Regulating the Personal Touch Out of the Schools

Since my work and personal life is one big (stagnant) blur right now, I'd like to use this post about -- as a jumping-off point for my own thoughts. Specifically I liked this quote from William James:

“The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.”

The school community has been on my mind a lot lately, and this quote reminded me of it as well. I've been thinking about what makes a good teacher, and particularly in a big public school system such as NYC, I think many of the best-teacher characteristics get either lost or

Two of my friends had to take what I'll call "best practices" exams in the past weeks, meaning tests designed to see if they knew what the approved response was for various situations in the educational system.

Not the best thing to do -- the officially approved thing to do.

I know guidelines like that get put in place because there are people who take the jobs and make wrong choices. But doesn't it take the spirit out of the teachers and administrators who are intelligent enough to look at the facts and make a right choice? Often there is a range of appropriate options. And a need to respond from your heart, not from a rule book.

Unfortunately choosing one Best Practice eliminates that range. It does eliminate the chance of employees picking from a certain range of wrong options, but we still hear about abuse and poor choices and lousy judgment calls. Not to mention apathy and a proclivity to choose the system over the individual.

My best teachers cared about ME. As an individual. My third-grade teacher, for example, had everyone create a rewards chart to encourage us to do better in whatever our most difficult subject was.

Now, in third grade, my most difficult subject was ... staying focused. My mind would wander, I'd find some tiny spot on my body that itched or hurt, and I'd ask to go to the nurse. My academics were fine; in fact, that's why I was bored.

Now, a different teacher might have given me more challenging work to do, and that would have been a valid option in certain classrooms But my teacher took the approach of suggesting my rewards chart might be for "Not going to the nurse so often."

I don't think the topic had to be on the chart, at any rate I don't recall any embarrassment about my "topic" being different than the subjects the other kids picked. That may have been her influence too, making me know I had nothing to be embarrassed about for being among the smartest in the class, but that we all have something we can work to improve.

Would that option have been delineated in a Best Practices course? Doubtful. She would have had to pick whatever subject I had the lowest score in, even if that score was A- instead of A, and my motivation, and the larger problem I was having which was not academic, would not have been addressed.

Miss Zimmerman took the time to get to know me, and what might work best for me, and it worked.

It must be difficult to become a good teacher nowadays -- the training they get kinda drums it out of them.