Teach..the Children Well.....

“Teaching is the greatest act of optimism.”

---Colleen Wilcox

In June, my last child will graduate from high school. Between her and her two older brothers, there have probably been hundreds of teachers, school staff members, and other education professionals in their lives. Even the very few that were not my favorite people showed up and put the time in, every day. I always tried to recognize that, but lately, it’s become clear to me that I had no freaking idea how difficult being a teacher is.

Substitute teaching is now my newest gig. Recently, it involved spending a couple of days with kindergartners and let me tell you, that is hard labor. Their behavior was fine, no one was rude or mean. The classrooms were well-equipped, and other teachers and staff made sure to check in on me. The school day for a sub is only six hours long, but there isn’t one single second of it that isn’t busy. I literally came home and spent an hour on the couch, in a near-catatonic state, with Penny the pug glaring at me for having left her all alone for most of the day. Seriously, we are underestimating the power of six-year-old children. They could take down a squadron of tanks with their energy and determination.

In the younger classrooms, each child has a job. Line leader, messenger, snack helper, door holder, etc. Just try to get in front of a line leader, I dare you. It won’t end well for you. They guard that position for the precious few days they have it, and no one puts the line leader in a corner. Some teachers have even made the last spot in line a fun job, calling it the caboose and asking that student to shut off the lights or something. They take these roles very seriously, and it’s truly a gift to see them eager to help others and their classmates.

That’s another thing about younger kids, they haven’t figured out how to be mean yet. A child in kindergarten is all about being your friend, having a snack, playing on the swings, and reading fun books. They laugh, they skip rope, they smile at you. Sure, there are a few disputes, and some tears, but honestly, they are a great bunch of people, most of the time. They tell you the funniest stories. In one of my classes, I learned that a student’s father is 160 years old, and seven feet tall. One sweet new friend told me his mom is rich because she had forty dollars in her purse that she won on a scratch ticket. Another kid wanted to know my “real name” so I told him it was Wonder Woman but it had to be our secret. He wasn’t buying it, but he was nice about it.

A typical day in a kindergarten classroom requires efficient time management. It’s also full of short, adorable humans who can’t tie their shoes. Or tell time. Add to this mix, the fact that on any given day, there will be at least half a dozen children who are sneezing, coughing, and leaking snot all over everything. It’s not their fault, it’s just how childhood works. Parents, I beg of you, please stop complaining about sending in boxes of tissues, hand sanitizer, and antibacterial wipes. Yes, we should all reduce our consumption of paper products and plastic containers, but come on. Trust me, you want your child’s classroom to have enough of these items, otherwise, your kid won’t spend much time in school, they will be at home, sick as a dog, and you’ll spend all your time fetching them juice and freeze pops and binge-watching Paw Patrol.

To the many phenomenal teachers my children have had over the years, I now have newfound respect and admiration for all you’ve done, and continue to do. There is no mug, Yankee candle or apple-themed tacky gift that could even begin to be enough. You should all be making a million dollars a year, no joke. There is no way to say how very much you are appreciated by our family, but please know that you are. A few days of substitute teaching doesn’t make me an expert, but it did give me a real look at what we ask of our educators. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

Everyone is a Genius

“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

--- Attributed to Albert Einstein

Talent is a funny concept. We say someone is talented if they can do something well, but the fact is, everyone has some kind of talent. The iconic 80s movie, “The Breakfast Club” about a group of high schoolers from different social groups gathered together for Saturday morning detention, has a scene where they are all discussing particular talents they have, besides the typical labels of “brain” “athlete” and “popular.” It’s a key scene that is meant to show that everyone can do something unexpected or out of line with how they are perceived.

 

The problem, in the movie and life, is that there are general standards and benchmarks for education, jobs, and just about everything else and many times they aren’t necessarily on point. There is always some rubric, some set of criteria that has to be met to assess proficiency. While it’s true that all of us have specific skills, there can be a disconnect on what we are good at and that on which we are judged.

Let’s start with education. Naturally, we have to educate our children in several areas of study. While it used to be the “Three Rs” we have, thankfully, moved away from such a narrow focus. Not mention that two of the three don’t even begin with an R, so it’s a good thing we’ve updated the standards. I may not be a genius, but I can read and write. Arithmetic is another matter. 

Just recently I had to buy a disposable party tablecloth to cover a ping pong table that was going to hold snacks and hot dishes. A ping pong table is 9 feet by 5 feet. Table cloths come in sizes measured in inches. There I stood, in the dollar store, because nothing but the best will do for me, trying to figure out how many inches were in 9 feet. My times' tables were never a strong suit. There’s some trick you can do when you get to the nines table, it involves your fingers and adding them up to get an answer, but judging by the looks other customers were giving me, I had either just flipped off the cashier or thrown up a gang signal.

It’s almost as if my brain was whizzing along and just slammed right up against the front of my head, coming to a dead stop, flummoxed completely by simple math. On the same day though, I had come up with a written proposal on how to showcase a retail analytics software package and a plan to incorporate assisted selling demos in stores, to a cosmetic company looking to change up their brand image. So, while in my math class I might be the fish that can’t climb a tree, in other areas I’m putting words together that can maybe, in a small way, impact a financial bottom line.

