Ubuntucat

Usually when it comes to educational issues… or any issue, really, I have strong opinions, but tracking in schools is an issue I have mixed feelings about. I’ve worked in five different high schools, and have seen tracked curriculum and untracked curriculum in action in various subjects, and I have to say it’s hard to find a good working solution.

For those unfamiliar with the term tracking and its attendant problems and benefits, tracked classes are classes covering the same material or curriculum requirement that are tiered into higher and lower levels of rigor. For example, in a 9th grade English class might have Honors English 9, English 9, and Remedial English 9. Of course, the course title rarely uses the word remedial in it, but it’s understood by both students and teachers alike to be remedial. One school I taught at had a little “grade inflation” for the titles. So remedial English was English, regular English was Honors English, and Honors English was Advanced English—presumably a self-esteem boost for all parties involved.

If you don’t have tracking, the classes you teach have too much of a diversity of motivation, ability, and knowledge for you to tailor the curriculum properly to suit most of your students’ learning needs, so you end up either teaching to your best students and leaving the struggling ones in the dust or teaching to your slowest students and leaving your best students bored. In most cases I’ve seen, teachers tend to teach to the middle-of-the-road students and offer extra help (outside of class) to the struggling students, but still leaving the brightest kids more or less bored.

If, however, you do institute tracking, the remedial classes tend to know they’re the lowest level and that doesn’t do much for their motivation. Their peers tend not to push them much, and so they don’t end up having to do much to get to the middle of the bell curve. Behavioral issues also tend to get compounded in these classes. And, worse yet, it’s often the most experienced teacher who ends up teaching the AP classes, leaving a teacher straight out of college or grad school with the remedial classes, which tend to be larger and full of a mix of learning issues, constantly distracted students, and low motivation.

I do have a rather radical solution (which, as I said before, I don’t feel too strongly about) to this problem, but it’s so radical that I doubt any school would ever adopt it. Get rid of the grade-level system and social promotion. This would have to be delicately implemented, as there would be cultural barriers to overcome in addition to policy ones. In other words, instead of having just English 9, 10, 11, and 12 or English 9R, 9, 9H, 10R, 10, 10H, etc.; have English 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and have a whole bunch of levels in various other subjects as well and get rid of this whole grade level business. You’re not a 9th grader or an 11th grader. You’re a student. One student might be taking English 3, Math 2, Spanish 5, History 6, Science 1, and Art 9. Another might be taking English 1, Math 5, Spanish 4, History 2, Science 2, and Art 1. That way, if you’re having trouble with one particular subject, you don’t automatically advance an entire grade or get held back an entire grade—you don’t advance to the next level of that one particular subject.

This is more in line with how students really are. Yes, there are many all-around spectacular kids, who excel in every subject. Yes, there are some all-around not-so-great kids, who do poorly in every subject. But I think most of us fall somewhere in the middle. I considered myself smart in high school, but I struggled in science and history big time, while simultaneously excelling in English, math, and art; and doing only so-so in foreign language study. If I had attended my own make-believe high school, I might have started off in Science 1, History 2, Spanish 3, English 5, Math 6, and Art 8. Kids in this make-believe school would get very used to the idea of having in any given class a mix of first-year, second-year, third-year, and fourth-year students, and there would be less of a stigma attached to being in Science 1, as even smart-in-other-subject kids would be in that class.

Of course, where this gets tricky is in college counseling, as it might be difficult for a guidance counselor to explain how this kind of curriculum prepares a student for college. We would know, of course, in real life that a student in my make-believe school is just as, if not more, prepared for college as someone at a regular high school, but on paper, it’d be ridiculous for someone who never got past English 2 to advance to university-level studies, even though plenty of high school seniors complete 12th grade English and cannot coherently express their thoughts in writing.

Well, that’s my mental barf of an educational theory. If I ever start my own school, I’ll keep this in mind.

• Time=learning. So, more time=more learning.
• Good schools have good teachers. So, better teachers=better schools.
• Testing discourages social promotion
• Tracking solves most classroom learning problems
• Lack of tracking solves most classroom learning problems
• Individual teachers create educational revolution (think Dangerous Minds and Stand and Deliver)
• Students do not care about education

What schools actually need

• Student-teachers as paid interns for at least two years. Every teacher should have at least one. Gives student-teachers a chance to learn the profession, make some money, not feel rushed. Gives students more adult presence in the room, more individual attention. Gives head teachers a little more breathing room, work burden less stressful.
• More flexibility in curriculum, with teachers justifying choices to the community not the state. Even “canonical” works need justification.
• More student choices in constructing their own education: a distribution requirement or self-designed proposal of study.
• More integrative approach: a less condemning attitude towards non-academics as supplements to classroom activity.
• Panels on important issues such as racism, homophobia, student voice, etc.
• Teachers’ reimbursed by departments for book purchases (make this one of the priorities in funding).
• Allocation of funds by community size, not community wealth.
• Smaller schools, more freedom for students.
• More teachers, smaller class sizes.
• Smaller class sizes.
• More funding.

