Sunday Night of Conference Week

I'm not understanding the perspective of my teaching colleagues. Why on earth do they continue to complain about parent / teacher conferences? We get the opportunity to talk with our students and their parents really once a year, and it is a wonderful opportunity to connect with these families. I don't understand the mentality that all other work in our school must stop because we have conferences! I'm seeing learning shut down all over the school, and we don't even start them until Thursday of this week.

I don't get it, and I'm not sure I ever want to get it.

Well, here's my first post. Not really sure why I decided to launch my own blog, but it is likely because it is so difficult to find a place to voice any of these thoughts. I work in a suburban school district, generally known as a high achieving district. Of course, we all know all too well the single greatest predictor of academic success is the income level and academic history of the parents. In that regard, we are a very high achieving district. Our district is in transition though, largely because many of us have started questioning our status quo. Is meeting standard really good enough? What about all the kids in our district and school who don't come from privileged backgrounds?

You can imagine that is ruffling feathers. The question really comes down to, for me and my teaching colleagues, whether we are practitioners or professionals. The argument is certainly being made that teachers are paid as practitioners, but I would argue we all consider ourselves professionals. Unfortunately, we certainly don't act it. Professionals constantly seek improvement in methods, techniques and tools to hone their craft. Most of my colleagues instead prefer to deliver curriculum from a common set of manuals. That, my friends, is a practitioner. It requires less skills and certainly less effort, and it is the a tremendous road block in our efforts to reform education.

Lest you think I am one of those standards spewing reformists, I believe public education serves a much higher purpose than preparing kids to enter the work force. If that were our sole purpose, we would clearly be funded by industry, since our goal would be to turn out workers. I believe our purpose as a public school system is to prepare students to participate in our democratic republic. No, I don't mean so they can vote. Rather, the purpose of schools as I see it is to better our society and work towards a more open society willing to discuss and debate a broader range of ideas while working for the betterment of all.

Pretty lofty I know, but that is the root of my frustration with public education. We are going through the motions in most cases. We are working hard, in most cases, too, but without committing to a higher moral imperative, we are wasting precious time debating issues of control and authority instead of working towards better methods and materials to reach a wider range of our students.

That's all for tonight. My rant was mostly stimulated by a frustrating union meeting in my school this afternoon, but I'll save that for another day.