Grandchildren, Teaching and Reform

Our grandson, Dylan Smock, a 17 year-old student at the Athenian School, Danville, California, is in Death Valley for three weeks, subjected to relentless desert storms, challenging team endeavors and three days alone. A time for clarity and courage, relationships and self-examination, leading with a moral, as well as a mechanical, compass. We’ll join our daughter April and family for the infamous “run-in” from the Athenian Wilderness Experience on March 29. Read more about this astonishing program on page 63 of Leadership Capacity for Lasting School Improvement.

This past week, we visited our granddaughter Keely Lambert at Chico State. She is majoring in design, loves philosophy, and is growing in confidence. Then we were on to the University of Oregon where our granddaughter, Chloe Smock (yes, Dylan’s sister), is majoring in education and dance. She hopes to teach young children, an undertaking that is close to our hearts. We were thrilled when she called as we were returning home on Friday to say that she had been accepted into the highly-competitive (isn’t that great to hear–high standards and expectations for teachers?) education program.

I could not help wondering about Chloe’s future as I continue to read about the new education reform initiatives. While I admire much of the President and Secretary Duncan’s desires to revise and improve (and throw out) much of No Child Left Behind–sighting the drawbacks that we all observed–the Draconian measures for low-performing schools are troublesome. Randi Weingarten’s words today (NY Times and SF Chronicle) that teachers must bear 100% of the responsibility with 0% of the authority may be too close to the truth. Tomorrow we’ll hear the details.

Will Chloe, along with thousands of other teachers, find themselves colonized, infantilized, by the lack of opportunities to exercise discretion, creativity and authority over their own work? A lack of freedom to reach out to each other and solve problems? A principal who thinks that power is a zero-sum game? This is too painful to ponder. My next blog will discuss transformation through teacher liberation.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 15th, 2010 at 5:06 pm and is filed under Education, Family. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.