Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Teaching requires the spirit.

I don't think there is any job that needs daily worthiness to receive guidance from the Holy Spirit more than a teacher. A teacher needs inspiration in all his/her communications with students, both past as well as present. This is necessary in order to communicate accurately, without misunderstanding, and to do it in a manner that will be accepted and remembered in the best light.

It is monumentally difficult to always have just the right answer, keep all things in mind about the student and what is and will be going on. There are so many things to balance and keep in remembrance, that it is humanly impossible for a mere mortal to do well without help.

I have found that when I keep myself worthy of God's guidance, things come together better, students accept and understand better, and we enjoy each other better. Things that I never thought of or planned serendipitously mesh or blend together for a much better experience than I could ever have planned on my own. When I get myself in tune with Him and do all I can to further His will, I become a much better teacher. The resulting feelings bring peace and appreciation for that help!

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Saying smaller school results are mixed is inaccurate.

Recent media articles have given a mixed message about the successes of smaller schools. The trouble is two fold. First, smaller schools were never a guarantee of success. It only made success more likely – probably more likely than any other factor changeable from outside the family. Some studies say that the only higher predictor of success than school size was socioeconomics, i.e. the family. With smaller schools, success becomes possible for people who will work to create the right setting for learning to happen. Big schools make that much more difficult.

Second, most attempts at creating smaller schools have not been truly smaller schools or they changed other things in the process. Most attempts at creating smaller schools have been what used to be called “schools within a school.” These is where students continue to come to the same big school but are grouped together by a common theme in smaller “communities” within the same school. Though it has been called creating smaller schools, it is not. It is just another way of organizing a large school.

Some have even reorganized a community of schools so that, for instance, all of the sixth grade students go to one building with other grades also similarly grouped. This is also NOT creating small schools, because the magic of smaller schools is in lowering the grade level size. Smaller grade levels make it possible for all students of varying interests, at the same age to know each other well, and makes real collaboration between teachers less difficult and cumbersome.

A school of 600 6th graders would be a huge school because the grade level size is so big. A school of the same number of students grades K-6 would be a moderately sized school, because there would be somewhat less than 100 students per grade. If a school was a K-12 school with that same number of students, it would truly be a small school, again, because of the number of students per grade level rather than per building.

Conclusions that smaller schools have mixed results are not accurate, because they aren’t judging real smaller schools. They are evaluating reorganized large schools. Schools within a school are what have mixed results – not smaller schools.

Real smaller schools work. Pretending to create them confuses people. The research is already there. When will we listen and act accordingly?!

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Class Discipline

A well disciplined class requires a well self-disciplined teacher.

Friday, May 28, 2010

Public Schools not Government Schools

I believe we have confused the term “public education” with “government schools.” Public education is not necessarily government education. It has just become that by government takeover.

Public education was created in the 1600s by the Puritans. It predates this country. Indeed it helped create the New England common people who were educated and independent enough to start the revolution that created our country!

For the first 250-300 years public education was NOT government education. It was a publicly held, locally owned corporation where the local property owners (taxpayers) were the shareholders. They controlled education. This changed when, first the school districts in growing cities became big. They became the flag ships that everyone looked to. Their property values (and thus tax revenues) increased rapidly, while the rural, smaller districts did not. The smaller districts coveted the revenues and begged for state revenue sharing. That led to state control, which might not be so bad, but that led in the 1960 Presidential election to Kennedy blaming schools for Soviet space advances and at the same time promising federal funding for them. That is what won the election for him, and THAT is when the change to becoming government schools started. False philosophies had been around for 50 years and more. They had some limited impact, but did not prevail until the national takeover began.

Public education isn’t the villain. The villain is government intrusion, which has been bought with tax revenue. Even the union isn’t the fault. It is rather an indication and complicator of the problem. The cancerous philosophy that government can guarantee success has grown exponentially in the last 50 years. It is destroying self responsibility and initiative. It also promotes and protects false philosophies. Actually it is amazing how good the schools are given the situation. That is a reflection of parents and teachers who have held to correct beliefs they grew up with and learned in their families and churches. Otherwise the schools would be much worse, and are in some places.

A community coming together to do the education of their children is not the problem. The problem is national interference and take over. Eliminate that, including restoring districts to community size, and education would be more likely to do a better job.

http://www.constitution.org/primarysources/deluder.html
http://www.archives.nysed.gov/edpolicy/research/res_essay_kennedy_genaid.shtml
http://www.smallerschools.org/