November202009
remember when I said, “at least there aren’t any fights?”
Well….. there were two today. Before 11am. And one on Wednesday afternoon. Its been building for a little while - its not like things were exactly serene and positive here. I didn’t bother finding out what they were about.
In addition, I sort of unloaded on the AP (assistant principal) this morning about the fact that our graduating class is going to have maybe 15 students in it at the rate we are going. She seemed… surprised. Which mostly had me wanting to scream “REALLY YOU DONT KNOW THIS IS GOING ON????” but instead I said something to the effect of “how can we ring the alarm?” Heard an annoucement for 11th graders to meet in the library right after the last class of today, to which a few students replied “Sorry, I don’t have time for that.”
The NYT wrote an article today about a small school succeeding despite the odds (thats usually how its portrayed) and closing the racial achievement gap : http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/20/education/20sfschool.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ref=education. The main point they came away with is that while different strategies can and should be tried, at the end of the day it is about “believing that kids can and will learn.” The article includes another quote that claims, “We know what needs to be done; we know how to do it” and yet “educators are notoriously bad at adopting others’ good ideas.” It seems from this kind of statement like every school has been hand delivered The Solution(s) and they just don’t want to implement them. Its like we/they HATE children or something. Placing this kind of blame seems like an echo of the same individualization thats placed on teachers in the national anti-teachers union drive as well. If THEY just put in the effort, our school problems would be solved.
What would be much more interesting are examples of success beyond saving that mathematically challenged 3rd grader. Like many of the other school spotlights that are done, this article was based on an elementary school. What if they’re EIGHTEEN? Where is the handbook for high school that solves problems at that level?
Tags: /The Reformers /graduation /small schools