I am not special in this way. We all have a mixture of talent and shortcomings. I went to college with someone who is now likely one of the top five people, nationally as well as internationally, in a very complex field. However, when studying poetry during my junior year? Not so much. I spent more than a few hours explaining Keats, Yeats and Blake, the symbolism used in their work, the meter of the words, the allegory and other elements and how their life experiences and the current events of their time were reflected in the imagery of the poems. At one point, he looked at me and said, “Ya, you’re just making that up. It’s a poem about some flowers he liked, that’s it.” He was, of course, horribly wrong, but it’s OK, he had other talents, as we all do.

While there have to be basic standards in education, and everyone, even if they just barely make it over the finish line with a passing grade, has to take math, we should be paying more attention to individual gifts and talents. What can you do that maybe someone else cannot? I’m in awe of people who understand the mechanics of anything. I had to seek tech support from the fine people at Green’s Hardware when I didn’t know how to reload my heavy-duty stapler. Changing a tire? Nope, it’s been explained and demonstrated to me several times, still can’t do it, nor can I jumpstart a car. However, if you need someone who can make a bed you can bounce a quarter off, complete with hospital corners, I’m your girl. Waitressing taught me how to get five plates of food and a tray of drinks out of a kitchen and to the correct table, and even to the correct diner, but I can’t cook anything more complicated than burgers, mac and cheese, and salad. We can all be a genius, even if it’s just in one small area. If there’s something you do well, do it! If you know someone who struggles with a certain task, help them out. Maybe less of us will feel stupid, and that’s always a win.

Homework Hassles

“Education is a natural process spontaneously carried out by the human individual, and is acquired not by listening to words but by experiences upon the environment."

---Dr. Maria Montessori

Growing up, my parents were as serious as a heart attack about school. My father was elected to his hometown school committee long before he ever had children. My mother chose to go to a private Catholic high school using her babysitting money because the public schools were, in her mind, "Not up to the task." She wanted more than sewing class and home ec. In private school, she was allowed to take biology and physics instead, and when she graduated, she joined the Navy as part of a flight crew. While neither of my parents went to college, they were two of the most educated people I've ever known.

 Naturally, when I had kids, I was committed to being the "Education Mom." I bought flashcards and worksheets the summer leading up to the first day of Kindergarten for my oldest. As a writer, I filled the house with books. The answer was never “No” if we were out and he wanted to buy a book. Not that math and science and history are not important subjects, but it mattered a great deal to me that my kids learn to love words. Reading, writing, and really, almost every other subject in school all starts with having the right words.  Looking back, I think I might have been overdoing it. This was pointed out to me when I went to my first back to school night and read the cute note that all the kids leave for their mom or dad on their tiny little desks. For what it's worth, it's overkill to take a red marker and make edits in the margins. Sorry, Andy.

Once my other two children came along, I relaxed. Schoolwork was (and still is) always a priority, but I didn't go all Tiger Mother about it. With my first, I would never have considered giving him an answer to a math problem. Mostly because once he got past third grade, I usually didn't know the answers, but still, homework was his job, not mine.

Now, with my third? Yes, OK, maybe back in elementary school I "helped" her with the spelling word sentences a few times. I specifically remember her thinking the word “underdog” referred to body parts that were on the underneath of our puppy, Oscar, the Wonder Pug. There was no way she was going to school having written, "Oscar likes to lick his underdog parts." That wasn’t something I wanted on her permanent record.

Homework has changed over the years; actually, it seems to change every school year. With each new teacher, new grade, and new school, the homework issue morphs into something different. The teachers I always respected the most and who were genuinely gifted educators, were the ones who didn’t make a big fat hairy deal over homework.  They looked at the child’s entire set of skills. What they did well, what they needed help with, and they went from there. 

If I had my way? Homework would cease to exist. While my background isn’t in child development or education, I’ve read and written about enough neuroscience studies to know a little bit about how the brain works, and pages of math facts, test prep worksheets, and arts and crafts do almost nothing to help children really learn. The dreaded "Group Projects" should be entirely done during school hours because then there is no 9:30 PM mad dash to Staples for poster board, note cards and at least one impossible to find item like green play dough. Then it becomes a Google search for "Playdough recipes" at ten o'clock because your kid forgot to tell you his part of the eco-system project was pond scum. Children are already too busy, and so are their families. Most homework, in my not-so-humble-opinion, is a waste of the precious hours kids have after school.

We need to take education seriously, but it doesn’t need to involve math homework that takes ten minutes to finish the equations and another hour to illustrate a cartoon story of Pete Protractor and the Pythagorean theorem. Why do students in some other countries have higher test scores than we do? Because they don’t color in math class, that’s why. 

Homework is here to stay, despite a lot of evidence that it doesn't improve the education our kids are getting. I just wish it could be more thought-provoking than the latest photocopies of MCAS "practice" tests and more relevant than whatever bits of glue and construction paper you can shove into a shoebox diorama. But what do I know, I got all the way through college without ever having to make a model of the Great Wall of China out of sugar cubes. It's a wonder I can think at all.