Educational Series, Pt. II - More Creativity, Less Bureaucracy

In Part 1, I talked about how teachers can impact our career paths and lives, for good or ill, just by how well they engage their students and make the material interesting. In this post, I want to talk about how the education system is hamstringing teachers from doing just that.

I mentioned in Part 1 that my HS physics teacher had us make holograms--we each got to bring an object from home so they were all different. During a different topic, one student shot a video explaining the science behind playing pool and making trick shots. I also had English teachers that allowed us to choose a book that interested us, and figure out our own topic for the paper we wrote on that book. I remember projects where we broke into groups that each created their own religion. I wrote a huge paper talking about War of the Worlds in book, film, and television form. I'll never forget the group in our class who explained connections between The Beatles' "Hey, Jude" and Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure. I recreated a poster from WWII that I colored with the circles from a hole punch. My friend and I sang a Tom Lehrer song for our US History class as a project on a related topic. My calculus teacher had us do something extra each week that was math-related, but could be a painting, a poem, a paragraph about a famous mathematician, or just extra problems. Whatever interested us.

In French class, we would play "Ou est Bubba?". Students would leave the room, the students in the room helped hide Bubba, and then the other students came back in and had to use their directional and objective vocabulary to ask questions to find him. We also learned to sing Happy Birthday and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in French and gave 5-minute talks on topics from French magazines or papers. We learned students made harder test questions than teachers when everyone was allowed to submit one question for the final test on a particular subject.

When I was in middle school, I read and wrote about The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. We dressed up and did a video about part of A Wrinkle In Time. We had journals we wrote in weekly, completely private between us and the teacher, but we could share if we wanted. Some prompted writing, some whatever we wanted. Halfway through one year, our entire grade was broken up into 3 groups, each of which created its own civilization. We created languages, decided how they lived, and all aspects of the culture. Then we created artifacts. Each group buried their artifacts. Each group then excavated a different group's artifacts, and then made guesses about the civilization on the basis of their interpretation of the objects they uncovered. This project covered art, science, math, language, history, physical activity, anthropology, and archeology, and engaged our creativity, all while requiring us to work as a group, but delegate to smaller groups because we couldn't all do everything.

My brother was attempting to teach his students about motion in two directions. So, he said that he would take them all out to the track with eggs. They would stand in the bleachers and he would walk along the track. He would give them the height they were at and how fast he was walking. They would calculate when to drop the egg to hit him. One student raised his hand: "Are you going to wear a raincoat?" My brother answered: "Would it be any fun if I wore a raincoat?" He had one egg hit his shoe. That was as close as anyone got. But they all gained a much better understanding of the problem and remembered better when the test came because the learning was memorable.

What all of these projects had in common was a personal buy-in. We had the ability to choose something that interested us. To make a project our own. To learn for ourselves and teach our fellow students in ways that had meaning to us. Teachers and students alike were thinking outside the box. Things like this can make learning fun.

Unfortunately, teachers aren't given the freedom to do as many interesting projects and lessons. All classes have to have the same lesson plans. All teachers are aching the same subject have to do it the same way. Writing out on the board the objective of a particular lesson is more important than making sure the students actually learn it. My brother used to do experiments in his physics classes. When experiments were no longer allowed (let that sink in for a moment!!), he began having "demonstrations." Soon, however, those too were nixed. But that's what science--particularly physics--is. Looking at how things work in the real world, making predictions about what will happen, and testing to see if you're right. If physics is just math equations and words, it's not going to stick in your head or make as much sense. But the school shut down the "demonstrations" because it wasn't fair that some kids got them and others didn't. Being able to show that the teachers completed all the useless items non-educators decided were important became how teachers were graded and evaluated.

My brother-in-law avoids some of this hassle by working at a private school. He has more control but makes less money. I had let him know about a job opening at a public school is a decent district. He conceded it would likely pay better, but he didn't want to deal with the increased bureaucracy that would have come with it. This is good news for his students, but how many other good teachers are we running off? How many other people who would make great teachers are we scaring away from the profession? My brother and brother-in-law are both second career teachers. They fought against their "education" classes and they actively fight the systems that they are hampering their ability to engage and teach their students. But how long can we expect good teachers to do this before they burn out? How long can we expect to attract good talent into the teaching pool when there is low pay and heavy amounts of bureaucratic nonsense?

We need more creativity and less bureaucracy. We need to stop discouraging and prohibiting topics and projects that enhance learning. It's okay that not every teacher teaches the exact same way. Students don't all learn the same way. When teachers have the opportunity to engage with their students, they can see what's working. They can fine-tune a topic they've taught a million times to better address the needs of the students in front of them.

My friend's daughter was in third grade when a certain math topic was taught in fourth grade. That year, the Board of Education decided it needed to be taught in the third grade. So, the next year, it was. And all those third graders who had expected to get it in fourth grade didn't get it because it wasn't in their curriculum anymore. It was a fifth-grade science teacher who discovered this when that crop of kids reached him. He took the time to teach his students what they needed to know and *ought* to have learned previously, but for lack of foresight on the part of the curriculum committee. If he hadn't been allowed the flexibility to do that, he couldn't have taught them anything. His topic necessitated an understanding of material his students didn't have. He could have thrown his hands up and done nothing. He could have simply taught his material and ignored that the students had no way to learn because they were missing the math. Instead, he taught the kids what they needed to know, in a subject that wasn't his to teach, because he knew his job was to educate and that was the only way it would happen.

School policies need to empower teachers to adjust their lesson plans. Make sure kids actually know a topic before moving on to something that builds on that knowledge instead of rushing ahead to a topic because otherwise, we won't get everything in, even though they don't yet have the capacity to learn that new topic yet anyway. Let teachers be unique. Let them teach in ways that embrace their strengths. When teachers are engaged and loving what they do, students get swept up by it. They see the genuine interest. They want to learn. Cookie-cutter education doesn't serve the interests of the students, the teachers, or society. It only lines the pockets of the companies advocating for that system, making materials to teach that way, and creating and selling testing to show whether students are learning that way. Stop worrying about a few bad teachers. We have never needed testing to figure out who these teachers are. Schools always know who they are. Principals, parents, and students can always name them. Don't sacrifice the education of the students in an effort to make all subjects the same so they can be compared as if in a double-blind experiment. Let everyone's creative juices flow--teachers and students alike. Learning will occur. Knowledge will increase. And everyone can have a little fun. It really is a win-win.