Summer School
June 30th, 2008If I ever mention “summer school” again, remind me it’s a bad idea.
Well, summer school is not a bad idea, but working during the summer certainly is. Upward Bound is a great program, and I love the work I’m doing,¹ but I don’t think I’ve ever needed a vacation more than I have this summer. It’s the first year I can remember when I wasn’t upset that the school year was done, the first year I can recall I wasn’t bored by 11am the first day. From the conversations I’ve had with other teachers, I’m not alone; this was a rough year, and not for anything that occurred in the classroom.
It’s amazing how dejected and demoralized the people who work in the district are, and like everything, the toll will need to be paid. I’m just hoping that my peers are getting more rest than I am.
I’ve been running at 110% since the school year ended—the last day for teachers was Monday, and Tuesday I was at Keene State teaching SAT prep classes. The good news is that they’re great kids² who seem like they really want to learn the material. The bad news is that I hate what I’m teaching.
I’ve gotta be a little careful here. I’ve been truly blessed with my coworkers and peers in the Monadnock district. There hasn’t been one who’s made a complaint about anything I’ve written, and that includes (most especially) the various members of the administration. With no exceptions, I’ve never felt the faintest infringement on what I can and cannot write about; if anything there’s been support for the idea of writing, even if they’ve disagreed with something I’ve posted or something I’ve been flat-out wrong about.³
That’s the Monadnock district, and Upward Bound is not Monadnock. So I want to be clear that I have nothing but praise for a program which gets kids who otherwise would not be prepared ready for success in college and life—and does it in a way that focuses on things that are really important. Upward Bound is a great deal like MC2 (community meetings, community builders, a student governing board, close relationships with faculty—the list really does go on) and I’ve seen in a short week how much some of these students need and benefit from what is done there.
But I still hate teaching SAT Prep. It’s not Upward Bound’s fault, but I do really, really hate it—even though I’m loving every moment in the classroom and every moment with my students.
The galling part of it, the part that frustrates, is that I’m not teaching anything that will help these kids in the “real world.” I’m teaching them how to do better on a test—A test which we’ve allowed to become so important that we’ll force our kids to sit in classes for several weeks in order to do well on it. And we have to because we’ve said the test is important.
Yeah, if that sounds circular, it is.
Upward Bound is, in its own words, about providing:
fundamental support to participants in their preparation for college entrance. The program provides opportunities for participants to succeed in their precollege performance and ultimately in their higher education pursuits. Upward Bound serves: high school students from low-income families; high school students from families in which neither parent holds a bachelor’s degree…
So these are exactly the kids I want to be serving, and this is exactly the right program to do it—small classes, academic freedom, and close community relationships. It’s awesome, and it does the job it sets out to do.
But to get into college, this country has decided that a good SAT score is needed. So we invest millions of dollars every year to making sure that kids can do well on the SAT—and not by learning more and better math, or by becoming better writers,⁴ but by looking for the weak points in the test design and exploiting them.
Everyone hates this, by the way—colleges hate it, but they don’t have another way, and students hate it, but they’re suck in it. The only one who really wins out of this is the test manufacturer, and the companies that publish and sell millions of SAT guides every year. They love it, but not because it’s the best thing for kids, but because it’s the best thing for their bottom line.
So here I am, getting kids ready for college by teaching them how to take a test. It’s pretty pathetic when there are classes on how to take the test—though it’s also needed at this point. There are so many kids who would be wonderful on a college campus and have all the skills needed—but will have a tougher time getting there because of a number between 600 and 2400. So I applaud the program for offering it, and I’m loving the class (enough that I’m considering offering it after-school at MRHS this next school year) but I really wish that such classes were not needed.
It’s pretty horrifying that everyone knows this and we still don’t do anything about it. Humans have this habit of believing that because they survived something, someone else should able to as well. Sure, it was miserable and I hated it, but if I needed to do it, so do you!
It’s probably asking a bit much to change the world into what it ought to be—but it shouldn’t be. Demanding we do the right thing really ought to be easy, and far more respected than it is.
Ah well. Change starts small. I was talking to a group of kids about how we do math at MC2—no worksheets (unless the student wants them) no tests to determine understanding, and a portfolio of applications for the work they’re supposed to know. Every kid I was talking to was thrilled with the idea.
Now all we need to do is convince the adults that what was good enough for them is not good enough for their kids—in fact, it wasn’t good enough at all. That’s much harder to do, and it’s going to take getting rid of some rotting sacred beef—like a number on a test.
1 Well, that’s not quite true, but that’s the rest of the post. ↺
2 Though I’ve forgotten how quiet, meek, and submissive a “regular” classroom is. After you’ve seen kids who have grown used to using their voice it’s a little scary bumping into kids who haven’t yet been taught to do the same. ↺
3 Dr. Dassau actually pointed out a spot where I was mistaken in a post when we spoke last Monday, and did it with utmost civility—and with an invitation to feel free to talk more to make sure what goes out is perfectly true. Not only was it an exceptionally gentlemanly thing to do, it also helps with my fervent wish to share some of the truth of what’s going on in the district—seeing as we have so many willing to spread disinformation. But that’s another story.↺
4 Well, not quite true. I can no more resist sharing things to help make a kid a better writer than I can stop breathing—but that’s not really the point, is it? ↺
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Competency Based Education, Education, School Change
