The "State" of Education

     

     Monotony.  It’s a teacher’s foe.  Try covering the same topic three, four, five times a day, and try to do it with the same enthusiasm each time.  I’ve gained some new respect for old rock stars who are still doing live concerts into their sixties and seventies, and are expected to do their greatest hits with the same love and energy they did when they were twenty or thirty.  How many times do you think John Mellencamp has performed Jack and Diane, or AC/DC has played Dirty Deeds?  Probably thousands.  Mellencamp has even famously said he detested his most famous song, until recently.  Musicians change the music to give it new life, letting it evolve into something better that fits the times.  Education needs to do the same thing, for the sake of the students, teachers, and the general good.

     Teachers in Massachusetts, in order to be recertified every five years, need to collect a certain amount of professional development points, usually through scheduled professional development days that give us professional development. Administrators have very limited budgets, and, consequently, these PD days are often relatively mind-numbing affairs despite the best of intentions.  But, every now and then, there is one that really grabs your attention and has some major impact on someone’s career. About five years ago, I was fortunate enough to experience this.  It felt like finding the Willy Wonka golden ticket, and it has made this old dog see his teaching methods and goals in a whole new light.  It has also made me question what exactly we are doing in the world of education.

     This particular PD day was a multi-town affair, and we were all required to drive to Bellingham high school.  The keynote speaker was Dr. Bill Daggett, a man known globally for education leadership.  Most paid speakers are brought in to teach you something new, letting you in on little secrets that you didn’t know until now.  Most teachers usually have the same reaction, “I’ve been doing this for years.  Next!”  But, this day, this speaker, led me to a personal epiphany.   The biggest takeaway for me was this;  Any teacher giving out a test will require two rules.  Number one is no talking (avoids noise and sharing answers), and number two is no use of IPhones (avoids researching and sharing answers).  Then, eventually, we send these students into the working world, and they are expected to do two things.  Number one is to work with others (talk and share answers), and number two is use the latest technology (research and share answers).  I sat up.  Someone was saying, out loud, the biggest concerns that had been gnawing at me for years. We were telling students to not do what we literally do ourselves in staff and department meetings. This caused me to seek out immediate changes to my classroom.

     Not long after this, I was told by my principal, Mike Rubin, that the state of Massachusetts was drafting a new curriculum for Pre K-12 social studies.  News like this can bring a conflicting feeling of hope and concern, mainly because you don’t know the direction it’s going to take.  And, when the draft came out, some concerns were verified.  Take a look for yourself.  Google Massachusetts Social Studies Standards and click on the framework.  Scroll for about a mile, and read the expectations at each grade level.  Elementary school teachers across the state collectively rolled their eyes.  Junior high and high school needed to embrace some new civics standards and projects (something I personally was glad to see), which led to new scopes and sequences (big changes for any department).  The amount of content at each grade level was off the charts.  Impossible to many.

       But then something caught my eye.  At the beginning of each and every grade level was a box which listed the same seven standards.  This list included words such as analyzing, organizing, developing, demonstrating, and arguing.  This was music to a social studies teacher’s ears.  It wasn’t asking students to explain what happened at the Battle of Antietam (which anyone with a laptop or IPhone can look up)!  I could now ask students to develop questions about the wisdom of McClellan’s and Lee’s actions!  Instead of listing the parts of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, they can evaluate the extent to which it has been successful!  And the beauty of this is that by delving into these topics through questioning, analyzing, synthesizing, and concluding, the content sticks so much more. Somewhere Socrates was screaming, “This is what I was talking about!!”

      Yet, I was still apprehensive.  The content list in the frameworks loomed, taunting me.  I felt like Lucy was holding the football, daring me to kick it.  Is the state going to pull the rug out from under me?  Am I going to get my hopes up for change only to have a content driven MCAS test thrown at me.  I’m not young, but I’m also not set in my ways.  If I’m going to put all this work into changing my department, I need to know the state is behind me as much as my administration was.  I needed to know that the standards trumped the content.

       As fate would have it, the state held a PD day just for that reason, as if they had been reading the collective minds of social studies teachers across Massachusetts.  It was held at Hudson High School, and led by Michelle Ryan (from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education).  She was all business, and did not seem like she suffered fools lightly. She took questions, and tried to answer them diplomatically, but the best discourse happened when she coupled people up and gave each pair an assignment;  Choose a topic from the framework and explain how you would teach it.   

     The man sitting next to me was a teacher from Hudson High School, and somehow we landed on the topic of tariffs (Whoo Hoo!!)  We each came up with a lesson plan, and methods of how we would cover it in class.  That’s when Michelle came over to us, and with the most attitude she could muster, questioned why we would pick such a dull, stupid topic.  I was indignant, and threw several reasons right back at her, including their relevance to the present day.  She smiled (kind of), and said, “Then, that’s why you teach it.”  Point made.  It was now clear that content coverage came secondary to the relevance of the topic and skills we want all students to exhibit. If you can’t find an important reason to discuss the Alamo, then scrap it or give it a quick fly by. What a breath of fresh air.

     I was energized.  I came back to UHS with a cause and a commitment to make the changes needed to our scope and sequence, a task that, once explained to Mr. Rubin, we were given the time and resources to map out.  I can’t speak for my department, but I felt that once we started to embrace the new and trust the state, there was a new level of energy we brought into our classes.  And, it has opened the door to more changes that might be coming down the road. Bigger, better changes, hopefully.

     I have often said that being born in the United States is like winning the lottery, especially in Massachusetts.  Since Harvard University and Horace Mann, we have been at the head of the class when it comes to education, and the next step of evolution is here.

     Just in time for me to retire.  

     Better late than never, I guess.