me.

That was also a one-year replacement contract for a teacher on leave, so my husband didn't plan to move his business to the island.  I rented a place on the island, he came to see me in the middle of the week, I took the ferry home on the weekends.  But I was hired for a second year, and my first child arrived in December.  When I went back to work in February, she went with me.  At first we continued our weekend commute, but we found a private pilot working to chalk up hours toward a commercial license, who would fly us back and forth for gas only.  Ten bucks each way, in 1986.  It was wonderful getting to work that way, but that was pretty much my paycheck.  There was a sort of community grandma on the island who was able to bring her to me at lunch.  It was lovely, but it was silly.

So the following year, I took a part-time job as the morning teacher at a small local Christian school, doing a classroom of 12 kids that contained grades 4-8.  We used the Abeka video school curriculum, which I thought was an excellent curriculum, but was akin to online education today.  More about that in a later blog, perhaps.

In November of 1987, my son was born, and for that year I was a stay-at-home mom, the only year I did not work at all.

The following fall I began substitute teaching in local area schools, and began getting regular work because I was a capable music teacher.  My sight-singing/reading skills had been well honed in college, and I could actually teach a lesson in the music classrooms.  I also substituted math, and most other subject areas, and that was a huge contribution to my education about education.  I learned about teachers, how hard they work, which ones I learn from when they're not even in the room.

My kids were 3 and 5 when I started work on my MA Ed, also at the local state university.  More on that later.  I had a graduate assistantship to do that, so I taught a class on education to pre-service educators as part of that assistantship.  Some of them were Master's-level students, acquiring their teaching certificate while getting their MA Ed.  

My kids did some pre-school while I was working on that degree, and to help pay for that, I did some work at the pre-school, too.

I began hanging out in my kids' classrooms when they began school.  I brought my guitar one day, kinda pushed my way into doing a half-hour of singing, made sure that the songs I brought in also supported what the teachers were trying to teach, and was welcome every week for that half hour.  I spent perhaps 4 more hours per week, doing whatever was handy to help those educators.  I knew how to run a photocopier, organize a bookshelf, supplement a lesson, and help kids with their lessons.

I tutored math at a local tutoring agency, using a model that would greatly influence my thinking about the way we teach math and science.  More blog on that later, as well.

Then I applied for a part-time job actually in the same building with my kids, as the music teacher for that building.  When it was awarded to an English major with good  piano and vocal skills, I decided that was my last effort at a K-12 job in public education.

That same fall, 1994, some homeschoolers who had seen me at the math tutoring agency requested I do some math classes for their kids.  Since the music job in my kids building didn't come through, we began doing that.  Twelve kids to start, three levels of math.  Twice-weekly classes, for 75 minutes each meeting.  I really began to learn about education.  I now administrate that group, and we use 13 instructors to teach more than 40 classes to about 125 students.  We support home-schooling, and usually pick up the kids where their parents are feeling less competent about the curriculum.  Lots more blog on that later.

I was also hired to teach math at the local community college, and I serve as adjunct math faculty there.  I do NOT want to be full time there.  I want to continue to work with my homeschoolers.  There are many good things about working at our community college.  It is the institute of second chances, and I love that part about community colleges.

So, I've taught full time and part-time, and I've substitute-taught.

I've taught pre-K to university level.

I've taught privately and in classrooms.

I've been in public and private, secular schools.

I've been the teacher and the administrator, at the same time.

The only thing I haven't done is be a single parent while trying to teach.  God help those of you in that situation.

My two children are grown now, both out of the house.  My daughter finished college at age 21 with a degree in biology, and works as a veterinary technician while preparing to do her own veterinary program some day.  My son is not yet academic material, but is finishing a tech-college program in a trade, is gainfully employed and having a lot of fun with life.  He may yet go do something in design or engineering, but has more possibilities in front of him than he can possibly pursue.

I have enough observations about how we do school to fill up this blog.  I'll get to them as I get angry enough to post.

Future topics:

The industrial manufacturing model of education.

Technology in education.

If I had one educational reform...

Other reforms I would implement.

You don't need a diploma to go to college.

Visual and auditory learners.

Arts in education.

Teaching in a moral vacuum.

Who should run schools?

Parent directed education.

Homeschoolers at the top and bottom.

More as I think about it.