The following is the next interview in the State of Maine Education series. It is easy for education reformers to forget perhaps the most integral piece of the puzzle. Teachers. I thought it would be important to have teacher’s perspective on Maine’s education matters. In the interview we discussed how budget cuts will impact Maine students, changes in education, and the overall view from the trenches.
What is your view of the state of Maine education at your school and statewide?
I don’t know a lot about how education works outside of Maine. Within Maine, it seems the education any child gets depends largely on the values of the population supporting the school system in question. The educators themselves aren’t much different. We’re all mostly trained at Farmington or Orono; the scholarly literature about best practice is available to all of us, and we all pay attention and attempt to incorporate it to the best of our abilities.
Thus, the difference between a school system like mine in Central Maine, where 60% of our population qualifies for free and reduced lunch, and one along the southern coast of the state, or even Bangor, is the type of kids going to the school and the type of family support they get. That’s not to say that Bangor or Portland don’t have to deal with kids who have no family support, but you don’t need a degree in sociology to know that there’s a lot larger proportion of them in poor, rural areas. When you have a larger percentage of kids who don’t come to school ready to learn or don’t have the type of home life that is conducive to focusing on education, teachers have to adjust their practices, and the few kids who are bright, motivated, and supported are not as likely to be challenged appropriately.
The role of a community’s socioeconomic makeup in determining what kind of school it will have cannot be understated. And that’s before you even consider the resources poor communities are able or willing to put into their schools.
So the simplest answer to your question is: depends where you are.
Do you believe that students in your classroom will feel the effects of the Maine Education budget cuts?
Yes. Cuts invariably come in the form of teaching positions, since 80% of the average school budget pays for staff, and the rest is stuff like like debt service and energy bills. The single greatest factor that contributes to the success of a school that is even remotely under our control is the number of kids per classroom. The first thing you learn when you go to college to become a teacher is “know the child.” I can’t tell you how many of my professors drilled this into my brain. The better you understand the child, the more likely you are to help him/her learn. Children respond to teachers they feel they have positive relationships with. This is because they are human beings, not lab specimens. But I digress. The point is, it’s a lot easier to develop relationships with kids and understand them individually if there are fewer of them.
It frustrates me to hear people complain that educators seem to think the way to solve educational problems is to throw money at them. Well, if money = people, then what you’re really doing is throwing more people at the problems (talented people, if you’re willing to pay even more), which is the only thing that has ever really solved anything, as far as I know.
LD 1438 (the Charter School Bill) garnered support from state officials and educators alike. Yet the Maine Senate chose to vote down charter schools in Maine. Do you believe charter schools to be a blessing or a curse for Maine education?
I have no opinion about charter schools. I don’t know enough about them.
I have two young daughters, one two years old and one four months old. As it stands now, their K-12 experience will not differ much from my own, my parents, or my grandparents. First, aside from the use of computers, do you believe this statement to be true? If so, what reforms or changes would you like to see in classroom operations to move our classrooms into the 21st century?
This is both true and untrue. It is untrue because kids are much different than they were even 20 years ago, never mind 50 or 100. To a large degree schools have to respond to what walks in the door. Gone are the days when a teacher threatening to call a kid’s parent would automatically bring the kid right into line. Kids are not as dependent on or attached to their parents as they used to be. The long and the short of this is that your daughters will have a much different experience largely because of the differences in their peer group.
Secondly, if one or both of your daughters happens to have a learning disability or behavioral disorder, her experience is likely to be much different than it would have been 30 or 50 years ago, due to the advent of special education. Special education has its own benefits and drawbacks, but no one could deny that it has drastically changed what we do. The latest push is for “early intervention;” in other words, attempting to identify the specialized learning needs of each child before he or she starts to flounder in the mainstream, rather than after. Essentially we’ll be making “an IEP for every child.” The concept is good, but I have no idea how we’ll pull it off.
On the other hand, schools are largely structured the same way they were 50 years ago. Students are managed in a way that makes the job easier and more straightforward for adults, but not in a way that prioritizes motivating and nurturing the kids. Kids are herded around like cattle, told when to eat, what to eat, when to go to the bathroom, when to read, what to read, when to learn, what to learn, when they can stand up or sit down, when they can play soccer or play basketball… basically all the miniscule decisions about life that adults take for granted are micro-managed for kids from the age of 4-18, and then we have the gall to turn around and tell them it’s time to decide, basically on their own, what they want to do with their lives. For more and more kids, school is the most stable and nurturing place in their lives. But school is an institution, and it can never care for them or guide them into adulthood as well as strong parenting can.
Any final thoughts?
Our society has never made any form of child care or child nurturing its number one priority. Education is always a fringe issue politically, even though it is run by politicians. We are hard-wired to place emphasis on the nuclear family to support children, but the nuclear family is disappearing or failing more and more. Schools are being propped up as a band-aid replacement, where kids can supposedly get everything they need earlier and earlier in life, but it’s just not realistic. Until something changes, there will always be problems and people will always be annoyed enough to complain, but not enough to actually find out what’s going on and attempt to make a real difference.
The most important book I’ve ever read is Hold On To Your Kids by Dr. Gordon Neufeld. I consider it necessary reading for any parent or educator. The works of John Holt and John Taylor Gatto have also influenced me tremendously.
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