In this fiscal climate, we’re looking for inexpensive fixes in education. Money helps to improve salaries and school infrastructure, but there’s really only one educational measure that matters: Are our own children happy and challenged?
Challenging students and making them happy should not be difficult for any good teacher. There are two keys to achieving this desired result: Teachers need to like children and look forward to each day with them, and they need to treat every student and every class as “gifted.” That costs very little.
My experience is limited to one school district, Fairfax County Public Schools, which has no problem getting books and other basic materials for the classroom. What I say is predicated on the assumption that each teacher has the basics for a learning environment.
Given the basics, teachers should ignore the instructions of principals, unless they’re about school policy. Their goals are different from yours. It’s also best to ignore what teachers say about their experience with your students. Each year is a new slate, and some children can change at astonishing rates. Don’t remind students that you know a former teacher or their older brother or sister. They want to be judged as though they’ve appeared in your classroom for the first time in the history of the universe.
This is the most important part: Treat every class as though they are privileged. Nearly 20 years ago, I arranged to have my regular American literature class attend a performance of Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories at the George Mason University Center for the Arts. I signed up a few parents on back-to-school night as chaperones.
Every student told me they had never gone on a field trip before. “That’s just for ‘gifted and talented’ students, isn’t it?” They were puzzled, surprised and pleased. The parents loved the idea: Finally, a “regular” class where something “special” was going to happen!
We went to the performance, and my class was the best behaved of any sitting in the balcony. If students chatted with a neighbor, they got “the look” from one of the parents, who were much more strict than I was. After the performance, we visited the GMU student union and food court, where students told me they felt like they were in college. Score!
Of course, one field trip does not a curriculum make, but there’s no reason all our students can’t read Emily Dickinson, Billy Collins (American poet laureate 2001-03) and Zora Neale Hurston, just like the advanced classes do. Interdisciplinary courses will pique their interest as well: Imagine studying a difficult 19th-century novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, along with a unit on the landscape and portraiture of the period, plus the thematic connections among literature, art and American Romantic composers. That is designed to light a fire under any student who complains that “school is boring.”
Teachers have the power to make students come alive. Shake up the curriculum, line the parents up on your side on back-to-school night, and schools will improve with little extra expense or resources. Above all — remember that students are all that’s important. If students are happy, administrators will look kindly on your unconventional classroom methods.
Erica Jacobs, whose column appears Wednesday, teaches at George Mason University. E-mail her at [email protected].
