A Teacher's Journal 36: The Next Great Crisis

Each new week seems to bring headlines highlighting a major flaw that needs to be addressed by teachers immediately. In the past month alone, I've read articles about how schools are overlooking boys, flunking in math and science instruction, neglecting to teach healthy living habits to an increasingly obese America, and failing to close the achievement gap between rich and poor students.

My favorite recent crisis: a passionate plea from an Atlanta author for schools to begin emphasizing the basics of bathroom hygiene with our students. To do so, he argued, would be a simple and logical task for teachers who already have access to and influence over America's youth.

The constant state of panic over education has just plain worn me out!

And that surprises me because I work in an incredibly accomplished school in one of the top urban districts in America. Wake County's SAT scores are well above the state and national average, the number of students in advanced placement classes has risen consistently year after year, and over 90 percent of our students demonstrate mastery on their end of grade exams.

Clearly, good things are happening in our system. Because of our proven success, teachers in our system should be able to move forward in confidence.

Yet warning bells are constantly sounding across our country. Activists demand a "renewed focus" on the part of educators and administrators. Elected officials campaign on promises to "reform education" and "restore America's competitive edge again." And parents fret over the fear that their child is being academically neglected.

And where does the responsibility for addressing each of these issues inevitably seem to end up falling? In the true spirit of the trickle-down theory, right on the shoulders of classroom teachers!

Now don't get me wrong. I can see the value in each of the areas of focus listed above. Who would argue against closing the achievement gap or teaching healthy living habits? Even I would love to see conscientious students with an awareness of the importance of restroom hygiene!

What I am saying is that bearing up under the weight of each new national crisis is becoming more and more difficult for me each year. As a close friend once said, we're being asked to work towards goals that are "simultaneously important and impossible to reach."

Subtly, the message is being sent that if teachers would work harder, America's "educational crisis" could be solved. If only all teachers were "highly qualified," we'd lead the world again. If only all teachers held "advanced degrees in the subjects they were teaching," we wouldn't fall behind China, Japan and India in engineers and scientists. If only we could recruit "our best and our brightest" to our nation's classrooms, no child would be left behind.

I think successfully educating all children in America requires something more than sounding warning bells and asking teachers to "pull up their boot straps" time and again. I wonder if we will ever be willing to significantly rethink how "school" is done in our country?

What if we extended the school day or year to take into account the ever expanding curriculum that we expect students to master? What if we experimented with electronic learning to extend opportunities or to provide remediation? What if we emphasized critical thinking rather than standardized testing in our assessment programs? What if we lowered class sizes and increased access to technology for all students?

What if we provided more time for teachers to collaborate with one another or to master new instructional strategies and skills? What if we raised teaching salaries to compete with the private sector jobs that lure accomplished educators away from our classrooms? What if we created a menu of compensation packages that appealed to teachers at different points in their careers or stratified the profession, providing opportunities to advance?

What if we renewed America's war on poverty and guaranteed economic opportunity for all of our citizens?

As a teacher and a citizen, I believe in our public schools and their mission.

I just can't handle the next great crisis alone!