Sometimes I miss elementary school. I miss being a little kid who looked forward to going to school, not because of what I learned but the whole experience. I miss a time when the little things brought me the greatest joy, like getting to play Oregon Trail in computer class (my son died of dysentery, yet I had no idea what that meant) or being invited to play handball on the big kids’ side of the wall. I miss the excitement of learning to play an instrument in band class (for me it was the drums) or finally climbing to the top of the massive jungle gym that by today’s standards would be considered completely unsafe. Even the classroom stuff was fun because the teachers focused on the basics: what we needed to know, when we needed to know it, like multiplication, or the California missions, or dinosaurs, or the Ramona books. Oh, and field trips! Those were the best because even if they were educational, it felt like a vacation and you couldn’t wait to come home and tell your parents about the adventure. Most students look back fondly at elementary school because it was fun, the teachers were nice, and there was no rush to grow up (except maybe the desire to finally go to 6th grade camp)
But something happens when students enter middle and high school. School becomes work. It becomes a job that they have to tread through for 6-7 years and the fun gets drained away. Sure, some students still enjoy school, but it’s usually only because of the friends they make and the extra stuff outside of school they get involved in (sports, drama, band, clubs). Some kids will enjoy a specific subject because it fascinates them or they have a passion for it, or it may even connect to a possible dream career in the future for them, but by and large, it feels like a lot of kids have a negative connotation of school after they leave the elementary world behind (I realize I may be exaggerating, and obviously I have no data to back this up, but sometimes the faces of the students I encounter say enough).
So what happened? What takes place that changes school from an adventure to a chore? One theory of mine is that as teachers we’re forgetting the advice of the wise Chuck-E-Cheese…school, no matter what level, should be a place “where a kid can be a kid.” (Quick side note, as a parent, I obviously dread the chaos that is Chuck-E-Cheese and the pizza that goes with it…but I can’t deny the smile that lights up my daughter’s face when she goes inside one). I believe that teachers are sometimes (or frequently) guilty of trying to make their students grow up faster then they need to. Let’s be honest, every teacher has to admit that the assignments and responsibilities we ask of our students is nowhere near what we experienced when we were students. Yes, times have changed and the world feels like a more competitive place. So as a response, teachers want to better prepare students for that competition, whether its college or beyond. But there is a big problem that arises when we push our students and demand more of them.
We’re robbing kids, even high schoolers, of their youth. Homework usually took me a total of 1-2 hours, which still gave me plenty of time to play football or basketball with my friends in the neighborhood. Projects and tests were spaced out enough so I never felt overloaded. Heck, we rarely saw the kids on Saved By the Bell doing homework. They had time to hang out at The Max, or make a music video for Hot Sundae, or sneak into “The Attic.” Today, a lot of kids are getting burdened with more. My nine year old nephew in the 4th grade goes home every day from school with 1-2 hours of work and 2-3 projects each trimester to complete. Lucky for him, he’s great at school, so he’s able to still have time for soccer practice and video games. But what about other kids who struggle with school? I’m sure it takes them longer. How dare we take away from kids the time to actually be a kid!
Teachers have confused the word “challenge” with the word “more.” Teachers justify giving more work and testing students more frequently by claiming: “I’m challenging them….I’m pushing them to be better…I’m getting them ready for college.” I don’t know, but that sounds like being too lazy to actually create a different kind of assignment that really does challenge them (it reminds me of when Zack got a 1502 on his SAT and Belding put him into harder classes where he just had more work to complete). And by the way, since more and more students go to college after high school, why do middle and high school teachers feel the need to give students a preview by running their classrooms like a mini-college class with long lectures, lots of reading, and monotony? They’ll have plenty of opportunities to experience that later on when they really are in college! Now I know I’m guilty myself sometimes, so I’m trying to really evaluate what I assign my students and decide what’s really worth their time. I also try to make the classroom experience fun for students so that they (and I) can experience moments of “youth” more frequently. Teachers should make every effort to turn school into the experience it was in elementary school for us. Or instead of dysentery, our kids will die from exhaustion.
No comments:
Post a Comment