Relections on a particulary difficult school year

Well, my summer break officially began on June 4th at 2:30pm. I must congratulate myself for getting through this 2007-2008 school year without a) seriously injuring a student and b)resisting the tempation to take up alcoholic beverages or mind altering substances.

We had 130 students and approximately half of them were underachievers and intent on doing anything other than schoolwork while at school. We lectured, we rewarded good behavior, we had parent/teacher conferences, we had parent/teacher/student conferences with the principal thrown into the mix most of the time. We gave detention, we gave fun Fridays, we had after school tutoring, morning tutoring, lunch detention, lunch tutoring...it just didn't seem to matter what we did, we just weren't getting through.

As much as I lectured these kids and got onto them about proper behavior and treating each other with respect, and all the eye rolling and huffs and puffs in response, I thought the school year would never end.

I teach with the best group of teachers you could ever ask for. Each of us has a different teaching style and usually each of us can reach a different group of kids and nuture them and we have some positive experiences along the way. That wasn't happening with these kids and it really wasn't until the last week of school that we finally realized that we had done some good along the way.

One of the positive things that comes from having this kind of year is that you learn so much about truly effective discipline. The other good thing is that you realize that this type of class doesn't come around very often. Thank goodness for that.

Teachers get very little respect in the United States. Constantly on talk radio, public school teachers are bashed, particulary by people like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity. They dislike all teachers because of the teachers union. They want choice in public education. They have never seen a group of dedicated teachers who truly want the best for the students go through a school year like the one I just went through. And on that subject, I have an opinion I would like to share about choice and the voucher system particularly. If you pass legislation that would give vouchers to parents to take their children to any school, public or private, then you are also going to have to give those vouchers to parents who homeschool their children. I know many families who successfully homeschool their children and who would continue to do so. The problem comes in when parents in the lower socioeconomic bracket discover they can get a lot of money for their children if they educated them at home. That will induce a lot of parents who are ill qualified and undereducated themselves to pull their children out of school in order to boost the family income. What you will end up with is whole generations of people with little or no education. Crime, unemployment, and a welfare state will result.

Public education in the US has its problems, yes, but it still allows a good ecucation for all of its people, even insures it. Those who want to change it need to think the process through very carefully and work all consequences of change before they alter it.