Watching the cookie cutters working desperately, yet powerfully, to maintain control of an institution that is failing it’s clientele.  Public Education.

Yes, we’re failing our students. Even the best institutions are failing… just ask them.  Teachers will tell you that they spend more time proving the quality of what they do than actually improving the quality of what they do.  We’re hiring the very best of our society, and then not trusting them to help make us better. 

I understand the need for standardized testing from the perspective of a public institution needing to justify expenditures… but I also understand that the necessary time, scheduling and preparation for such dictates curriculum, lesson planning, and use of educational minutes.

(Even the fact that, as a practioner,  within my stream of conciousness, I just wrote “educational minutes” in the last paragraph proves my point.)

All the while, the business world slowly (yet surely) encroaches into the world of practitioners.  As a non-business minded person, it is fascinating to watch them forecast, re-tool, reprint, redevelop, lobby, adopt, push, push, push…”here’s what will make you more effective.”  Really?

Oddly, the tools that will truly make a practioner more effective (training, development, mentorship, team-building, reinforcement, and refreshment) are rarely tapped.  Perhaps we just don’t have time.

It’s an interesting paradigm, this overlay of these two worlds.  One so desperately interested in what will make a more effective presentation… the other so desperately interested in what will align, standardize, and conform. 

Maybe they are not so different…

In the middle, however, is an amazing place.  A small place where dreams are created, informed, and fueled.  It’s a place where ideas are forged, shared, and reinterpreted.  Schools.  There are so many different ways of interpreting how and what should be presented… but ultimately it comes down to that small place, that time, that interaction that causes learning to occur.  It comes down to two critical elements, the Teacher and the Learner… or perhaps Co-learners.

There are too many factors, too many regulations, too many standardizations.

What will happen when knowledge is proved, but learning has disappeared.  What will happen to us when passion, dreams, and inspiration are gone?

We are not all the same, we don’t all learn the same… but we continue to financially reinforce the way we “do” education, and reward those that build toward standardization.

We have to stop.

We have to allow schools to be schools, teachers to be teachers, and students to be students.

We need hire the very best people to do our most important work, and then trust them to do their job.  We, as a society, need to help… show up, get involved, and be part of the process.

My Dad always told me, “if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”

Which one are you?

As I have walked through this life I have found great encouragement and enlightenment in humankind.  The power of the body to heal itself, and the mind to learn…watching others grow and glean knowledge along the way is powerful life stuff.  I love it… life, that is. I love being around people–learning from them, laughing with them, laughing at them…watching life happen. 

I guess that’s why I love schools.  I guess that’s why I’m a teacher, why I’m a mentor… I guess I’m selfish. 

I jokingly told a 12th grade Government class that teaching them was more about me than about them, so they needed to behave… “your incessant talking” I told them, “is not part of my therapy session today, but your participation is.” We all laughed, but I think there was a little more than an iota of truth in that passing comment.  I’ve found that they enjoy class when I do…. more importantly, they learn more, when I learn too.  Approaching each day with the understanding that I have something to learn today I work harder, I communicate more clearly, I invest time better… I thrive.  15 years of trying to “teach” only to find that all I really need to do is keep learning…

Life, it’s funny that way.