Soap Box

You know how people use their family blog as kind of a journal and rant about everything from the right type of peanut butter to buy to the way to solve world hunger? Now is one of those moments. For those of you who are teachers, you might find interest in this. For those of you who are parents, I hope you find interest in this because whether you are an educator or not, you hold a vote as to the things that could or could not happen to education in this country, and it WILL effect your kids, now or in the future. If you are neither, then gosh darnnnnit, get involved in education in any way you can! It's one of the greatest tools this life has for good in the world. Seriously.

So I just came back from an EXCELLENT presentation by a guy from UNC who came to our school to talk about RtI (response to intervention). If you are in Colorado right now and you teach in any form or fashion, you know about this. If you don't, you better hope your school gets on board ASAP! Basically response to intervention is a state-wide initiative to get kids who do not succeed to the best of their ability in the regular core classrooms, whether it be because they are not challenged enough or because they need help, be it severe or not, all the help they can possibley get from the teachers. All the teachers. Every one of them in the school for every one of the students. Our school has been working hard on this all semester long. A lot of the things we have implemented officially were things we were already basically doing informally from teacher to teacher. A lot of things still need further expansion. From student to student, so far, we have seen some successes and some failures or flat-liners (kids who neither improve or go down in their progress, which is bad. Anything that is not improving is bad, there is no neutral student).
First off, I think our school works our tails off to get some kids a inordinate amount of help. Second of all, after hearing this presentation, I was SOLD for the most part on the idea of what RtI is trying to accomplish. The "old" model of intervention was very black and white, especially for students who were not succeeding in general education. Suzie is failing in math, okay, call the special ed department, save a couple of tests and work from her, get her tested, okay, she qualifies, then have what our presenter called an "IEP party" where you all get together, put on some music, sign a bunch a papers and mambo your way out the door. Brows are wiped, that IEP goes in the drawer, drawer is shut, now back to "general education". Except only about 50% of Suzies who are tested actually qualify for IEP's. And where do the rest go? Back in their seats in the classroom. Realistally, there are a lot of educators out there who do more than an IEP mambo party, and really did put their best foot forward in helping all of their students achieve. But realistically, there are also a lot of educators out there who looked and Suzie and said "welcome back, we're on page 15 in the text, go ahead and open your book". Granted, I think the educational system has to usually go through mistakes to realize they are wrong. If educational systems aren't being educated here and there on a lot of things, then there is something wrong with the educational system (sorry folks, life-long learning should happen with every profession, even if you're just working at McDonalds the rest of your life, not just teaching).
Now here's where I did a lot of self-reflecting on my profession. I am a music teacher, why the heck do I care about all this? In all reality, aside from maybe having some problems pronouncing words in a choral piece or reading the instructions to those rare assignments that I hand out to my K-2nd grade music kiddo's, if a child has problems reading, it's not going to affect their performance much in my classroom. Kids can learn a steady beat in Kindergarten, they don't have to be reading novels or solving the quadradic equation to do it. So all my kids get A's and if they don't, it's mostly a behavioral problem, not an academic one. Great, so at least they have the music part checked off on their report card, don't have to worry about that! And you know what? I'm really passionate about music. So I'm getting fulfilled every day because kids are succeeding in my classroom and I get to teach what I love. Fantastic.
Okay wait a minute. You know, that's really great that because I did my job well as a music teacher in elementary school and middle school that Johnny now only comes to school everyday in high school because he loves his choir class, even though he's failing and ditching everything else and doesn't have the tools necessary to succeed in college, let alone keep a steady job. But if I only became a music teacher to help that kid get a free A in high school in a class that probably won't have much effect on their future life because they didn't learn the work ethic they needed from their other classes to even be a successful musician in the future, then there is something wrong there. And wait another minute. I was actually pretty good at math and reading in high school. I even took some college courses on them. And you know what else? When I teach kids what it means to be in 4/4 time and they understand it, couldn't I use those same teaching skills to help them with some of their difficulty in multiplication tables in math? Couldn't I give them a book about the history of that piece that they just won't shutup about in choir so they could get more reading time in at home? Couldn't I even use higher level vocabulary in describing the essence of a beautiful Mozart motet and then have them use it on a regular basis to describe other elements of art or history or even math or science? Isn't that what education is all about? Giving them the whole flipping pie instead of just pieces of it in every class or subject area? I am a musician, yes, but if I only went through school as a performer and just decided to get a teaching degree because I wasn't probably good enough to join the NYC opera house and it would be a steady income, then I will be a miserable educator the rest of my life. I teach. Music is my vehicle, but we all have to travel the teaching road to the top of the mountain and if I'm not good at it, maybe I need a different mountain to climb.
As a side note, I'm going to do some shameless promoting of core knowledge schools, which is where I work. If you can get your kid into a core knowledge school in your area, than do it, the earlier the better. We serve whole pies every day, every unit, every quarter, every year, through their whole education K-8. I've learned more about education at my year and a quarter here than I learned in my entire 5 years at UNC. I can tell you any student that is struggling at the middle school level is a student that was transferred here from another school and any student that has stuck with it here since Kindergarten is at the top of their class. Hands down. It's incredible.
I guess what I'm really trying to say here as well, is that if you want to make a difference in education, give the schools the resources they need in every classroom and for every teacher (and in many circumstances it's just placing a higher priority on putting the right resources in the right places: there is nothing wrong with sending a third grader to the lowly music teacher to get fifteen minutes of intensive vocabulary help every day just because that's not his or her content area) and educate teachers on how to do their job better. I think there are too many teachers out there who are close minded about their performance and they mistake working their butts off (because let's face it, every teacher does, you can't be a teacher and not work your butt off, it doesn't happen) for being an effective teacher. I think it's fantastic that teachers have such great work ethics, but as our presenter even explained about himself as a beginning teacher, if you don't know how to teach something, especially if it's your content area, the last person you are going to tell is someone else. That work ethic should have a bigger portion of bettering yourself as a teacher and a lesser portion of egotism. Knowing your material and knowing how to effectively teach your material are two completely seperate things, and the greater emphasis needs to be placed on effective teaching and not amount of knowledge. Personally, I could have done with a lot more with in classroom experience in college than I could with voice lessons, choir rehearsals, and recital classes. I love to sing, don't get me wrong, and I loved my rehearsals, but it has done little to help me as an educator. And if you are one of those teachers that has done everything you possibley can and your student still isn't acheiving, than you have a mislead conception of your abilities. All I know is there is a lot of information out there. There are a million and one different ways to get it through Johnny's head that if you don't try, you fail, and just because you spend a lot of time on him doesn't mean that you are doing things the right way.
However, I humbly acknowledge that I am a second year half time music teacher, not a 30 year vetran with all the answers. I would love to hear other opinions out there about this. I also humbly acknowledge that it is impossible to create more time in our days, and that is probably the biggest challenge. There is only so much we can do with the time we are given, I just don't want to be the teacher that gives up because I was so confident that all the work I was doing was the right thing to do when I was missing the mark. I would hope that when I become that 30 year vetran that my biggest area of expertese is trial and error. :-)
Stepping off soap box now....