Education Day! While I still put up the good fight for the City of Rochester, the fact is my wife and I moved out of it last year. Reason number one had to do with the random gunshots a few doors down one night while we were asleep. The second reason was our first daughter was rapidly approaching kindergarten and I didn't want to send her to the City schools. Hypocritical? Sure, but it is what it is.
The day started off early with the class meeting at East High School on Main Street. Aside from going through the metal detectors on the way in, East reminded me of my own high school in Philly. Kind of dilapidated, with no warmth to make you feel welcome. "Institutional" is the best word I can think of to describe the feeling of the place. The class met in the library, which was closed to students for the day. At first I was a little concerned with this, but I did take note of the number of times someone tried to come in. I'll have to assume the single digit numbers were due to the student body being told in advance that the library was closed rather than the lack of interest in using it.
Dr. Rick DeJesus, VP of Student Affairs at St. John Fischer College opened the day by reminding us that solving the educational problem in our country is one that's been tackled, dropped, picked up, and dropped again by a myriad of people with no immediate success in sight. But, that we were to keep an open mind through our day and to take in all we could. He was followed by Patty Malieri, Chief of Staff for the RCSD. Instead of a talk, she lead a brief Q&A session. The Qs were fairly limited as I believe we were all feeling the need to move on to the next part of the day, school visits!
I should stop here and admit I have a bit of a bias for the first school we went to, The Harley School. My wife and I attended an open house there a few years back and fell in love with the place. As an artist, my wife was blown away by the facilities that were available to all students to take advantage of. As an engineer, I of course looked at the track record numbers of student success. :) We've discussed sending our daughters there, but alas the cost is far too prohibitive. Especially when you have to double it!
Our whole visit can best be summed up with two sentences: "WOW!" A short sentence, but it was heard a lot from those of us in the class. And, "every child should have the opportunity to attend a school like this". The latter was one of my classmates before even entered the building. Simply walking up to it, listening to the birds sing in the fields and the quiet ambiance of the grounds, is a visceral event. The school is housed in a former church, and the impression I had walking up to it during the day was "Cathedral of Education".
Inside, we were met by the Director of Admissions, Ivone Foisy and an elf. No, not a real elf. He was one of the teachers there. This was the day before their holiday break, and the school was allowing both students and staff to blow off some steam by taking it easy. Our elf and Ms. Foisy took us on a magical tour of their facility and it was nothing less than spectacular. The students could be found milling about the halls or in classrooms watching holiday movies, and the teachers and staff were all working actively to ensure the kids had a good day.
My favorite moments? First would be the art room. I imagined my daughters in there and the marvelous creations that would come from them. It's a beautiful two-story room, filled with supplies and workstations and...everything! They even have a glass blowing facility. Second to this would be encountering their "reading nook". Yes, they have a reading nook for the kids. It's just outside one of the libraries (ONE of the librarIES) tucked quietly under a set of stairs.
They have a reading nook.
Our tour actually ran quite a bit long as there's just so much to see and so many great programs and features to learn about. The pride the staff have in their school comes across clearly, and they spent a lot of time showing every amazing nook (not really continuing on that last paragraph there) and cranny. As such we had to be dragged from Harley to move on to our second school visit.
This one was to James Monroe High School on Alexander. I wrote four paragraphs on Harley. Don't expect as much gush here. After driving around the block a couple of times to find a place to park (apparently, there's only one spot dedicated for parents and other visitors), we found a spot on the street a few blocks away. On the way in, I happened to notice the nice playground area outside the school. I thought to myself how it was on par with the one I saw outside the Harley, and so I had hope. That's when one of my classmates decided to point it out and the incongruity of it being at a high school. I'll let you ponder for a moment.
Just like at East, we were greeted by a guard sitting next to a metal detector leading into the school. The principal apparently hadn't told anyone we were coming, so we had a few moments of confused reactions from staff until the principal came out to wrangle us. And, wrangle he did. After unchaining the doors, he lead us into the auditorium where he told us all about his accomplishments and the good work he had done at his previous school to turn it around. He told us about his childhood and growing up in, I believe, Brooklyn. We also got a good overview of how they came to find out the two now-racist murals on either side of the stage have been appraised at over a million dollars. Nice!
But, you say, what about the school itself? Sad to say, he never took us out of the auditorium. I don't know if it was a time constraint or not, but to be honest it felt more like he really didn't want to show us around. He did talk a little about the issues he faced there, such as the lack of parking. There was also the revelation that they have a large Latino community, and for whatever reason a large population of Latino girls who were pregnant or already had children. Thus, the playground. It was for the day care.
Having high notes to end our tours with, we headed back to East High for lunch and debrief where we learned the other teams experiences mirrored our own: the private and charter schools were doing well, the public ones, not so much. This wasn't a universal, but an obvious disparity.
After our debrief session, we got to participate in a panel discussion with students from all around the city. This was a VERY enlightening discussion, and it could again be summed up by describing two of the students. First was Denzel, a very (and justifiably) angry but extremely eloquent young man who related the horrors of attending Franklin High School. He waxed for quite some time, well past his allocated time, about what he faces. He described the uncaring attitude of staff and faculty who have basically labeled him a troubled student and locked him away in a cell disguised as a classroom. There, he's required to sit quietly and read the material he's given and nothing more. There's no challenge, no interest, no desire to help this young man succeed. When he was finished, I looked around the room in hopes that some higher-up from the RCSD had arrived early so I could challenge them to help this young man. No one deserves the life he's been dealt.
