I met today with a woman who looked just like me a few months ago - at a complete loss for what to do next. She's a public educator, just like me, and her entire being screamed for relief. She also has two children, and what I heard from her loud and clear was her discomfort at sending her soon-to-be kindergartner into the public education system. And most of the private schools don't provide much comfort either.
Our original intention was to try to join forces in a new business venture that would hopefully keep the two of us out of going back into public ed permanently, but as we talked, we moved into the idea of homeschooling. She'd considered it, but after we talked, I kind of feel like she's really considering it now.
Why am I leaving? Why am I sheltering my own children from the public education system? Those answers are easy. Philosophical differences.
When I first became a teacher, I felt like it was my job to teach. To teach kids to toe the line. To teach them to be responsible citizens. To teach them respect. It was my job to have an orderly, yet creative classroom where each student wrote their first and last name on a paper, and points were granted for sheer effort. This was during a time and in a place where my students' lives were not dictated by long orange busses, and they could arrive at school an hour beforehand and stay for hours afterward. And they did. I built a lot of relationships this way.
I can recall walking with a group of kids down a side street in Berwyn - shaded by trees. They chatted loudly as we made our way to a classmate's house. He'd recently been hit by a car and was stuck in his upstairs apartment because he was wheelchair bound for several weeks. Another pair of kiddos (cousins) - when I worked on the east side of Aurora - never went home before me. If I stayed until six, they stayed and walked me to my car. They cleaned lab tables and took care of my fish. Whatever I asked, they did.
As time went on my philosophy transformed. I also had children of my own. It was at this time that I began to see education from the eyes of a parent instead of from the know-it-all eyes of a teacher in her first five years of teaching. I'd never been satisfied with my grading system until I changed it to reflect mastery of the subject instead of number of complete homework assignments. And when RtI started I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Finally. A way to track our kiddos through data-driven means and to find out which ones were just merely getting by and which were actually making progress. And a way to fix them all!
But education today is like missing an exit on the expressway. We were good for about two years and then we missed the turn off. While we probably should have taken a look at the amount of data we were processing, instead we continued to plow down the busy expressway without even glancing at the warning signs as to what was ahead. Today we collect data - so much of it - that our children become numbers. They identify with the numbers, and they are miserable if the numbers don't tell them what they need.
I'm a mathematical gal, but even I know when it's time to put away the spreadsheet and look into the eyes of the child sitting in front of you. That child may likely be one who can't take a test on a computer or had a bad morning before this very important assessment - or, heaven forbid, doesn't give a rats hiney about the test. I had a girl last year ask me, "Miss, how did I do on this one?" (referring to the progress monitoring test she had just taken).
"Well," I replied, wishing I had had some better news for her. "Your score actually went down this time."
She smiled at me in a resigned way and said, "Yeah, I figured so. I wasn't really feeling it today, Miss. I have better things on my mind today. See ya tomorrow." And she turned and walked away, shoulders slumped.
I spent a lot of time that year looking at numbers, and, frankly, I'm exhausted by them. They make me happy when they say what I want, and they make me want to stab myself with ball point pens when they don't. But here's something that never makes me feel that way. When I teach a kid how to figure out the right way to make a "b" and a "d", and I see him doing it under the table when practicing his spelling. Or when I walk into a session and tell one of my kiddos that we are going to work on spelling, and he asks if we can practice nonsense words today so that he can get the skill down. That never gets old.
And that is what I want for my children. Who better to serve that to them than me? And this, my friends, is why I am sheltering my children from the public education system.