When I began thinking about teaching, I began it with a rather self-centered outlook: I will teach the way I wanted my teachers to teach me. I will be the kind of teacher I’d always wanted in high school. I also had a dream to be the revolutionary teacher from such faux-inspirational films as Stand and Deliver and Dangerous Minds. I wanted to buck the system, improve the quality of public education. This, I realized later, was also a self-centered (and extremely unrealistic) pursuit.

Upon studying more about educational theory and working directly with a number of public school systems (as a student-teacher, a long-term sub, and an on-call sub), I felt the shortcomings of my individuality: I had to learn to work with a community, and I had to serve the needs of members of that community (both students and faculty) who did not share my values, my learning style or my intellectual background.

I had a chat with Deborah (another teacher at my current school) once in which she lamented that she actually felt guilty for teaching in a private school. I reassured her she had nothing to feel guilty about. As one of my fellow graduate students once said (I’m paraphrasing): “We always talk about being where the students are. The students are everywhere.” It’s true there’s a definite need for good teachers in public schools, particularly in lower-income schools, but truthfully, I see “good teachers” as only part of the solution. Schools that are struggling to meet even the “basic standards” of the state (whatever state it is) need administrators willing to change, parents willing to invest time and energy in their children’s education, a supportive rather than a demanding government, and a workable budget that allows a school to function easily. “Good teachers” aren’t enough.

I found myself, as a public school teacher, spending the bulk of my time dealing with discipline and paperwork. I would have to keep careful track of tardy slips, write cut slips and detention notices, make sure students did not physically harm one another, manage bathroom passes and hallway passes… the list of tasks that had no immediate bearing on curriculum weighed heavily on my idealistic shoulders. It was then I realized I wanted to be with students who wanted to learn in an environment that supported me, where parents, students, faculty, staff and others worked together to create not only good lesson plans and curriculum but also a good learning environment and a community. I thought Frisbee Dogs was a great addition to my current school’s “Spirit Week” last year. We have Spirit Week events, faculty and student retreats, even Grandparents Day to foster community and remind ourselves that education is not just about the classroom.

Before coming to this school, I’d had a few encounters with self-selected groups of students and they were all wonderful. I worked as an SAT instructor for Kaplan. I taught conversational English to high school students in Hong Kong. I even taught Sunday School to middle school students in my family’s church. Self-selected students know why they are there (in the classroom) and are more likely to take responsibility for their education. It is for that reason that I take the somewhat radical view that we should not have compulsory education in this country. We quickly went from little free, public education to much mandatory schooling. True change in education will not happen with the police, vice-principals, teachers, and parents strong-arming the children into classrooms. If the students bring themselves to the classroom, then they’re ready to learn.

So, here I am at a private school, taking the time to learn from experience, from my fellow English department members and from the students. Suddenly, in a community where learning (not paperwork or discipline) is the primary concern, I can remind myself of the theoretical principles of quality teaching we talked so often about at my graduate school of education. I’ve always had a heart for education and a passion for teaching. Honestly, though, in recent years, I’ve gone back and forth between wanting to teach for the rest of my life (teaching and students—yay!) and quitting altogether in order to get a desk job (grading papers—boo!). I don’t know where I’m headed. I love this community—the opportunity I have to teach wonderful students, work with supportive fellow faculty members, and have the educational luxuries I’d always dreamed about when I used to teach five classes (of 20-28 students per class), supervise two study halls a day, and have to plan my bathroom breaks.

The idea of schools having more money instead of better teachers sounds counter-intuitive, but there are numerous ways we benefit from a large endowment and a tuition- and donation-driven school. Faculty and staff are reimbursed for expenses. Students have to purchase books—so the books are less likely to be in bad condition, and the students can write and take notes in their books. Technology is readily available to students and faculty. Faculty can significantly cut down on “meetings” as well as stay in touch with each other better through the use of email. We have retreats, etc.