The second student was a young lady from a local Catholic, all-girls school. I apologize I didn't write her name down, but having spent the early part of my own academic career at a Catholic school she was fairly typical of students at private schools. I don't mean that in a bad way, she certainly was very smart and able to hold her own in the discussion. No, when it comes to this student, she essentially put the period on the sentence "every child should have the opportunity to attend a school like this". At one point in the discussions, Denzel was relating more of his trials and tribulations when she cut in and said "I don't understand how this can be? I mean, the biggest issue we have to contend with in my school right now is they just banned yoga pants!"
She stopped there, but it was obvious from her face that she got it. We all did. In fact, that's where I'm going to end the description of the day and take us right into the opinionated portion of the article. There were two more panel discussions afterward, but the disparity in our educational system revealed by The Crisis of the Yoga Pants really speaks more to the problem than anything else. Some people are given the opportunity to better themselves and prepare them for success. Others are dumped in a room and told to keep quiet until graduation. If they happen to learn anything along the way, it's most likely by accident. The dividing line seems to be drawn in right around the same spot as a person's net worth.
I should clarify that my intent is not to place all of the blame on the RCSD, either. Despite my getting into a brief shouting match with one of the superintendents over misunderstanding one of my questions, I fully understand what they're up against. As she pointed out, the RCSD has to pay for busing kids around the area. They also have to take in every student, which includes those with mental disabilities and problems, and care for and attempt to educate those students. They face a diminishing budget and a populace that can't or won't take the time to fully understand the issues. That's of course assuming they're even able to get access to the right information on which to base a decision. From what I gathered, it appears the school district is TRYING, but are hindered by costs and political crap.
I left this program day with my world view intact. However, I did find the scope of the issue to be so much larger than it was before today. You see, as a parent, I've got my own opinions on education. My view is the education of my children rests 100% on me (well, and my wife, of course). The teachers and schools are there to set the curricula and schedule. That's it. If my children, for example, somehow made it to the sixth grade without being able to read...the typical consensus is to blame the teachers and the school system that failed them. That may be politically expedient, but it really would have been ME that failed them. It's MY responsibility to ensure they're learning what they're supposed to. It's my responsibility for them to know what they're supposed to know when they're done with school.
But, politicians can't get on TV and say "we can't fix the education system until parents start taking the responsibility on themselves", can they? Of course not! Can you imagine the outrage that would erupt from a statement like that? So, the responsibility for the failure falls on the teachers and system. Perhaps if we tweaked this, pulled here, moved this over there and...oh, yeah, let's REALLY vilify the teachers! Hell, they have a union, that's pretty much the mark of Satan right there!
This isn't a "responsibility" thing, so all you neo-libertarians in the audience can stop jumping for joy. Let's face it, if you're a parent who is making minimum wage and working three jobs to put food on the table how are you supposed to spend hours every night checking your children's homework? Frankly, most people in that position are probably lacking in the educational experience themselves to ensure the kid's gotten it right. In other words, until we "fix" the poverty problem in our country the education issues aren't going anywhere. Study after study has confirmed that 80% of what determines a child's academic success is the level of parental involvement. With that 80% not being brought to the table, how do you make up the difference with the remaining 20%?
It's nice that we won't leave any child behind, despite the fact that legislation like that only ensures more do. And, those that do succeed don't know squat compared to those who were educated prior to its passing. This doesn't mean, though, that we ignore the obvious and glaring short-comings of our education system, but it means we start having a meaningful dialog that actually addresses the issues instead of what's politically expedient to blame.
It also means we leave the damn teachers alone until we've solved at least SOME of the actual issues that are out there. Good teachers can't thrive in an system that prevents them from educating their students. Kids can't be educated under a system more interested in testing the teachers than the students, and using the students as proxies to "get" the teachers. You can't put a pile of manure on top of a flower and then blame the flower for not smelling as good anymore. Until we get a handle on the system, there's no real way to distiguish the good teachers from the bad, and I admit there are bad teachers out there. Let's fix that, and stop with the blaming.
On a final note, I'd like to mention that I do have some serious problems with the educational system as a whole and the direction it's headed. The problems are fundamental to the fact that life in the 21st century is going to be dramatically different than life in any time prior in our history. Looking at current technologies, and those that are on the horizon, it's very easy to see that within the next 20 years you'll be able to get a chip implanted into your brain that will give you 24/7 access to the Internet. That changes the landscape of education away from reciation and regurgitation. When kids have instant access to all of the world's knowledge, expecting them to memorize it becomes superfluous.
As such, we need to modify how we educate to focus even more on experiential learning and critical thinking skills. Students need to be taught how to find the right information in a sea of conflicting viewpoints. They need to understand how to apply the knowledge they have. And, they need to be taught the emotional intelligence necessary to use that application for the greater good. No small undertaking, to be sure. But, if we're going to put the effort into redesigning an educational system shouldn't we do so to prepare for the future instead of trying to fix the past?
