Happy New Year!

For everyone else in the world a new year begins on January 1st, but for anyone in education the new year begins the first day of school. Many children are eagerly awaiting the return to school with brand new backpacks and shiny new shoes. I remember as a girl I would double check all of my school supplies and pick out my first day of school outfit. I can still remember what I wore on the first day of all 4 years of high school. I loved school - I still love it.

I love the concept of learning, teaching, and discovery that happens at school. I love the idea of people shaping and expanding the minds of children, giving them tools for independence and understanding.

It makes me sad that school focuses on test taking, the importance of being able to take a multiple choice test successfully by disproving each incorrect answer and "getting the jist" of each silly paragraph. We think we are instructing children in the depth of curriculum but really we are teaching them a very limited scope of applied skills. Children today are not critical thinkers, they are over analyzers. We are teaching them to distrust their reasoning skills, and waste thought and time on proving why nonsensical answers are wrong.

I had a parent tell me this week that their daughter still uses a math chart to help her solve multiplication facts, and this makes her feel self conscious in front of her peers. I told them that the nice thing about that would be in just a few years learning to use a simple tool such as a calculator would alleviate all that needless worry. The teacher about jumped over the table at me and said - "Well we are not going to tell her that now!!! She cant use one on the TAKS test!" Her parents agreed - "Yes we want her to know how to do it all by hand!"

Dear Lord, When did the TAKS test become a chapter written in the Bible?

And when did such bullS**t become tolerable? I had to compose myself and did not allow myself the enjoyment of demanding that both teacher and parents demonstrate the efficiency and importance of knowing how to do it by hand by asking them to multiply 29083645 * 8479734. While I simply typed the numbers into my calculator. Really??? It's the equivalent of teaching kids how to run a telephone operating board to understand how the connections really work - when all you really need to know is how to program your contacts in your cell phone list.

Kids are technological learners. It is STUPID to teach them tedious and time consuming tasks that as adults they will NEVER use!! A magic 7 strategy for long division is STUPID when a calculator does it in seconds.

Maybe if we devoted more time in schools to teaching children lessons that are useful, encourage critical thinking, expanding creativity, and expressing their own ideas we may find that test scores don't even matter ----because our students would be such smart and talented thinkers they would perform spectacularly despite our best attempts to dumb them down with useless strategies that are easily replaced by simple technology.

So to every fellow educator - have a great start to the year and be the embodiment of stretching the boundaries of mediocrity and setting the highest of expectations for our future learners.