I walked into the teen center at the YMCA to take my seven year old to the bathroom.
"I wonder if JD's actually doing his homework?" I thought aloud. Inwardly, I answered my own question with a pretty solid negative.
I looked in the window to the computer lab; JD sat at a screen filled by the game Adventure Quest. I sighed. Even though that was exactly what I expected, somehow I had continued to hope that he would be diligently plugging away at his math.
The seven year old went to the bathroom and then headed back outside to soccer practice. I sat down beside JD, who had hastily closed the Adventure Quest window and turned to look at me guiltily.
"Why aren't you doing your math research?" I asked.
"I couldn't remember the guy's name that I'm supposed to be looking up. It made me depressed, so I just decided to play Adventure Quest." His head hung low and his shoulders slumped. His long hair hid his eyes.
"Uh-huh. Do you have it out in your backpack in the car? The backpack I suggested you bring in with you 40 minutes ago?" I leaned back in my chair, arms folded across my chest.
His face lit up and he jumped up from his chair, "Oh yeah! I do!"
And off he went to the car to search for the scrap of paper on which he had written some Chinese mathematician's name. I spent the minutes waiting for him to come back trying to let go of my annoyance and frustration. I thought about how he's only 12. How far he's come since he was 8. How smart he is once you get him focused in on the project. Focused in. Right. He hadn't taken his Adderall this morning. Ergh! Getting an ADD kid to focus on remembering to take medication to help him to focus is, well obviously that's a lot to ask.
A sense of sadness crept in to take the place of annoyance. My son really wants to do amazing things. He wants to build, to create, to discover. He once said that he might have to be a teacher because, "All this cool chemistry stuff just isn't that fun if you don't have anyone to show." He's passionate about justice too. He's been known to take boys at his school to task for not treating his sister well.
On the other hand, it's true that there's only so much I can expect when he doesn't take the medicine. I've seen a lot of half built inventions lying in the grass, and seen too much finished homework that never made it to the turn in box. Or homework that went undone because a crucial something was left somewhere else. Still, I don't want him to have free pass to be a mess if he doesn't take the medication.
He is a beautiful, smart, funny, sensitive boy. And all of that can be overshadowed by the chaos that can be swirling around him.
Should I feel happy that there is a medication that he can take to help him slow down his thinking enough to let the magic out, or should I be sad that the magic that is in him inherently can't just be let out in its natural state? Should I be glad that this medicine lets him focus on a project long enough to create something amazing - and finished, or should I feel sad that there is no appreciation for the joy of the process, only the product?
On the surface, the "half finished" life that he leads sounds so typical of a preteen boy. Is it my child who a problem, or the world he lives in? Does figuring that out matter? If there is a "brokenness" about him, should he learn to let it become some kind of a gift, or should he fight to get rid of it?
It's so tempting to jump in and answer these questions with the arrogance of an outsider. It's easy to see only two camps. It's so easy to point an accusing finger in one direction or another. I think there's more to this. Sadly, I can only sense that there's more; I just can't name it.
I think that the only question that I can answer right now is, "Does figuring it out matter?" For now, I'd answer, "No." I think that for now, I'm going to sit in this tension and watch and wait and see. I just hope I have the focus to do it.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Schools
You might have seen the movie, or at least the promos for it, Waiting for Superman. It's a movie about school reform. It "stars" one of my favorite educators and one of my least favorite educators. The documentary exposes all the horrible things that are going on in public schools and how they are failing kids, leaving them "waiting for Superman" to get them out of there.
This movie drives me right up a wall (full disclosure, I couldn't bring myself to see the whole movie because the promo itself gave me a stomach ache), along with a Newsweek cover story from last spring that also was all about the horrible public schools. This article was also a big fan of KIP schools and Teach for America. Their star witness was that same least favorite educator that I mentioned a moment ago.
