As an English teacher, I believe in the usefulness of metaphors. Students always perk up when I say before a test, “Psych yourself up — pretend you can hear a coach cheering you on!” Or I might encourage them to judge a difficult poem the way they judge a new rap song: “You can’t catch all the words, but you think it’s good, so you listen again and again until you understand it.”
I have spent the last two days in airports, waiting on tarmacs in planes that never left the ground, and then waiting in lines to be rescheduled. The waits were unreasonably long — three hours in one line where a single agent was assigned to rebook more than 200 passengers.
I therefore had plenty of time to think: Do schools also keep clients in the dark about what’s happening, and ask them to wait interminably while a ludicrously small number of people attempt to meet their needs? I have heard from quite a few frustrated parents whose requests on behalf of their children have become like an airport line: Too few people in a position to meet their needs, and no helpful information forthcoming.
In Fairfax County Public Schools, parents can petition principals or counselors to change a child’s curriculum or class assignment, but staffing is not sufficient to meet everyone’s requests. The first response is “It can’t be done,” but persistence often pays off.
School rules are often merely guidelines. “Any child with more than three unexcused absences will fail a course” has as many exceptions as there are parents to appeal it. Attendance is important, and there must be rules to enforce that, but teachers know that failing a student for unexcused absences is unenforceable upon parent appeal.
Similarly, rules may state that a student can’t drop an Advanced Placement class until the end of the quarter, or can’t take an AP class until certain conditions are met. However, in the three high schools where I taught, exceptions were made all the time.
Yet there are too few counselors to accommodate all individual requests — much like airline counters are not staffed for rebooking an airplane full of frustrated passengers. As we wait and wait, is there anything that would make the situation better?
If only someone would speak the truth. If someone had said to the long passenger line, “There are 200 of you waiting to be rebooked; go home or call from cell phones. This line will take 3 hours, and you probably won’t get a flight out today,” we would have known the score.
Similarly, parents could be told, “You are welcome to request a change, but we might not be able to accommodate it. We hire teachers based on numbers the first day of school, and can’t hire and lay off based on shifts of students from one class to the next. Give the situation some time, and we can revisit your request later, if necessary.” Hearing the truth from someone in authority would give the situation honesty and even dignity. It might not change the wait time, but we would no longer feel that no one is listening!
What kids are reading
This weekly column will look at lists of books kids are reading in various categories, including grade level, book genre and data from booksellers. Information on the books below came from the Amazon.com list of children’s books and are listed in order of popularity.
Books on airplane travel
1. “Going on a Plane” by Anne Civardi and Stephen Cartwright (Ages 4-8)
2. “The Noisy Airplane Ride” by Mike Downs and David Gordon (Ages 4-8)
3. “Lisa’s Airplane Trip” by Anne Gutman and George Hallensleben (Ages 4-8)
4. “Airport” by Byron Barton (Ages 4-8)
5. “Flying over the USA: Airplanes in American Life” by Martin Sandler
(Ages 9-12)
6. “Amazing Airplanes (Amazing Machines)” by Tony Mitton and Ant Parker
(Ages 4-8)
7. “Plane Rides (Let’s Go)” by Pam Walker, Mark Beyer, Thaddeus Harden and MaryJane Wojciechowski (Baby-preschool)
8. “DK Big Book of Airplanes” by Anne Millard (Ages 4-8)
9. “Let’s Go by Airplane” by Anders Hanson (Ages 4-8)
10. “The Airplane (Inventions That Shaped the World)” by Nancy Robinson Masters (Ages 9-12)
