Over the past 19 years I've seen the first month of the school year become just as busy and hectic as the final month of the school year, and man, I'm sure glad it's over. We've had one all school hike, two class retreats (with another next week), an expulsion, the beginning of soccer season, assemblies on drugs, recycling, and community service, back-to-school night, an evening poetry reading, an evening college application workshop, and the blending of new students and teachers into a new community. All in all it's been great, quite positive (except for the expulsion), and the new folks are proving to be great additions to our community. Alas, it's still exhausting, in a way that seems more intense than it was in 1991. Perhaps it's having more students, or the general anxiety caused by (choose any 3) the economy, 9-11, health care, angry town halls, our children's future prospects, or any of the myriad of issues we carry with us each day. As the days turn cooler (how do you like living in San Francisco East) our pace will slow a bit, and hopefully allow us to become more reflective and think more deeply about how and why we go about the work we take on. Soon enough the pace will pick up, as we begin to budget and plan for the 2010-2011 school year!
One of the really good thinkers of the past couple of decades, his concept of "Flow" posits that people perform best when they have a high degree of skill and strong (but not unreasonable) challenges. Lots of implications for our teaching, and education in general.
If you're not familiar with the TED conferences, their videos and podcasts are well worth checking out at ted.com.
I'm in a writing frenzy today! It usually takes me weeks to get worked up enough to write!
Lest the wingnuts drive us to think that healthcare is just fine in America, our small business is facing a 20% increase in premiums next year. Tuition went up 2%. You can do the math.
Our broker says that 20% is pretty good... one of our small school compatriots is seeing a 76% increase in their premiums.
Our faculty's average age did not change, nor did any of us have catastrophic illnesses.
My choices: increase the teacher's contribution, weaken the plan we offer, fire all the old teachers and replace them with young teachers.
And we're just one, small, business. Maybe that's why we get hit so hard, where are we going to go? Something needs to be done.
I'm sure that all of our students' parents are pleased that, despite our president's attempts to indoctrinate us with his socialist message, the school is still standing. A few of my personal highlights are quoted below. My favorite quote with regard to the controversy came from the NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who called the protesters "stupid." Quite right!
"But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, and the best schools in the world – and none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities. Unless you show up to those schools; pay attention to those teachers; listen to your parents, grandparents and other adults; and put in the hard work it takes to succeed. "
"And no matter what you want to do with your life – I guarantee that you’ll need an education to do it. You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it and train for it and learn for it."
"...at the end of the day, the circumstances of your life – what you look like, where you come from, how much money you have, what you’ve got going on at home – that’s no excuse for neglecting your homework or having a bad attitude. That’s no excuse for talking back to your teacher, or cutting class, or dropping out of school. That’s no excuse for not trying."
"...the truth is, being successful is hard. You won’t love every subject you study. You won’t click with every teacher. Not every homework assignment will seem completely relevant to your life right this minute. And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.
"That’s OK. Some of the most successful people in the world are the ones who’ve had the most failures. JK Rowling’s first Harry Potter book was rejected twelve times before it was finally published. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team, and he lost hundreds of games and missed thousands of shots during his career. But he once said, "I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.
"These people succeeded because they understand that you can’t let your failures define you – you have to let them teach you. You have to let them show you what to do differently next time. If you get in trouble, that doesn’t mean you’re a troublemaker, it means you need to try harder to behave. If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.
"No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work. You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in."
How unbelieveable is this... parents don't want their kids to listen to the President of the United States talk about the importance of education because they think he's "trying to indoctrinate their children with socialist ideas" according to the NY Times. I suppose it's no surprise in a country where 40% of the population believe in ghosts, and the value of science is undercut by the value placed on faith. (Personally, I'm comfortable with mystery, and the idea that while not everything can be explained, as time passes more and more can be.)
Oh well, we'll certainly allow our students to listen to the president during lunch on Tuesday, and hope that they take his message of hard work and accomplishment to heart. That, after all, is part of our mission as a school and as parents. And the further some folks move their kids to the fringe, the more room there is for our kids at the top!
Over the past 19 years I've seen the first month of the school year become just as busy and hectic as the final month of the school year, and man, I'm sure glad it's over. We've had one all school hike, two class retreats (with another next week), an expulsion, the beginning of soccer season, assemblies on drugs, recycling, and community service, back-to-school night, an evening poetry reading, an evening college application workshop, and the blending of new students and teachers into a new community. All in all it's been great, quite positive (except for the expulsion), and the new folks are proving to be great additions to our community. Alas, it's still exhausting, in a way that seems more intense than it was in 1991. Perhaps it's having more students, or the general anxiety caused by (choose any 3) the economy, 9-11, health care, angry town halls, our children's future prospects, or any of the myriad of issues we carry with us each day. As the days turn cooler (how do you like living in San Francisco East) our pace will slow a bit, and hopefully allow us to become more reflective and think more deeply about how and why we go about the work we take on. Soon enough the pace will pick up, as we begin to budget and plan for the 2010-2011 school year!
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