You might also have seen an ABC story, I don't remember the exact show that ran the segment, about SEED schools. It's a story about a boarding school for poor kids. They don't have to pay and they get all the great education that rich kids get at their boarding schools. At the SEED schools children aren't just taught a demanding curriculum, they are also taught how to study, how to behave, and what the rules of society are if you're going to make it.
What finally struck me was what all of these schools have in common. It's something that none of them have explicitly acknowledged. The SEED school does it the most obviously, and they are the ones who opened my eyes to it. Each of these schools change the community the child lives in. The SEED school takes them right out of it from Sunday night to Friday night. The KIP schools have longer school days and Saturday school; kids are in school more and in their communities less. The Harlem Children's Zone starts teaching kids' parents before the kid is even born. Those children are going to grow up in a fundamentally different community than they would have if their parents had not been touched by the HCZ.
I finally decided that, unwittingly, each of these school reformers have really just illustrated what my gut has told me all along is true: A school is part of a child's community and the rest of the community impacts that child's education too.
That's what was making me sick when I read Newsweek: How could it all be on me? I'm one person in a child's life. I get such a short time with them and I can't MAKE them do anything. I can engage, invite and entice, but ultimately each child and his or her parents have their own choice in whether or not they're going to succeed.
I'm not saying there are no bad teachers. Of course there are, and they don't have any business staying in education. Go ahead, find them and root them out. You might find when you get there though, that more than a few of them once were good teachers that got left behind in a community that was falling apart while people with the opportunity ran off to chase the newest and the best.
When we're looking at the big picture, we're going to have to do more than run down teachers to solve the problem. Somebody is going to have to get serious about building up communities. Actually there are a few Somebodies already, so I guess I should say that a lot of Somebodies are going to have to get busy building up new communities. It's going to take some sacrifice and discomfort, and frankly, we're not actually all that big on that here in America.
This movie drives me right up a wall (full disclosure, I couldn't bring myself to see the whole movie because the promo itself gave me a stomach ache), along with a Newsweek cover story from last spring that also was all about the horrible public schools. This article was also a big fan of KIP schools and Teach for America. Their star witness was that same least favorite educator that I mentioned a moment ago.
You might also have seen an ABC story, I don't remember the exact show that ran the segment, about SEED schools. It's a story about a boarding school for poor kids. They don't have to pay and they get all the great education that rich kids get at their boarding schools. At the SEED schools children aren't just taught a demanding curriculum, they are also taught how to study, how to behave, and what the rules of society are if you're going to make it.
What finally struck me was what all of these schools have in common. It's something that none of them have explicitly acknowledged. The SEED school does it the most obviously, and they are the ones who opened my eyes to it. Each of these schools change the community the child lives in. The SEED school takes them right out of it from Sunday night to Friday night. The KIP schools have longer school days and Saturday school; kids are in school more and in their communities less. The Harlem Children's Zone starts teaching kids' parents before the kid is even born. Those children are going to grow up in a fundamentally different community than they would have if their parents had not been touched by the HCZ.
I finally decided that, unwittingly, each of these school reformers have really just illustrated what my gut has told me all along is true: A school is part of a child's community and the rest of the community impacts that child's education too.
That's what was making me sick when I read Newsweek: How could it all be on me? I'm one person in a child's life. I get such a short time with them and I can't MAKE them do anything. I can engage, invite and entice, but ultimately each child and his or her parents have their own choice in whether or not they're going to succeed.
I'm not saying there are no bad teachers. Of course there are, and they don't have any business staying in education. Go ahead, find them and root them out. You might find when you get there though, that more than a few of them once were good teachers that got left behind in a community that was falling apart while people with the opportunity ran off to chase the newest and the best.
When we're looking at the big picture, we're going to have to do more than run down teachers to solve the problem. Somebody is going to have to get serious about building up communities. Actually there are a few Somebodies already, so I guess I should say that a lot of Somebodies are going to have to get busy building up new communities. It's going to take some sacrifice and discomfort, and frankly, we're not actually all that big on that here in America.
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