The Weekly Watch

Dreams...


real and imagined

Last week we focused on schools. Like most institutions our tendency is to look at what is wrong rather than discuss what would be ideal. So today let's dream about schools and our society and think about what could be.

a dream.jpg

Birmingham Alabama dealt with integration by creating satellite towns and school systems. In 1970 the campfire girls organized a county wide meeting of high school students (of which I was one). They invited all the student council members of every high school in the region to a weekend convention at the newly growing UAB campus. They offered a series of sessions (are you old enough to remember 'rap sessions'?). Topics were things like: the Vietnam war, feminism, racism, drugs, the environment, population explosion, politics, sex, and so on. The sessions were moderated by professors and grad students.

For the first time students from all around the city were able to talk with one another. It was such a success that regular monthly gatherings ensued. A weekly church visit was started where we would all visit a different church each week. There were performance exchanges with students traveling and presenting at different schools. Community art projects were created....plays, murals, poetry collections.

I can't express how powerful and meaningful these exchanges were to a developing teenager. Blacks and whites, radicals and conservatives, rich and poor working together to think about how to solve the ills of society...in Birmingham in 1970 – 72. I think we all came away enriched with eyes, minds, and hearts opened wider.

I suspect the organizer moved on because the exchanges stopped after 1972. Shows you how important one pivotal person can be. I think every city or region could benefit from a convention like that today. There's no trouble getting schools together for competitions but no effort at cooperation.

My path toward teaching started by tutoring elementary kids. I was helpful and word got around and it became my after school job throughout high school. But the biggest influence on my teaching was summer camp. I was offered a councilor position and spent my high school summers working at camp. At camp learning is fun. You learn by doing. I learned more about teaching there than I did with my three University degrees. Those lessons of engagement with activities stayed with me through my career, and led to much of my classroom success.

I spent several years honing my skills, collecting a bag of tricks, and establishing a personal curriculum (textbooks were always just a reference book in my class). My students and their parents were happy with their experiences in my class (not always true of my administrators – especially those who wanted to exercise control). But as my eyes continued to widen, I began to look at schools like a forest. My classroom like a solitary tree was healthy and thriving, but the forest was sick. The school organization wasn't focused on student learning and growth like I was in my class. So I began on my failed journey of school reform.

The first item I wanted to change is the school day. Adults rarely consider the fate of children at school. Bell rings, go to class, sit down shut up, find those dark black words in the textbook, don't talk, don't run, don't be a kid, bell rings...repeat several times a day. No wonder our schools are failing, we created an organization so contrary to a child's biology it is doomed to fail.

Communities need to invent their own schools not corporation! There was a well know effort in the 1930's to reinvent schools...the eight year study.

During the initial years of the study, each school staff developed its own curricular program–core curriculum–which sought to integrate and unify the separate academic subjects. A series of innovative staff-development workshops were scheduled beginning in 1936 to assist teachers in reconsidering the basic goals and philosophy of their specific school and to support the development of their own teaching materials.

These Progressive school graduates were matched with graduates from traditional secondary school programs, and the pairs of students were evaluated as they proceeded through college. In comparison to their counterparts, the Progressive school graduates performed comparably well academically and were substantially more involved and successful in cultural and artistic activities. The Follow-Up Study also concluded that graduates from these thirty experimental schools did not experience any impairment in their college preparation. The Eight-Year Study confirmed that schools could experiment with the curriculum while attending to the needs of all students, and in so doing, those college-bound graduates would not be ill-prepared.

...the Eight-Year Study proved that many different forms of secondary curricular design can ensure college success and that the high school need not be chained to a college preparatory curriculum. In fact, students from the most experimental, nonstandard schools earned markedly higher academic achievement rates than their traditional school counterparts and other Progressive-prepared students.

http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/1947/Eight-Year-Study.html

So the bottom line is if teachers and the school community were allowed to “invent” their own school, students would be more successful and everyone would be happier. As I mentioned last week, I was involved in the equity lawsuit for schools in Alabama. I had the opportunity (curse?) to go all over the state barnstorming for school reform. To make a long story short, those in power do not want to share control with educators. In fact today we are in worse shape with the take over of schools by corporations. Who in their right mind would think they have the welfare of students as their priority? Profit is their goal – and on-line schools stand to make the biggest profit.

I'm lucky to live my personal dream. I built my own home with my own hands. I homestead my few acres. I have a pension. I'm part of a small community of musicians. But much like my awakening about my classroom being a healthy tree in a sick forest, I feel my personal life is a success in a sick world. I feel guilty to have such comfort while the youth of our country drowns in student debt. I feel ashamed our country perpetrates wars and misery around the world to promote corporate profit. I feel sad we refuse to get off fossil fuels dooming the human species to misery if not extinction.

