Cptn. Snyder answers student's questions about being a pilot.

I must stop here and loudly thank my guest and airline pilot, Captain Eric Snyder, for  attending. Not only did he drive 2 hours to get here,  and then stand out in the hot sun for 3 more, but he talked and talked with our students, telling wonderful stories about traveling the world and patiently answering all thier questions (even when they asked if he was afraid of heights for the hundredth time). My informal polling later that day showed he was a top favorite. 

The event was in two parts: one was a formal assembly, in which student council members interviewed several professionals, including a neurologist, an inventor, a lawyer, a museum director, and several public service jobs. But the real fun was out a t the “fairgrounds,” where the firemen and beach rescue had pulled up their trucks, a welder was demonstrating his blowtorch, Verizon had electrical gadgets the kids could take a part, and several others (including my favorite pilot!) had tables set up. Kids could wander around and talk one-on-one with anyone and everyone.

As I circulated with the other teachers and helped supervise, we all noticed something amazing happening out on the PE field that day: these kids were genuinely interested and curios, they were asking very good questions, and  without a doubt they were–without a multiple choice test in sight– learning. 

Students get a peek inside the firetruck.

Our Library put together a special display section on careers especially for this event. Featured titles included:

Career Building Through Blogging by Deirdre Day-MacLeod. Even some of our teachers didn’t know this was a viable career field.

Working In The Fashion Industry by Margaret McAlpine. Not to be discounted (was that a pun?); there’s serious money and huge career opportunities in this industry. 

Working With Animals by Margaret McAlpine.

Cool Careers Without College for People Who Love to Organize, Manage, and Plan by Robert Greenberger. GREAT series! Covers a range of interests, form nature to computers to building. What a concept: introducing careers based on what kids actually like to do!)

Earning Money by Patricia J. Murphy. Basics, basics, basics.

Design and Technical Art by Richard Spilsbury.

How The President Is Elected by Heather Lehr Wagner. Aim big, kids.

“Omigod! I would totally kill for her API!”

We had an interesting discussion at our faculty meeting yesterday morning: if we could have any intervention to raise student achievement, what could it be? “Raising student achievement?” This is Edu-code for test scores and everyone knows it. And I had an epiphany. I know a great intervention to deal with fact that our test scores aren’t ever going to be high enough: let’s stop worrying about them.

I was sitting a the table with the PE department, and we came up with what I think may be the best metaphor for the ridiculousness of this testing frenzy I’ve heard yet. Meeting NCLB targets is alot like trying to loose weight. There is no quick solution. No easy fix. Grapefruit diets and control-top panty hose only go so far; eventually, and probably after years of disappointing results, you are going to have to stop fixating on the number on the scale and look at the big picture. You will realize that you must make fundamental changes to your lifestyle that only work when given lots of time.

And so it goes in a “data-driven” school. I believe NCLB has given all of us negative self image (Omigod! I would kill to have her API!). We’ve pushing for these scores to rise for years, but instead of looking at the basic elements of these kid’s academic diet, we’re time and time again handing them an educational slim-fast and hoping for the best.

We need this test prep! We need that test prep! We just need more test prep! One site I taught at thought they needed to go over every test and bubble in student’s responses for them (apparently 6th graders just can’t be counted on to color in a circle). And we can’t forget to “weigh” them every five seconds; how else will we know if all this is working? We need unit tests and mid-course tests and quarter progress tests and hey! Taking all these exams aren’t enough by themselves, we need pretests for everything too!

Every year, every school, same story. Anyone knows who knows anything about anything can see it: this is never going to work. The more time and money we spend on these quick-fixes, the more we deprive students of what could actually help them in the long run. How about lots and lots and lots of time reading really interesting books? How about practicing writing again and again in low-stress situations so kids might not hate it? How about taking the 40 some-odd-days our school devotes to testing and have kids write, memorize, produce and perform a play? Or read some more. Or write some more. 

How about just eating healthy food, exercising alot and being OK with gradual, appropriate improvement?

Think I’m exaggerating? Take a peek at the California Department of Education website. All but one of the “High-lights” are about testing, Although every educator alive will tell you: you can’t focus on just  one test as a clear indicator of anything, the CDE seems to think these scores are pretty darn important.

“New California law protects school journalism advisors. The act, said to be the nation’s most stringent, prohibits school administrators from retaliating against advisors for trying to protect student press freedoms.”

According to the article by Robert Lopez, over the last three years 15 teachers at the high school level were fired, transferred, or otherwise retaliated against for allowing their students to publish articles that were critical of the school administration. 

This really tickles me for a few reasons. First, we librarians L-O-V-E love that “free speech thing.” Basic standards and beliefs of this profession hold that information should be available and freely accessed by anyone and everyone. We fight censorship as mightily as we keep food and drinks away from our books. I can think of no better time to begin instilling this value in the next generation than in these formative teen years. 

But on a more serious note, I profoundly believe in the competence of a teacher to know what’s appropriate for her students, and in the underlying freedom from being pushed around by the higher-ups for doing so. No school is perfect, but frantically trying to pretend like students have done something horrible because they focused a critical eye and gave a different opinion, especially in a journalistic context (Isn’t that the point of it, after all?) makes us look a little silly. Schools are public facilities, and since I am a taxpayer and all that, I applaud the opportunity able to get a student’s perspective on what’s happening just about any public campus. 

Read the text of the new law here: Senate Bill 1370: Protection for Journalism Teachers