Twisting our Children

Today at Lacoochee Elementary where I volunteer once a week in a first/second grade classroom, I am, as usual, astonished by these good and patient children. This group of seventeen youngsters is now a cohesive group one loves to be embedded with. They strive mightily to please and 'do right'. They have learned the etiquette of this particular classroom and they love their teacher who respects and enjoys them. They are mostly hispanic, a few African-Americans, some whites. All, are from blue-collar families, some from dire poverty. Some of their parents are in prison or gone from the family for one reason or another. There are no lines of Lexuses at the drop-off.

On Tuesdays when I come all the kids are all present. These kids like to come to school. A fifth grader, Dynasty (yes!), is the Tuesday classroom helper. She comes in after being a safety patrol and helps out for thirty minutes. She waits for me on Tuesday mornings to help me carry in my voluminous bags of stuff for the classroom. She really loves the art projects I always have and would dearly love to partake of the food project we always do. Dynasty- skinny, freckled and totally appealing, is one of those quintessential eleven year olds who is competent, confident, and interested. She told me about her winning science fair project (went all the way to County!) When she was a first grader, we didn't have those nose-to-the-grindstone FCATs.

Today, I was particularly saddened to observe how this system is trying to bend and torture like bonsai every child into the same mold. Seven year olds! FCAT expects that every single one of them WILL be able to read on a certain level. Breakthrough to Reading! Relentlessly, the reading schedule goes on in the scripted form. This includes so much tedious stuff that even I am about to lie on the floor and kick my legs up. But these good and patient kids try their best, and clearly, their best is definitely not good enough some of the time. The kids take their turns at the computer program that has no opportunity for anything creative or interesting. (This is teaching kids about the wonderful world of twechnology they'll inherit??)

What I want to bring to this classroom is mulch for minds: hands-on stuff, information from discussion and books, the tastes of cooking, real art (not colored in work sheets)AND OPPORTUNITIES TO SPEAK TO AN ADULT ABOUT ANYTHING INTERESTING!

But, in public schools, silence is golden, pretty much. You walk a group of kids to a class or lunch, and it is forbidden to talk or get out of line. But what if you see an interesting bug or a lizard or a kid wants to tell you that her mother had surgery yesterday?

Becoming competent in reading or math or science doesn't happen in silent controlled classrooms with testing always lurking on the horizon. It happens when kids have lots of experiences, opportunities to read on their own, hands-on messy projects. This is mulch for the mind!

As a teacher for thirty years I can attest that some kids learn to read quite well when they are four years old and others not until they are seven or even older. But if all of them are being mulched with experiences and hands-on learning, they'll all eventually be good and dedicated readers. When they want to they'll go to fine colleges.

What are we thinking that all kids of a certain age should be making a certain score on a standardized test? Are we mad to even THINK of testing kindergartners? Are we MAD not to let them play and have experiences in social play and with manipulable things? What is the hurry? Have we totally forgotten all the child development science?

I see those good and patient kids who want to please. But some of them are really not yet ready to read. They need to snuggle down next to an adult and have a good story read to them. They need conversation. They need to have experiences, be outdoors to wonder and ask and explore. They need to run around and make up their own games and feel the tugs of social interaction. They need to make things which are not 'canned' and generated from worksheets. They need to dream and invent.

Sad to say, I see none of this at Lacoochee. The teachers are driven by rules and the FCAT. I see no joie de vivre, no interest in pedagogy. In the lunchroom all the teachers ONLY talk about their physical ills or how dissatisfied they are with the bureaucracy of FCAT or the school administration. One woman who tells me she has worked in the lunchroom for thirty years still has a lovely gentle smile and warm manner for the kids. When I told her that I noticed, her face lit up with such a smile.

What would happen if a principal of such a school as this just said, "Hey, staff! Let's have fun, forget the FCAT. Let's try to really be good teachers, a team. Think of all the interesting things we can do to engage kids and ourselves. Hey, we could paint an amazing mural on the school walls. We could break out a few windows so we could have some damn AIR in here. We could put on a Shakespearean play! We could grow vegetables in a real school garden so we don't have to eat that brown-edged inedible lettuce we now serve. We could even have kids cooking! We could have an amazing science center, a weather center, animals! Our technology could throw out those tedious canned reading programs and kids could use 'Word' or some other program to generate a truly good school newspaper. Photographs- no problem, the kids can do it. The media center would hum with activity.

And, most important of all, BRING BACK RECESS! This should happen every day for every child. It keeps kids thin and fit, socially and emotionally.

Public school as I see it, seems scared and strangled. Our wonderful children need to see a generous, inclusive and audacious bunch of adult models. As a volunteer, I'm working on it. What do you think?