Moving around the room, I help to answer anxious questions by those fearful that their true knowledge may not be reflected by their test grade. In another room, students sit mesmerized in a world of castles and knights as a history teacher creates a long bygone era in the classroom of today. Down the hall, a guidance counselor is comforting a distraught teen about his future plans while a physical education teacher is bringing a smile to the face of one who has finally mastered a difficult and at one time thought to be impossible bodily feat.
The school nurse is treating a student who has become ill, and an assistant principal is meting out discipline to a teen who will hopefully learn from his mistakes. A special education teacher is instilling in a student a sense of accomplishment that means more than words can express, while young voices from the choir echo through the morning halls.
Upstairs, a math teacher gets a quiet feeling of satisfaction as a student’s face lights up in sudden understanding of a concept hitherto unknown. Across the hall, young scientists are guided through an experiment which opens vast new possibilities in their worlds. Next door, an art teacher brings out the creative possibilities that a shy teen had never thought she possessed, while down the hall a student feels what it would be like to truly live in another country by beginning to speak the language. All of this is happening at the same time on that brisk winter morning.
Think back for a moment to your own education. Think of that teacher, that administrator, that member of the support staff, that person you will never forget as long as you live. He or she is there in your mind.
Think of the quiet magic that that person created for you. Think of how that molded or changed your life forever.
Creating that magic, that learning, that experience is occurring everyday in our schools.
Then think of Billy and Susan, two students who hear their parents at the dinner table agreeing with that newspaper article, that politician, that neighbor who speaks so eloquently about how bad the schools are and how bad the teaching profession is today. Think about how Billy and Susan come to school with these ideas and then seek to fulfill this prophecy.
Then think of Andrew and Jennifer, whose parents disregard the school and teacher “bashers.” Think of these students coming to school fulfilling the prophecy that education is good, that learning is taking place in the classroom and school is a place of great importance in their lives.
What is wrong with education in America; you decide.
