Educational Discourse

First, I’d like to pass along some Pats on the back to people I’ve been reading over the past week or so. Kimberly Moritz at G-Town Talks has had some wonderful posts about setting rules and the whole decision making process within the school context. I know that a blog is good when it makes me sit back and reflect about what goes on within the walls of our school. While reflecting, I like to see what others are saying about the topic and found that Chris Lehman’s post added more for me to think about so another Pat goes that way.

My next Pat goes to Christian and Dan for their discussion about blogging and the reason to blog. As I read through Christian’s original, I again sat back to reflect. What do I do now? Two great ideas that I need to spend some time thinking about and not an evil twin in sight to take on some of the work. I knew I should have quit looking at my Google Reader right then, hit the Mark all read button and just let things go from there. But NO! I just couldn’t do that. So continue reading did I.
My final Pat goes to Dean Shareski for his question/blog about making mistakes and owning up to them. Whew! Now I’m really reflecting – maybe evening glowing

While doing some driving to and from a meeting tonight, I thought about these various ideas and how they impact me as an administrator and teacher. The meeting was about setting up our new School Community Council that has been part of the amalgamation process here in Saskatchewan. Now, we had local boards or PTAs or some sort of council before but now every school has a SCC. While at the meeting, we were discussing various aspects of the school and ideas about the SCC. As I listened, a skill I am honing, I began to realize that many of our own parents do not really know what we do at school. They have some notions but these are sifted and distorted through the information they get or overhear from their children or things they pick up during discussions with other parents, usually over coffee. However, they really don’t know what school is all about. This immediately got me thinking about what Kimberly was saying about schools, rules, teachers and the principal.

As things are changing at breakneck speed and schools are trying to somehow sift through the seemingly endless amounts of information, promotions and regulations, finding time to teach to students in a spectrum of ranges and deal with increasingly diverse social considerations, there is a gap between what parents understand is going on in schools and what is going on in schools. Now, I don’t want to blame or point fingers. This is one area that just hasn’t always been at the forefront of what schools do even though we know that parents are vital to what we do. Parents send childrent to school, teachers teach the said children, parents get said child back at end of day and for holidays, occasionally coming to the school for interviews, discussions, receiving newsletters and phone calls and, supposedly, knowing what is happening.

As we begin to discuss how schools are not serving our students with the changes that are taking place, had we better not bring the parents along? I know that some thinkers believe that adults won’t understand what is going on and we should just trust them but I believe that is just an easy way out and, as a parent, totally ridiculous. I believe that parents need to be informed about what it is we are trying to do. We see that things need to change and we are looking at doing that exact thing but, the rubber tree plant needs more ants!

As our group was discussing the various things that go on, I was aware that they did not fully understand that some of the things that are going on in our school are, in fact, very “cutting edgish” and that despite what we may want to do, we still must follow the mandates of the provincial curriculum and the school board. We need to clearly outline that, although we see something that may need some change, that change may not happen in the timeframe that we want and that changing may not bring about the desired or expected benefits we expected without changes taking place in other areas of the child’s social world. An example is the fact that in the two years since I have been principal, we have upgraded our lab and equipped classrooms with at least two computers, some with as many as four but teachers are still mostly using them for email reading and mark input. Without sustained renewal and staff development, we won’t move much further no matter how much we might see that things need to change. In fact, most parents don’t even know what exactly the students do with the computers within the school.

On the drive home, I realized that not only are we needing to change some of the student/learning paradigm but we also need to change the parent/learning paradigm and both need to receive our attention. Kids are going home saying they are bored, they don’t do anything in school, school has no relevance, etc. Parents, like the ones who are willing to take time to sit on SCC want to help the school to improve what is going on because they care about what their childrent are doing, for the most part. Yet, without some understanding of the changes, they really are unsure of what they can do or what the change might even look like and yet they know change needs to happen.

So how does this link to the whole idea of Teacher, Principal and rules? Well, considering the pace at which change is occurring all around us, we had better take time to bring parents along as we navigate this new and often murky change that we are doing. Many of the things that are being discussed, like ipods, cellphones and other digital devices, need to have input from parents so that we are all going in the same direction. Most parents don’t even realize their children have them at school or are texting each other instead of doodling or other things. And with the whole YouTube angry teacher thing, maybe we’d better have these discussions with parents BEFORE more things happen. I know that in some cases, the school will provide the conduct and it needs to be followed but for some other things, where change is having a greater impact, including parents might be the way to bring about some things faster.

This is where one of my passions lies. Creating schools that bring community together to help with the children. We can say we are “Open to Parents”, extending invitations through newsletters and notes home but, really, these are only tokens. Most of us realize that few parents will come but we can say “See, we invited them, they just didn’t show up.” Sorry, that just doesn’t work anymore. I can hear the crack of another paradigm shift. The whole idea of Web2.0 has to be more than just change with students or schools. It needs to be more than just student focused learning. Our parents are also having to embrace a change and for many, it is not easy. Maybe by sharing and working together in bringing about this change, the whole idea of “Home, School & Community” can become more than just a nice catchy slogan. Sure would beat having to deal with a parent who thinks that I made the rule on hats!