School days

I have many memories of my twenty-nine years of teaching. A good many of them are pleasant memories. I know I was able to make a difference in many of my student’s lives. My philosophy was that teaching the child to be a responsible person was far more important that teaching them the steps of mitosis (cell division). Learning to take responsibility for one’s actions will take a person much further in life. I also learned that the responsible student became the successful student. It was a win/win situation.
As the years progressed however, the state standardized testing took over the schools. We were teaching the test - only. I found myself teaching reading in my science classes. I was teaching math, which wasn’t a very big stretch since we did use so much of it. But teaching the test did more devastating things than take away from the science curriculum. The message with this test was that if the child did not do well on the test, it was the teacher’s fault. The parent and child held no responsibility. It was the student.
Along these lines, the administration also changed. At one curriculum meeting I attended, I was shocked to listen to one of the new administrators debunking the "bell curve" to replace it with the ‘j curve." Most of the students would make "A’s" and "B’s" with very few (read no) failures. Her rationale was something like this: this is the generation who will be in charge when I am retired, and I want them to be able to handle the job."
What? They are functionally illiterate, but they feel good about themselves because they never failed. It seems the administration forgot how you get a good self image. It isn’t bestowed on you like a title. You have to work to get it. If a teacher "gave" more than 5% "F’s," they were called into the principal’s office and asked what they were going to do to solve the problem. So you rigged grades. I understand that now the teachers cannot give a grade less than 50. If no work was turned in, the student gets a 50. How would that fly in your workplace?
Dealing with some of the parents was quite interesting. I understand wanting to be supportive of your child. I certainly was, but some of them were a little misguided. One of the more memorable things that I experienced happened to my best friend about ten years ago. We had a fire drill. This leads to organized chaos. The students just see it as a chance to be out of class, not a serious learning situation. D was bringing her class back into the building. One boy picked up a handful of gravel and threw it at his classmates. D called his father who said he would talk to the boy. The next day, D had a message to call the father. He told her "Mrs. X, you didn’t see what you thought you saw. I spoke with my son, and he denies doing that. He never lies to me." I always thought I would like to sell that man some swamp land!
Good teachers are there to try to make their students successful, both in the subject and in life. They are the ones to champion successes that student makes more than anyone else. Sometimes the teacher knows the student better than anyone else. There is so much written about poor teachers now the good ones are not allowed to teach their students so they will learn. There is a lot of rhetoric about learning styles and the like, but what the students is getting is a "cookie cutter" curriculum - and they better fit it.