Those Lacoochee kids

Today I went to do my usual Tuesday gig with a class at Lacoochee Elementary School. Each Tuesday I go to do some cooking with Rachel Aguilar's class. Though I never cook at home, I am still pretty competent. We are putting together a class cook book to include all the things we have made. So far: fruit salad, green salad, and smoothies. Next week, we will make pasta with tomato sauce. (The kids suggested doing huge gooey sundaes, but I demurred. They know I am into healthy fat-free cooking.) There are two classroom volunteers, wonderful Mexican ladies who are very helpful without being asked. I have invited them to help me prepare some Mexican dishes. Their eyes light up and I know that we are going to have a great time with this.

The kids, like all kids, love the hands-on stuff. And so do we all! What will these kids remember about this week? The smoothies, of course. They will not remember the drudge from the dog-eared science or social studies texts. Kids are like adults (but they are beaten back!) : they respond to the immediate and interesting in their environment. They tune out the boring and repetitive stuff.

I certainly get a good feeling in this classroom. The kids want to please and most of the time there is a harmonic hum going on. They love their teacher and they see in her such possibilities. In fact, it is such a good classroom, I think these kids could do a whole lot more in terms of investigating everything and anything.

But we have the dreaded FCAT and all its many tests and preparatory tests and prepreparatory tests etc. Teachers, nowadays are considered to be idiots, and must be led through every part of teaching. (Thanks to Houghten Mifflen and the others who rake in the money) These teachers are NOT idiots, and given the task they have, they do their best.

They do not have enough time on the present schedule! They cannot read out loud every single day to the kids (though all the research says that this is key to making good readers). Most kids do not have time every day to hunker down and read their good book. There is not enough time for kids to explore math or science or social studies. (When, in this public school, have I seen the kids working on a project about Lewis and Clark or John Adams or de Soto or Columbus that was not something canned and on a worksheet to be filled out in fifteen minutes?)

These things take time, not just 30 minutes. A kid could spend the whole day or a whole week or a whole month researching what people ate on the trail out west with Lewis and Clark. And on and on. FCAT does not take into consideration how children think and act. Or, teachers, for that matter.

Our teachers, so stellar for the most part, need to get up on their hind legs and say, "Enough is enough! Let us teach!"