Each morning, over 4 million teachers rise and head off to the schools of the United States. I have no doubt that the vast majority of those 4 million teachers do their best to carry out what they are charged to do. But what exactly is it that they are charged to do? When you start to find some answers to this question, you’re going to arrive pretty quickly at raising achievement levels on basic competency measures. And then someone somewhere will attempt to sell performance on those measures as a means to creating good citizens charged with leading the country triumphantly through the 21st century. The honest truth is that those people seem to me to have no idea what they’re talking about.
The charge of an educator is not to focus on raising basic reading and math competencies. We’ve been trying hard to do this in the United States for over 50 years with literally no improvement. And if we were able to raise any of those scores by 10 points, nothing about our world would change. The education system is aiming at the wrong target. And because the system is pointing in the wrong direction, teachers are forced to miss the mark. Schools and teachers are trying very hard to do the wrong things better.
So, if our system, and then by default, our schools and teachers, are missing the mark as they attempt to do the wrong things better, what are the right things? It seems pretty simple to me what those right things are. We want our schools to prepare students to lead rich and fulfilling lives. And schools and teachers prepare students for rich and fulfilling lives by teaching them about life through a focus on creativity, problem solving, and the exploration of personal interests. If you think that sounds pretty good but question the ability of our school system to hit this mark, I would agree with you. The entire system is built to do something very far removed from those goals. However, the system has two amazing components that make the achievement of these goals possible which are 1) amazing young people who arrive at school eager to grow and learn, and 2) 4 million amazing and dedicated teachers who at one time in their lives believe it was possible to change the world through their own actions.
That dream, of changing the world and teaching students of today in ways that allow them to live rich and fulfilling lives tomorrow is certainly possible. The goal is to take the people and remove them from a broken system. The environment is everything, and the current school environment simply misses the mark. It was designed for a world over 100 years ago and didn’t succeed then, either. Please join with me in the call to help all educators within the system hit the mark and create new and dynamic systems for teaching and learning. – Miles
Miles O'Shea 
1 Comment
Comments are closed.