Last day of summer vacation…. I always experience mixed emotions about going back to school at summer’s end. I mourn the end of summer vacation and all my glorious free time, but I usually also look forward to seeing colleagues, meeting new students, and planning new and interesting projects for my classes.
This year, though, I find myself faced with a different set of emotions, or maybe I should say concerns. I’ll still enjoy reconnecting with school friends, and I’m still happily anticipating a new set of students. I even have some fun, worthwhile projects already planned, but sadly, I’m not looking forward to the upcoming school year.
Thanks to the tremendous dedication and diligence of the entire staff, our school remains “recognized” by the state for the second year in a row because we have successfully accomplished the heretofore seemingly impossible: encouraging and teaching the most economically diverse middle school population in the district, perhaps the city, to raise TAKS scores to the “recognized” level. Undoubtedly our students are proud of their accomplishments, and certainly our staff is pleased, yet I dare say I’m not alone in dreading the year ahead.
You see, despite our terrific TAKS scores, our school is broken. A year ago, the staff discovered that, based on the school’s discipline statistics, an unnamed group of people “in the community” judged our campus to be bigoted and racially biased. Because of this perception, our discipline continuum changed considerably. Disruptive children were minimally disciplined in order to keep them in the classroom where, in theory, they could continue to prepare for TAKS. In time, many students from varying economic backgrounds realized that unless they brought drugs or weapons to school, punishment for disrupting instruction and order in our school would be innocuous at best.
As educators, we must strive to teach the entire child. Of course enabling our students to score as highly as possible on standardized tests is a crucial part of our job, but we are also largely responsible, especially at the middle school level, for training young people to become responsible citizens. Part of this task includes teaching appropriate social interactions within a community. When students are allowed to disrupt the school community with nominal consequences, we desperately fail in our charge. Ultimately our students are the ones we harm, not facilitate, with this lasses-faire policy. We inflict a grave disservice upon our children by teaching them that we tolerate undisciplined behavior in our school community.
Understandably during the past year, morale among the staff plummeted as teachers became increasingly frustrated with the lack of disciplinary support they received. When disciplinary concerns were voiced, the responses, in essence, failed to validate the concerns and indeed often belittled them. Frequently staff members heard that since our TAKS scores were recognized, “we must be doing something right.” Unfortunately, an “us against them” relationship developed between administrators and teachers, an attitude that only escalated an already tense and stressful situation.
So, our school is broken, but surely not beyond repair. What must we do to mend our school and restore it to an outstanding educational institution which encompasses the needs of the whole child, which teaches individual responsibility as well as test-taking skills to all children regardless of economic status? Clearly the answer lies in team work, cooperation between teachers and administrators, and open lines of communication. Our teachers undoubtedly enrich their students’ lives with academic subjects and learning tools, but they must also dig deeper into their bags of disciplinary tricks and perhaps utilize more creative forms of classroom management techniques in order to help students develop self-discipline and individual responsibility. When the bag of tricks is depleted, teachers and administrators must work collaboratively with students to remedy discipline shortcomings. Finally, administrators must appreciate all the teacher has attempted before involving the administrator, and realize that now stronger measures are warranted.
Unmistakably, mending our broken school will require great effort, dedication, and cooperation. As a staff we possess an infinite pool of resources to accomplish this mission, but together, and only together, can we succeed.
