By John Louis Meeks, Jr.
It is my job to help rescue 90,000 children. It is our duty to save them not from any physical or medical danger, but from something that affects their lives in a much deeper way.
This is how many students fail to complete high school every year and I attended a town hall meeting at WJCT where teachers from across Florida converged to discuss ways to keep students from being left behind.
Moderated by Al Letson, host of NPR’s State of the REunion, this important Forum on Public Education is going to be broadcast statewide on public television stations onMay 24 at 9PM.
WJCT President and CEO Michael Boylan said, “We cannot allow another generation ofour young people to fall through the cracks.”
Stan Cleiland, WJCT director of corporate communications, referred quite accurately to this event as a ‘communion of souls.’ Participant surveys taken before the taping helped to drive the discussion with frank questions and answers about how to resolve this pressing matter.
I was most impressed by how busses carried teachers from Tallahassee, Tampa and other cities to spend their weekend sharing a diverse array of opinions.
Over the course of the taping, they also responded via text to informal polls that asked for their view points on questions like, “Do you have any students at risk ofdropping out?” 70 percent of the attendees responded yes.
The warning signs of dropping out from school are evident long before a student walks away from education. Students who are more than two grade levels behind, are chronically absent from school, lose interest in learning and are labeled as disfluent in reading are the ones who raised red flags.
Notice that these factors are largely centered around what is often beyond the control of administrators and teachers.
“We function within the realm of a greater society,” said a Hillsborough County teacher who said that absent students are the ones who need education the most but cannot be reached if they are not in the classroom on a regular basis.
And, life outside of the classroom, is what drives student’s ability to embrace academia. For example, before second grade, students require 30 minutes a day to learn how to read and they require at least two hours a day after second grade. The problem is that most middle and high schools are only afforded an hour a day for reading instruction. This problem is compounded if parents are unable to create an atmosphere at home for students to extend their learning.
In these circumstances, students are often on their own. Letson shared his own experience where his teachers wrote him off but hehad to motivate himself to make progress. A successful playwright, poet and broadcaster, Letson added that he was able to accomplish his goals without attending college. This helped segue the forum into a talk about society’s emphasis on directing students to college.
AHillsborough County teacher shared his disappointment in the college track forall students, saying, “We look down on students who want to work with theirhands. We stigmatize vocational-technical education.”
As someone who paid through the nose to repair a faulty toilet on a weekend when I lived in Delaware, I have to agree that we do not value those who are skilled laborers and we assume that their work is less than that of someone with a college degree.
What we want to avoid, said another participant, is tracking minority students away from college and into vocational programs simply because of past thinking that reserved higher education for white and/or upper class students. A little more cultural awareness and increased rigor in all academic programs, however, would go a long way toward helping keep students interested in their academic careers.
Florida’steacher of the year and finalist for national teacher of the year, Alvin Davis, cautioned the forum that college preparation is essential because none of thenewly created jobs in the national economy rely on technical skills. He gave as an example of how garbage workers are using more automation and need fewer people to do the same work that a high school graduate could expect to do without post-secondary education.
The conversation shifted toward the bane of many educators’ existence – the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT).
Another Hillsborough County teacher said, “The extreme high stakes testing plays a rolein the dropout crisis.”
Because of state mandates, students who do not perform well on FCAT are ‘punished’ by being deprived of electives that were originally designed to teach the whole student. What is forgotten, though, is that arts and the humanities enrich the learning experience and can sometimes give children something to enjoy and look forward to. Instead, many of them are herded into intensive reading and math classes that were created from good intentions but turn education into drudgery.
“They hate education because they are over tested,” said one Duval County teacher.
Paramount among the concerns was the teachers’ belief that they were being spread too thin by varying expectations of them to meet the needs of children eligible for Mensa on one end and children who do not speak a word of English on the other end.
The most visceral feelings were reserved for the leadership in Tallahassee. Davis said quite accurately that everyone’san ‘expert’ on education simply because they went to school. I believe that this kind of micromanagement without regard to the resources or needs of students will doom our schools to failure if we do not engage our learning communities in the process for improvement.
“We have to come together as one unit – one voice,” he said.
This was a Saturday morning well-spent for me. I look forward to seeing the final product then it is broadcast later in May.
John Louis Meeks, Jr. has been teaching social studies in Duval County Public Schools since 2002. Meeks is a former teacher of the year (2005) who freelance writes about educational issues.
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