Sugared Over

Every book holds a memory of my past life, crawling under my skin without permission.  

After my layoff, I kept my personal library hidden in my home.  It has been too painful to be reminded of the love I had for my students, for my classroom, and for the privilege I had teaching at-risk students  the value of their voice, their thinking, and the importance of listening to others through various media.

I tore the cover off of a book in front of my class, handed out several others, and instructed them to do the same.  Some were confused, some were excited to desecrate school property.  Strangely enough, when I read to them from one of the books, the class actually listened.  At the completion of the excerpt, one of them asked if I was going to get in trouble for doing what I had to a "school book."

The reality was that the school had thrown the lot of the books out; a well-written piece of literature was about to be passed up, simply because the cover sucked.  I encouraged my students to create their own covers, to tell their own stories; to be original because their opinion was valued.  

Unfortunately, a style of teaching that was encouraged under one administration, became taboo under the next.  Government standard requirements trickled into our community, and the structure of free-thinking was only allowed within certain parameters.

Rather than stay in school, at-risk students are becoming obsolete; programs and support systems not supported by the state are being let go, and the drop-out rate increased.  Crisis counselors are being removed.  Schools are throwing the lot of them out, just as my school had with the bad-cover books.

This pattern is not specific to any one school.  The system has changed.  What started with, "No Child Left Behind," became a series of tests, eliminating the bottom of the barrel by rewarding schools financially when high scores superseded the whole.  

A structure that provides financial gain based on high-scores causes administrative nepotism.  Those who don't follow suit are let go, and those who don't agree stay quiet in fear of losing their job and marring their reputation.  

Even after being let go, I have within me a huge fear of speaking out; a fear that big brother is watching, that I will be exposed as a bug, and that hiding in a house surrounded by rumors allows my voice to appear only in the crook of a tree, with the hope that Atticus will share my voice before my faith in public education sags like a heavy load.

I worked my entire life toward teaching children how to communicate through various media.  I am ashamed that I allowed my own voice to be temporarily silenced for something as stagnant as a layoff.  

There needs to be a change in how we teach our children if we are to move forward in our lifetime. We claim to value diversity, yet streamline curriculum.  We argue different learning styles yet mandate multiple choice assessment.  

There are so many wonderful minds out there teaching effectively and thoroughly, magnificent teachers and administrators doing right with our children.  Rather than condone mandated testing that values one intelligence form over another, we need argue for more diverse assessments if they are to accurately reflect our students.