So dreams my are both real and imagined. I hope your dreams have met with some reality in your life. I look forward to reading about your dreams and thoughts of schools. However, I'm driving home from a festival in PA and regret not being able to comment back. Have a great Sunday!

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Arrow's picture

I remember how it was back then. There is a river that devieds the suburbs from the city where I went to school in Harrisburg Pa. There was an attitude among some to 'Not let 'them' come across the river'. Sad to say it was the jock 'military brats' expressing this.
The best guys I knew from then were guys from the diverse high school by the steel mill.

Always a good read Lookout.

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I want a Pony!

mimi's picture

for sure, if I dream, my dreams never were met with some reality in my life.

I definitely don't dream. I am busy trying to help those who did not get over their dreams, because their realities never met their dreams and they got broken.

For schools ... my non-academically educated father only told us that grades in schools don't reflect anything about future professional performance. So, I don't care much for grades. Just that without a degree or highly artistic skills people put other people down so much that they break them.

It's a dilemma.

Schools:
Take students of any age to even teach them the basics others get in elementary school. Never put someone down for not having "the necessary education". Don't discriminate.
Educate for free.
Be kind to your students.

That's all I have.

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NCTim's picture

During this AM's walk, I was thinking my calling might be to work against for profit schools.

I dream of holding my Sweetie again.

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The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself. - Friedrich Nietzsche -

Mark from Queens's picture

Just about to head out the door for the rest the day. But wanted to drop by just to say how much I look forward to reading this when I can.

And thanks for the suggestion last week about the school on the East Side of Manhattan. Lots for us to consider, though it seems so early in the game.

Enjoy your day. Heat broke here today, making it a wonderful morning.

Headed to Brooklyn now for a bday bbq of old friends I grew up with playing in bands with on Long Island, which began near the end of junior high.

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"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:

THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"

- Kurt Vonnegut

crushing it

Labour is five points ahead of the Tories at 46 per cent, found the Sunday Times.
The survey, which took a random sample of 5,000 people, also found that Ms May’s approval rating is at minus 17, a mirror opposite to Mr Corbyn’s plus 17.
...“Let us be together and recognise that another world is possible if we come together," he said, as the audience called out his name. "To understand that, understand the power we’ve got and achieve that decent, better society where everyone matters."
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mhagle's picture

Do you know about the Leap Manifesto? https://leapmanifesto.org/en/the-leap-manifesto/ A group of Canadians got together and said to each other "let's dream about what we want the world to be." (paraphrased) Then they wrote the Leap Manifesto. It's pretty cool.

Please don't feel guilty about your life. It sounds like a model for the dream. Live it. Enjoy it. It is a positive force in the world. Smile

I think our right now little dreams are the most important. I dream about picking beautiful tomatoes. I dream about cooking a meal my family enjoys. I dream about gathering eggs. I dream about caring for the teenagers . . . helping them find their way. I dream about looking out for my husband. He has diabetes and ignores it sometimes. Scares the shit out of me!

That probably sounds really sappy, but you see, at this moment . . . I cannot solve global warming, or erase student debt, or stop the wars. Don't get me wrong - I still sign petitions, donate to causes, and vote.

So I am just focusing on my right now little dreams.

Your life on the homestead in the community of musicians is a right now little dream. It is good. IMO.

Editing to add this: To complete this thought I need to add that an important part of the right now little dreams are the opportunities for sharing them. In my case that often means sharing vegetables or meals. Sharing knowledge, help, encouragement, stuff . . . whatever . . . that is when a right now little dream really blossoms. Smile

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Marilyn

"Make dirt, not war." eyo

Can you write more about this:

In 1970 the campfire girls organized a county wide meeting of high school students (of which I was one).

For the first time students from all around the city were able to talk with one another. It was such a success that regular monthly gatherings ensued.

It strikes me (as you alluded to, I think) that this should be part of all school's intercommunity work. If we play Football, or whatever, against each other on Friday, let's meet on Saturday or Sunday and talk about what we value and know. Let us compare our two realities and see what might unite us.
Where I am, there is a divide in the different high schools. Some are more working class communities and others are more academic types. Some of this is cultural and racial. In others its class and money. The model you mention has the potential to heal divides that most here just think should be left be. "That's the way it is...". Yeah, OK. But it oughtn't be that way.

As a single example, kids of working class white folks in the trades (here: loggers plumbers carpenters etc) might be surprised to find what they share with kids from working class brown folks (here: agricultural pickers and pruners concrete workers butchers). Right now, there are some reports of one group bullying the other. These type of meet ups could short circuit the hate and anger that comes from the "adults" and allow the young adults to come up with their own solutions.
If it can happen in Birmingham in1970, why not make it widespread today? It is mind boggling to imagine the impact this could have. It is also mind boggling to think that this is not a normal thing to do already. Thanks again.

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