Touring the Mediocrity Factory, Part 2
Follow-up to “Touring the Mediocrity Factory (meeting with principal of rich suburban public school)“…
I went to a parent-teacher organization (“PTO,” an upgrade from the former “PTA”?) meeting at the Happy Valley public school (“Happy Valley” is a rich suburb west of Boston).
Two principals spoke. One, a former performing arts teacher, handles K-4 and the other grades 5-8. The headline topic was a “school improvement plan.” I had been told that it would be about academics, so I showed up to learn what plans were being made to prepare our kids for a globalized world. Would there be a shift to topic-based learning, for example, as apparently is happening in Finland? (Washington Post)
The principals opened by saying that their #1 goal is “behavioral and emotional. We’ve spent more than a year getting to Happy Valley Cares Values.” This is apparently analogous to a corporate mission statement. The principals explained that lessons will be taught in every class using the Values, especially about conflict. The K-4 principal added: “Nobody wants it and yet it is part of our everyday life. I feel like if you’re bad that means you’re not good and that’s not true.” Now that the values statement (not to be confused with a mission statement) was drafted, could the principals move on to academics? The answer was “no” because the values statement was budgeted as a 2-year project, but really should be “a 5-year cycle” (not to be confused with a 5 year plan).
The second topic concerned what the principals characterized as the teachers “taking a tremendous risk.” At a previous coffee with the principal, I had learned that a teacher essentially cannot be fired even if he or she does almost nothing. Was the “tremendous risk” then something like hanging out the side of a helicopter hovering-out-of-ground-effect to maintain a high-voltage power line? The “tremendous risk” and “huge undertaking” turned out to be that, twice per week, students, possibly from different classes within the same grade, would be organized into groups by ability and then taught, e.g., math, for 45 minutes.
Was this the end of risk-taking by teachers? The principal for grades 5-8 said that it was not due to the issue of kids not being sufficiently sheltered from news and cultural events (e.g., the Trumpenfuhrer addressing the Reichstag). It wasn’t explained what teachers were going to do about this, but we were assured that it was “really really hard.
Kids stressed out? The good news is that there is a “wellness teacher”.
The principals explained that they “want to look at homework in a 360-degree way. This is work we are going to take on as a school council (parents and teachers/admins together).” It turned out that a full 360-degree view wasn’t necessary because there was a single overriding factor of concern to the K-4 principal: the time homework prep and grading would take for teachers. This was consistent with a parent’s point that, while the middle school teachers said that students should do homework, they don’t bother to check even whether or not it is turned in: “they let their assistants check twice per week.” Her child was inferring from this that homework was not in fact important.
One parent asked “how much do you want us helping them?” The Grades 5-8 school principal said that she never did homework with her child. “I just pay [the town after-school program]. I don’t want to get anywhere near homework.” It wasn’t explained why she parks the kids in the after-school program if her job is substantially over when school gets out. But perhaps the principal must work longer hours than teachers? A parent volunteered that the $15/hour young people who staff the after-school program can’t really help kids with homework. The principal responded with “that’s what I am finding out.”
It was the same answer when a parent asked about a “flipped classroom.” The principals said that it was working well for one teacher but nobody else has adopted it because it is too much work (for the teacher). It was’t explained what the extra work was. Do teachers have to record themselves giving a lecture? Or do they just have to assemble a playlist of lectures for students to watch and then discuss in class?
A parent from Sweden suggested that comparative religion be taught. The principals said that the Massachusetts curriculum mandates this starting in 7th grade. The Grades 5-8 principal said that she was worried about preserving family values if the school teaches something. A mother then suggested that “we can teach tolerance in second grade more than substance of religion.” (maybe borrow curriculum from the Cambridge Public Schools where they have a full-time diversity and tolerance program that the Tsarnaev brothers attended?) It turns out that we can’t, actually, because “sadly these days education is driven by accountability,” responded the Grades 5-8 principal.
A mother asked if parents could sit in on some of the math lectures to learn how problems are supposed to be solve. She offered that her husband was completely useless. The K-4 principal sympathized that she is “a recovered math phobe” but expressed pride that she was recently able to help a second grader with a math problem (see The Smartest Kids in the World regarding a Calculus-free guy who “figured the best way to become a [football] coach was to become a [high school] math teacher.”)
The above meeting was held the day after the Trumpenfuhrer’s election and the PTO head closed it by saying that “the last 24 hours show that conversation is more important than ever.”
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