What I Saw, Who I Met and What You Should Know About My Back to School Tour
I am on a plane, heading home for the first weekend I’ve had off in six weeks. I’m not tired. Maybe it’s the six cups of coffee I had this morning, but I’m not tired. My mind is racing with events from the Road Trip I’ve been on. It’s a classic case of “Be Careful What You Ask For, You Might Just Get It”.
I told my colleagues at NEA that I wanted to have in my mind and in my heart the stories of real educators, real parents, real students who face today’s challenges and who are finding ways to succeed in spite of Racing to the Top of some testing food chain to avoid being eaten alive by the sharks of corporate factory school reform.
I didn’t want to memorize stats and bar graphs that prove that the pillars of factory school reform: Standardize, Privatize, De-Professionalize is a house of cards falling not so softly from the commanding heights of a deregulated market place of bad ideas for students. I wanted a conversation. I wanted to hear voices and see faces. I told my peeps, “If I’m NOT whining about being over-scheduled, you’re not doing your job.”
Oh, lord. So far I’ve been to Alaska, California, Florida, Texas, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan and New York. I’ve visited preschools and elementary schools and high schools and university campuses. I’ve spoken with teachers and custodians and college professors and mommies and principals and superintendents and school board members and gubernatorial candidates. My head is full. My heart is fuller.
In Fairbanks, Alaska I visited the Effie Kokrine Early College Charter School with a curriculum wrapped around Native Alaska culture, often taught by Native Alaska elders who had their own gathering room near the library – The goals of the school is for every student to go on to higher education, and the results are impressive. They’ve put paper-pencil tests in perspective, and are moving forward by focusing on culture and respect.
In Wisconsin, I visited Howe Elementary where I spoke with a group of kindergarten bilingual boys and girls. I asked,“Dime una palabra que describe tu maestra.” Tell me one word that describes your teacher.
They said, “Bonita – pretty”,
“Inteligente – Smart”, “
Divertida – fun”… then one student who couldn’t fit it into one word..
“Ella nos quiere – She loves us.”
We walked outside to see a garden the students had planted. The garden boxes had been built by a teacher who volunteered to write a grant for the materials and built it in his spare time. One family volunteered to come several times a week to water it and help the children weed it and watch the vegetables grow.
We were shown an odd old building in the middle of the parking lot that looked like it was for storage.
The teacher guiding us said, “You have to see what we’ve got in here.” The familiar smell hit you as soon as you entered. A dentist’s office. They had a dentist’s office. They partnered with an outside organization that offered free dental care to the families.There was another community organization that had a small office in the building that worked with pregnant women and did home visits to explain how these new moms could help prepare their infants to be ready for the school’s preschool in three years. They were amazing, positive women who saw the school as the foundation of their outreach. And the school saw them as their angels.
I visited Washington Irving Elementary in Oak Park, Illinois. The principal was so proudly walking us around the building that was over 100 years old, showing us how clean it was and how safe and healthy, and the custodian walked by. The principal said, “It looks like this because of him.” He looked confused, but I introduced myself and told him, “I’m here to see schools that shine.” And he smiled and told me that some mornings on snowy days, he has to come at 4am to get everything ready, then added, “But it’s worth it. The kids know that somebody cares about What I Saw, Who I Met and What You Should Know About My Back to School Tour - Lily's Blackboard: