Regrets

I spoke recently with a retiring teacher. She was emptying her filing cabinet of teaching materials she collected over her over 20 years of teaching.

She said she was filled with sadness seeing all of the creative projects and activities she was never able to do with the children. Every minute of spare time was absorbed in meeting excessive paperwork demands and just trying to keep up with the excessively heavy workload.

Right now she said in a classroom of 30 grade 7 students, she has about 5 who can't read at a grade 1 level, about 10 that read at a grade 5 level, another 10 at grade level and the remaining 5 are above grade level. She is expected to teach the curriculum materials to each student individually at their level. That requires having at least 4 different versions of each assignment or test. Textbooks are written at only one level. That is one of 5 classes she has during the day. Excessive paperwork is the reality of "individualized instruction."

Classroom management is also a challenge as several kids in her class are labeled as ADHD and some as learning disabled and one requires all assignments to be printed on coloured paper. That last requirement means that she must re-load the paper tray of the photocopier to print just one test.

Assignments and test must also be marked regularly and with 5 classes of about 30 students, so her entire evening almost every evening is spent marking papers and writing assignments.

Unfortunately the creative projects like labs or outdoor explorations get set aside. The creative things that might engage students are not evaluated as plusses on teacher evaluations nor is the material tested on standardized exams.

What matters to the bureaucracy is the number or entries in the teachers mark book and that there are no zeros in the mark book. Ridiculously unrealistic expectations from bureaucrats who spend no time in classrooms is destroying education.

Can a new premier make a difference?

So far, so good. It looks like Redford is going to support education in the province.

"On Sunday morning Redford repeated her promise to reverse the Stelmach government's $107 million funding cut to education."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/story/2011/10/03/edmonton-redford-education-premier.html

Rural communities have already sent their teachers away, will they be able to get them back again?

Education Act

The Alberta Governments proposed Education Act which will replace the outdated School Act.

Highlights of the new Education Act include increasing the age of compulsory attendance to 17 from 16 years to encourage more students to complete their high school education.

The reason for this is to reduce the shamefully high drop-out rate in Alberta. Making school mandatory for the few kids who see little to no value in education is a waste. There are some kids who know what they want at an early age. They want to go work at mom or dads business or they have some sort of work lined up. Forcing them day after day to sit in a classroom to simply fulfill a government requirement is not likely to help them complete their high school.

If the government wants to encourage kids to finish high school, pay for college or University. Free post secondary education would be a great incentive to stay in school.

First Day of School

I know scheduling the school year is a tricky task because the government mandates certain holidays but not all. Students are required to complete a certain number of hours before writing diploma exams and so on.

However why is it, the bureaucracy as a whole can't decide the first day of school should be after the labour day long weekend. I don't want to argue or debate about who is at fault, the board or the provincial government. I don't see why everyone can't agree this is a sensible decision.

It is particularly true in St. Paul because of the LRA Rodeo. Very few children are going to be ready to return to school with rodeo activities happening. I think we should set a provincial rule, school should not begin until after the long weekend in September and work the rest of the schedule around that.

Should technology be banned?

Students will be returning to the classroom soon, leaving behind their facebooks and social networks to take up research and mathematics.

Personally, I don't believe social networks, cell phones and other modern communication devices should be banned from schools. I know I am in the minority as an educator. I agree they are distractions and may temporally attract student attention in the wrong direction but this is true of almost anything.

A pretty girl or a cute guy walking down the street will distract. A nice car will capture plenty of attention. In the 1960's Edmonton Public (and many other cities) built schools with no windows in an attempt to reduce these distractions. So children sat for hours in classrooms with no natural light, not able to see a tree or a snowflake. In the winter in Canada often it's dark when students go to school and dark when they get out. With out windows, children barely saw sunlight. The idea was soon discarded as silly and we went back to building schools with windows.

We are making a similar mistake today by assuming that if we ban communication devices and other technological distractions, students will pay attention to their lessons and learn better. So teachers, TA's and principals rome the halls looking for children texting their friend or calling their parents. Their phones are confiscated because this is a "no phone" zone. Although teachers are adults and should be completely capable of having a phone and using it properly, they too are banned from having phones. Both teachers and students continue to sneak phones into schools, hiding around corners to communicate with the outside world.

Perhaps it would be better to accept technology and teach kids how to use them properly and respectfully. If a student is abusing cell phone privileges, it will annoy the other students in the class as much as the instructor. Peer pressure is a powerful behavior moderator. If not, then the teacher should address the inappropriate behavior not the communication device.

Technology is a wonderful educator, I believe both teachers and the education system is doing a good job of using technology in education. However fear of distractions, holds back the entire system from making full use of technology.

A column worth reading

I believe we are more progressive than the U.S. in terms of our schools and digital content but this is still a good read.

"When we criticize students for making digital videos instead of reading “Gravity’s Rainbow,” we are blinding ourselves to the world as it is."

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/07/education-needs-a-digital-age-upgrade/?src=tp