Our members: Powerful educators thinking outside the tiny testing box
I’m still overwhelmed with tears, with pride, with hope… ok, now you’ll think I’m just exaggerating. I couldn’t. This is real. This is the way forward. I have seen the future of humanity, and it makes me smile.
Thomas Lentz, Amanda McCallister and Cristina Vega are teachers at Ridge Community High School in Polk County, Florida.
They are union leaders. They are education leaders. They are creative to their core. They understand the power produced when you give leadership and authority to people – whether those are big people or little people. They understand the energy produced from knowing you’re responsible for making decisions that will impact something important.
They understand the very human thing produced when people come together in a democracy to propose and plan and debate and decide what to do. Apathy falls away. New ideas are generated. You have a sense of purpose and become driven to succeed.
They thought of their own students who were at risk at becoming lost in an inhuman, irrelevant bureaucracy that only counted test score points. These powerful educators began to think outside that tiny testing box.
What if the students at their school could feel the power to lead? What if their students could propose, consider and decide important things in their lives – things that mattered to their education; to their community; to their world? What if their students could clearly see the purpose of a whole and human education and the power in their how hands to achieve what they wanted to achieve?
Not much in the lives of these students appeared to be in their own hands. Ridge Community High School is made up of a diverse population of white, African-American and Latino students. Many of their families face financial struggles and immigration issues. It’s not uncommon that in schools like Ridge Community, demographics become destiny.
Parents, who had little opportunity to learn when they were children, work hard at low-wage jobs with no benefits. Most have not attended college and are unsure how to help their own children navigate a system where you begin in jr. high school preparing for a pipeline of classes that will result in the right credits needed for a college Our members: Powerful educators thinking outside the tiny testing box - Lily's Blackboard: