This Is Our School

Most preschools, at least to a certain degree, rely on parent participation to make their program run. A cooperative preschool's program is parent participation. Enrolling in Woodland Park is easy on the pocketbook, but being, as it is, a kind of DIY project in which 40+ families work together to make their own school, what one saves in cash one necessarily pays for in elbow grease.

Each year on the Friday and Saturday before school starts the families enrolled in our 3-5 class arrive at school, children left with spouses, grandparents, or sitters, to contribute 2 hours each to the process of getting the school ready. My job is to manage the process, which typically entails working down a list of things I don't want to have to do myself. That's what happened on Friday and we got a lot of cleaning, organizing, and painting done. I reserve the job of fluffing and tidying our main storage room for myself, which, as usual, didn't actually happen because, really, who can stay cooped up in a dark little room when there are so many interesting, intelligent, attractive people out there to chat up? I'd say my chattering proclivities alone probably slow the entire project down by a good 10 percent, but that's part of why a cooperative does things this way, with all hands on deck: to have conversations, to get to know one another in a context of working together, because that's the adventure we're setting out on together this year. These people are not just the parents of our children's classmates, but their teachers and friends as well.

Saturday was a different story. The day started with Charlotte's mom Amanda (who isn't even a 3-5 parent this year) arriving with ten boxes of "lockers" that we would need to assemble and install. This is a big deal for our little school. We've been making do with a row of hooks and a couple of banks of cubbies all jammed into a narrow hallway. It was a functional system, but with our new commitment to outdoor play in a cool, rainy climate, there was a pressing need to make it possible for children to store things like slickers, boots and changes of clothing on the premises, and with all the extra taking-off-and-putting-on that would entail, we felt our little hallway would be far too crowded to accommodate us. Luckily we had nice budget surpluses at the end of last year.

Cora's mom Brooke was the first working parent to arrive and her first job was to unpack all those boxes. It might sound like an easy task, but between the manufacturer's excessive packing techniques, and my bag lady like insistence upon saving as much of it as possible for future use, it was a job that wound up requiring 3 different tools and a good portion of her 2 hour work window.

I know we can find good uses for these, but first I have to figure out where to

store them.

And check out these sturdy, non-recyclable corner

protecting pieces.

They seem to be made out of cardboard strengthened with

some sort of plastic. We also got a nice collection of

styrofoam bricks and squares.

Charlie M.'s mom Liz, Sylvia's mom Toby, and Sasha's dad Rob were next on the scene, and along with Brooke got to work assembling the units. The kits came with most of the hardware we needed, included some of those nifty Allen wrenches (which I also made the parents save for me) and included what appeared to be very clear instructions. Naturally, there was one key piece of information left off of Step 1 that necessitated that the first unit Toby and Liz put together be taken apart and put back together the proper way. And while there was definitely some sweating and cursing (although not at each other), the four of them made an impressive team out there in our narrow hallway, taking down our old hooks (which had been very securely mounted into studs and did not want to come down), and puzzling together the first 5 of the 10 units.

When Orlando's mom Valerie arrived, there just wasn't room for another adult body in there, so I was actually able to put her to work on the job of making name tags.

Unfortunately, just as the parent team was getting good at it, their 2 hours started to expire, and other weekend obligations called them away. Fortunately Rob was able to go above and beyond and keep at it well past his "required" time, working first with Max's mom Callie on the project of locating studs. Amanda, who had no obligation to take part in this project at all, once more arrived on the scene with a stud finder. Making sure to hang these heavy pieces of furniture securely from studs was a high priority, but finding them was a struggle, made difficult by the lathe and plaster construction of the walls. With the prospect of heavy things falling on the heads of young children making this stage of the process vital, we all spent a lot of time discussing, theorizing, knocking on walls, and generally trying to come to a consensus about what the insides of those walls looked like.

It was at about this time, that Lily's dad Gregory showed up. Perfect timing and I knew from experience, he's a guy who knows how to work with his hands. Rob, having already put in far more than 2 hours, was ready to move on, but he stayed long enough to pass on much of the collective learning we'd acquired throughout the morning. As the two men talked through the project together, Callie took over the name tag making from Valerie who had to leave.

Everyone had worked hard up to this point, but when I stepped back and looked at where things stood I had no choice but to start planning for the very real possibility that we had bit off more than we could chew. It was 2:00 p.m., we'd been working since 9:30 a.m., we still hadn't hung a single unit, there were five more that needed to be assembled with those Allen wrenches, and our official end time was 5:00. To top it off, this was the point at which we realized that in spite of the many bags of hardware that had accompanied the lockers, they had not provided screws for actually attaching the things to the walls, which meant sending Gregory to the hardware store, crossing the property line, the curse of any project.

With school starting on Tuesday and my Sunday already booked, I was asking myself, am I competent enough to get the rest of it done on Monday? In any event it would be an all-day project and I had serious doubts I could do it on my own. 

Charlie B.'s dad Jon arrived about this time with his father-in-law's pressure washer. Well, his time was already accounted for, so I couldn't put him to work with Gregory. Okay, I looked at my list of families. Who else can I still expect to show up? When Ruby's dad Chan arrived, I felt a glimmer of hope. Here was another guy who knows how to use tools and it didn't take him long to determine that we were going to need more and better tools than we had at hand. As he headed home for his toolbox -- yet another crossing of the dreaded property line -- I was convinced that I had a long, hard Monday ahead of me.

In the meantime, Violet's mom Cheryl checked in with her friend Kiki, their plan being to handle the family's 2 hour obligation by working together for one hour. I put them to the job of assembling the remaining 5 locker units, making sure to explain the important part of the instructions that were missing. By the time they got to work on the second unit they were laughing so hard, tears were running down their cheeks.

It was about 4 p.m. now. Gregory and Chan had one unit hung and there were still 3 unassembled lockers. Jon had finished the power washing and despite having already been on the premises for 2 hours, asked what else he could do. No way! Just what we needed. He joined the women in getting the lockers assembled. 

By 5 p.m., Gregory already 3 hours into it, and Chan at 2 hours, the hallway lockers were hung. 

Jon, Cheryl and Kiki had all finally left, having finished their assembly jobs, leaving the units in the gym where they were going to be installed. Maybe, maybe, maybe I could hang those final 5 locker units on my own . . .

That's when Chan said, "Hey, we're already on a roll. I'll bet we can get the rest of them up in 20 minutes." No way! All of us called our spouses to make sure we weren't going to be needed for another hour or so, then as I ran to the hardware store -- yet another crossing of the property line -- for more screws, the men put their backs into it.

It took more than 20 minutes, but by 6 p.m. the lockers were up the project having consumed at least 25 parent volunteer hours, lots of sweat, and a little cursing.

On the first day of school, every one of our 46 children will have two cubbies and two hooks to call their own.

This is our school. I love these people.

Giant Silver Hands

Hi!

When you're really stuck for something special to do at school, it's time to break out a pair of giant, silver hands.

I wish these photos were better, but I was putting a lot of energy into dodging those long appendages as the kids tried them out (and I'm not really much of a photographer to begin with)

I made these four years ago to wear in the Fremont Summer Solstice Parade thinking I would add some parade-scale umph to my alter ego Captain Superhugger who has the superpower of spreading love around the world through his two arms and a heart full of love. (You probably have this superpower as well!)

I originally intended them to go on the arms of a giant back-pack based puppet that was going to use her long arms to reach out and hug the people in the back rows of the parade audience, but before installing them on the puppet I started horsing around with just wearing them myself. I wound up putting handles inside and dumping the whole puppet idea. I quickly discovered, however, that while they made pretty good parade art, they got in the way when it came to doling out hundreds of hugs. I much prefer actually touching the people, so other ensemble members have taken them over.

Being made from cardboard and paper mache, they've taken a beating over the years. I've made lots of repairs, including full-on surgery two years ago to replace and reinforce the handles inside, one of which is now again broken and barely holding on.

Their parading days are done. I've decided to retire them to the preschool as seems to be happening to much of my old parade art. They're still pretty sturdy. If Old Bessie has survived this long, I give these hands at least a couple years of waving, clapping, high-fiving and, of course, giving big silver hugs.

See ya later!

Growing Brave Children

My mother-in-law tells the story about some boys bullying her when she was a preschooler. Her father was a manufacturer of orthopedic devices. His solution was to create a set of steel toe-inserts for her shoes. The next time the boys bullied her she was to kick them in the shins. Family legend has it that she broke at least one bone. And thus, the bullying was handled.

Growing up, this was the prevailing message, especially to us boys. Our books were full of stories of weaker kids learning to fight or otherwise taking pointed, lesson-dispensing revenge on their tormenters. Even Sheriff Andy Taylor, one of the top TV dads at the time, advised little Opie to fight for his milk money, otherwise the bully would never stop. And he was the law. This message was everywhere.

Sheriff Teacher Tom

There’s a kind of obvious operatic justice in this approach, and while we would all be scandalized to learn that our child’s classmate had come to school equipped with steel toe-inserts, it’s hard not to sympathize with the idea that one’s child can give as good as he gets.

But let’s be honest, it’s a kind of frontier justice that simply doesn’t play in the modern world. I mean seriously, just think of what would happen if a four-year-old was discovered with steel toe-inserts?

We don’t live in the land of legend, and I doubt we ever did. Those who let their fists do the talking have always been in the minority. Real talking, honestly and responsibly, has always been the only practical solution.

One of my proudest moments as a teacher came a couple years ago. Esme held a bucket of water and Malcolm stood temptingly beside her. She wasn’t the first child to give into that temptation and dump water on her friend, but what happened next blew me away. Malcolm turned to her and shouted, “You dumped water on me! That makes me mad! Now I have to go change clothes!”

I’d been rushing to intervene, but these words stopped me in my tracks. As he marched off to find the dry clothes in his cubby, Esme threw herself onto the ground, face between her hands.

Holy cow. This was as powerful as any kick to the shin and it was done with an honest and responsible use of words.

If Woodland park uses a steel toe-insert, it’s the forceful use of the word, Stop!

“If someone is hurting you,” I ask at Circle Time, “What do you say?”

And all together the children show their palms forcefully and say, “Stop!”

“If someone is scaring you, what do you say?”

“Stop!”

“If someone is taking something from you, what do you say?”

“Stop!”

"And if someone says "stop" to you, what do you do?"

"Stop."

There are nuances to the rule and practice is necessary, but I can personally vouch for the effectiveness of this technique through kindergarten; it even works on strangers at a playground. My daughter Josephine, who had mastered the technique in preschool, informed me that it stops working in 1st Grade, but the principle of using words lives on.

I think that our Circle Time question holds true throughout our lives: “If someone is hurting you or scaring you, what do you say?”

“You’re just trying to hurt my feelings!”

“I’m going to walk away from this!”

“I don’t like the way you’re treating me!”

“I won’t be bullied!”

Standing and fighting is an irrelevant response to conflict. Being clever, sarcastic or insulting has nothing to do with anything. Inflicting wounds in response to being wounded only makes sense in the mythological world where the “bad guy” learns a lesson through the forceful application of a shiner.

In the real world, a violent response, a hurtful response, nearly always just escalates matters.

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate . . . Returning violence for violence multiples violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: Only love can do that.

--Martin Luther King, Jr.

Ultimately our steel toe-insert legends appeal to us because they bespeak bravery. But speaking honestly and responsibly takes far more courage than an irrational, emotional resort to violence.

And raising brave children is really what that mythology is all about. We can do it without the violence.

(Reposed, with revisions, from 7/7/09)

The Giganticness Of Kindergarten

I've sent my own daughter off to her first day of school 12 times, and while there's still a special feeling about the day, it's lost the giddy nervousness, helped along no doubt by the fact that she's only attended two schools -- her cooperative preschool and her current K-12 school. The facilities, classmates and even in some cases the teachers are already familiar. With less to fear and more to anticipate, it's an easy move to send her off for her first day.

Make no mistake, I still cried as I have for the past 9 years during convocation when the entire 550 student body, from 5 to 18 years-old, gather together to listen to speeches from the head of the parent association, the head of the school, and a representative of the each the 5th, 8th and 12th grades. Usually its our Head of School Frank Magusin who sets me off with his talk about building community, but this year I made it all the way through to the senior speaker who moved me, perhaps, because we're now only 4 years away from the day that my own daughter or one of her classmates will be standing there, on the first day of her last year of high school.

In recent years, I've stood with the crowd of parents ringing the students who are arranged up front, but this year I fought my way up to a position where I could watch the kindergarteners seated as always in the very front row. For the first time in my 9 years as a preschool teacher, there were two of my now former students sitting in that group. They both spotted me and waved, tightly, a little self-consciously, wanting to stay focused on the challenging task of kindergarten. We've been part of one another's lives for the past 3 years, more than half their time on the planet, and I'm excited about the prospect of being able to keep up with them as they work and play their way through elementary school.

It occurred to me that I'd done nothing as a teacher to prepare them for sitting in a single spot listening to speeches for 45 minutes, yet they managed it brilliantly, perhaps the most difficult thing they'll do all year. There was definitely a little glazing over during the adult speakers. They perked up when the 5th grader took the podium, and they took notice of the whoops that came from the back of the room when my daughter's classmate, Kashev, took the stage as representative of the middle school, and they noticed the rowdy cheers that that erupted when the senior stepped up to the mic. But mostly they sat there lost in their own thoughts and sensations, barely looking at the speakers, but by turns studying the crowd, their classmates, and making secret eye-contact with Teacher Tom. I love that I got to do that.

Later, when I got home, I found videos and photos posted on Facebook of several more of my former students on their first day. I don't remember that from last year. I probably just missed it in my social networking ignorance, but I won't miss it again. It gave me the sense that I was a part of it. I thought back on when I first met them as 2-year-olds, some brash, some shy, some silly from excitement, others frozen into silence by suspicion. I saw a little of all of those things yesterday, and while they can hardly remember the specific lessons, I'm confident that they -- and their parents -- know they have the skills to settle in, to get busy, to make new friends.

The next time I see them, I'll ask questions like, "Isn't kindergarten a lot better than preschool?" and they'll agree. Or if they come back to visit Woodland Park, which many of them will, I'll ask, "Doesn't the preschool seem smaller than you remember it?" and they'll answer that it does, perhaps following it up with a story about the giganticness of their kindergarten.

When I arrived to pick up my daughter at the end of the day, I first made a quick swing through the kindergarten area and saw both of "my" girls again. They looked exhausted.

"Kids Are Bored To Tears"

This is an interview with Karen Lewis, the head of the Chicago Teachers Union, and Lois Weiner, a professor of education at New Jersey City University. In spite of what the video player says, it's only about 23 minutes long, but is one of the best push-backs against the test-punish-privatize-approach to public education I've yet seen.

It's instructional in particular to hear what Ms. Lewis has to say given that she's been at the forefront of fighting the "reforms" championed by President Obama's education secretary Arne Duncan from when he was the superintendent of Chicago's schools. She has seen the devastating effects of this ill-conceived, unproven, purely ideological approach to education that has been relabeled "Race To The Top," but is really just the same old "No Child Left Behind" in new packaging.

Anyone who values public education or teaching should watch this. Amateurs and dilettantes with lots of money are persuading politicians to turn our schools into job training and money making ventures. They have absolutely no evidence that their approach will work -- none -- yet our politicians from both ends of the political spectrum are lining up to force this so-called education reform down the throats of professional educators, parents and children.

We need real, properly funded public schools, not unproven charter schools with high executive pay and burger-flipper wages for teachers. Just as there is absolutely no evidence that the test-and-punish approach produces anything more than unmotivated students and teachers, there is no evidence that charter schools produce better results, and in fact in the few cases when studies have been done, we find they do, on average, a worse job that traditional public schools.

We really all must fight back against this. It's time for parents and teachers to stand together, as they did in Chicago, as they recently did in Seattle, to demand schools that educate the whole child, that instill a love of learning in students, and that measure results based upon something more than high-stakes reading and math tests.

Here are some highlights:

"Our curriculum has narrowed . . . If you look at the average day for an elementary school kid, it’s reading, reading, reading, reading, reading, reading, math, math, math, reading, reading, reading, reading, math. I mean, kids are bored to tears. They’re hating school at an early age. There’s no joy. There’s no passion. And the results show that."

". . . what’s really going on is a vocationalization of education, a watering down of curriculum for most kids, so that they’re going to take jobs that require only a seventh or an eighth grade education, because those are the jobs that are being created in this economy."

Regarding charter schools: "I want to see the evidence. And what’s really incredible and disastrous is that this enormous social engineering that’s going on to transform—I would say destroy—public education has not been accompanied by government funding for serious, objective evaluation. We have this so-called Institute for Education Science, but if you look at the sorts of research that they’re funding, they are not funding the kind of large-scale evaluative studies that we need to determine whether these reforms are going to be effective. And we shouldn’t permit that. We should identify this as what it is, which is an ideological venture that does not have a scientific basis, and it doesn’t have a basis in evidence."

"No Child Left Behind is part of this global project to deprofessionalize teaching as an occupation . . . the thinking is that the biggest expenditure in education is teacher salaries. And they want to cut costs . . . that means they have to lower teacher costs. And in order to do that, they have to deprofessionalize teaching. They have to make it a revolving door, in which we're not going to pay teachers very much. They're not going to stay very long. We're going to credential them really fast . . . We're going to burn them up. They're going to leave in three, four, five years. And that's the model they want.  So who is the biggest impediment to that occurring?  Teachers' unions. And that is what explains this massive propaganda effort to say that teachers' unions are an impediment to reform. And in fact, they are an impediment to the deprofessionalization of teaching . . . It's a disaster for public education."

"Well, that’s part of . . . the thinking here, that teaching really . . . does not have to be a skilled profession, because we’re not going to . . . educate kids to do anything more than work in Wal-Mart or the equivalent. They only need a seventh or an eighth grade education, at most a ninth grade education, and so we don’t need teachers who are more than, as Grover Whitehurst, a former Undersecretary of Education, said, "good enough." That’s all we need is teachers who are "good enough" to follow scripted curriculum and to teach to these standardized tests."

". . . if people really looked at these core curriculum standards, I think they would be aghast. You know, vocationalization of the curriculum is beginning in first grade. They’re doing career education in first grade, if you look at these standards. What is that about? That we’re preparing kids for the workforce when they’re in first grade? And the foundations . . . including the Gates Foundation, they are absolutely driving this. They’re funding it. They’re funding the media campaign to persuade people that this is necessary."

Cars And Dolls

When my daughter Josephine was a preschooler, I bought her a Hot Wheels set, not because she asked for it, but because I wanted to make sure the good times of car play were at her fingertips, just in case. Sure, she played with it when I played with her, but I only recall her twice playing Hot Wheels when I wasn't involved. One of those times was when she got a bee in her bonnet about inviting Cyrus over for a play date. She spent the better part of two hours watching him drive the cars around the track, occasionally looking at me and shaking her head.

The other time she "chose" to play Hot Wheels was during a vacation to Lopez Island where our toy selection was dramatically limited. She and her friend Elly found a quite corner of the living room in the house we were renting for the week and set up shop. I was a proud, modern daddy, feeling like I'd finally broken the strangle-hold society's gender stereotyping had on these little girls. See? If given the chance, girls can enjoy cars too. I was later to discover that while the girls were indeed playing with cars, the game that had them engrossed was one in which the various cars were getting married and setting up "house" under the raised portions of the track. In other words, in the absence of dolls, the cars were being used as stand-ins.

At the time, the prevailing psychological explanation for why boys play with cars and girls play with dolls was that we had consciously and unconsciously socialized our kids into these gender specific preferences. And while I'm convinced that there is still a certain kind of reinforcing truth to that, scientists are starting to conclude that some of it is hardwired. Now I can understand why even vervet and rhesus monkey females might demonstrate a preference for playing with dolls, after all they're surrogate babies, and bearing newborns is part of the definition of "female" in all species, but why in the world do the male monkeys, just like human boys, show a preference for wheeled vehicles? Weird, but true, and no one knows why.

This coming school year is my final year teaching the "boy bubble" that has been passing through our preschool these past 3 years. All eight of my 4-year-old students are boys. When they first joined us as 2-year-olds I had to donate all of Josephine's old, barely used, Hot Wheels to the school so that we had enough to go around. And that meant enough of the small cars so that each of the boys could hold a car in each hand. Even at that age, there was competition over who got to hold which car and that's mostly what they did with the cars in class, carry them around in their fists like comfort items.

It really bugged me, too, the way those damn cars were coming to dominate the classroom. If left to their own devices, that's all some of the boys did. It wasn't all the boys all the time, of course, but at any given moment, when cars were available, there would be 4 or 5 of them vying over who got to hold that day's "special" car. I tried to limit access to the cars, only breaking them out once in awhile, but there were a couple boys who really only seemed capable of feeling comfortable in class with a car in each hand. And once I got cars out to comfort one boy, the others would turn away from the blocks, put down their paint brushes, or walk away from the sensory table to demand cars of their own. Then they would just walk around with them.

Looking back on this time I'm struck by the fact that I didn't think twice about the 2-year-old girls spending their days in what we call the drama area, caring for babies and baking play dough cakes and cookies. I recognized, just as I had with the cars, that this was a comfort-building type of play. I knew that these girls might not ever leave the dolls behind entirely, but eventually, as they grew more confident in the classroom they would branch out into art, manipulatives, construction, and sensory play. I knew this was true because while there were 2-year-old girls who played with our dolls almost every day, the 4-year-olds barely touched the basket of babies that is always available.

Since I'd recognized a parallel between dolls and cars, why was it then that I limited access to the cars but not the dolls? Why wasn't there a basket of cars right there next to the basket of dolls? Why did it feel so natural to me to comfort an upset girl with a doll, while it felt like a failure when I had to resort to a car to comfort a boy? Why did I look at cars as a distraction and dolls as a cornerstone of the classroom?

This summer I gave up on controlling a collection of small vehicles. They are now scattered around the outdoor classroom, just another aspect of the loose parts that pave the ground. It's not only boys who pick them up and incorporate them into their play any more than the workbench is only for the boys . . .

. . . or the mud pie kitchen is only for girls . . .

. . . but there are undeniable tendencies no matter how much we want to avoid gender stereotyping. And we should all still strive for that.

We will have a basket of cars in our classroom every day this year. It probably won't be a collection of unique makes and models as we find with Hot Wheels. No, these will be more generic cars, just like we tend to have generic baby dolls, because having one or two special ones, I think, is what leads to the competition. I'm working on the theory that it is the vying, not the cars themselves, that I find distracting.

Sometimes I'm a slow learner, but at least I'm still a learner.

The School We Will Build Together

On Thursday night the parents of our Pre-3 class met for our fall orientation meeting. As has been the case for the past several years, about one-third of the 20 families present are not new to Woodland Park, returning as they are with their second or even third child. Making this mix of familiar and new faces unusual for me is that several of the families who have not previously been enrolled in our school took part in our first-ever summer program, so I'm already familiar, if not good buddies, with well over half of the kids.

Of course, it's all a bit unusual this year. Normally, I'm experiencing an emotional collision of excitement and self-doubt as I anticipate the start of a new school year from the perspective of one week away. After all, in the past I've been coming off 3 virtually child-free months during which I was entirely on my own schedule. And while I've only been teaching 3 mornings a week this summer, it was enough, apparently, to dam up the undercurrent of performance anxiety that so often flows under my week of preparation for the new year. I'm starting this year, for the first time ever, with no doubts either about my ability or my future as a teacher. This is a powerful place from which to launch into a new year.

As we worked through the business portion of our meeting, I was struck by just how calm and confident the parents seemed as well. Normally, I detect a fizz of nervous tension in the room as parents contemplate the prospects of their babies going to school. Perhaps this is just an extraordinarily grounded group, but I'm now also wondering how much of my own anxiety I've been projecting onto others in years past. Probably a lot!

There's really not much for me to do in these meetings until the final 30 minutes during which I run through my spiel. I spend most of my time watching the faces of my new crop of parent-teachers, working to memorize their names, listening for clues they may drop about the temperaments, tendencies, and tantrums of their children, making note of parents who accidentally confess to talents, knowledge, or professional skills that we might find useful in our community. These are not just the parents of my students, after all, they are also my employers, assistant teachers, colleagues, and friends. I'm always struck by the joyful complexity of the multi-faceted, multi-leveled relationships that spring naturally from a cooperative model.

With which one of these people will I laugh? With which will I cry? With which will I experience despair, awe, anger, wonder? Do the half dozen pregnant women realize how many years we'll be part of one another's lives? They are my bosses, they are my colleagues, they are my assistants, they are the parents of the children we're all gathered here to teach.

Whether the people sitting in that circle know it or not, we are entering together into a network of human relationships unlike anything I've ever found in the world outside of co-ops. And while I'm excited for the children to arrive next week and begin forming our unique culture and community, I realized on Thursday night that I'm just as excited for the prospects of this parent community. I'm excited to find out what what kind of school we will build together.

Seattle Teachers Stand Up For Children!

On Thursday, the Seattle Teacher's Union, fighting back against the rising tide of high stakes testing and academic standardization that is being dressed up in this country as "education reform," achieved a magnificent victory for our children. After tense, hard fought negotiations they approved a contract by a 70% to 30% margin that will not tie teacher's evaluations, jobs, or pay to student test scores, and fights back many of the other "privatizing" aspects of so-called reforms being forced upon professional educators by political and business leaders.

The subsequent vote of "no confidence" in Superintendent Dr. Marie Goodloe-Johnson was nearly unanimous.

Seattle teachers will not have their livelihoods dependent upon a standardized testing regimen that has been proven to be an ineffective, capricious method for evaluating teachers (I highly recommend clicking on this link if you harbor any lingering doubt about what I'm writing). They will now be evaluated by a plan based upon the work of Charlotte Danielson, a well-documented and researched evaluation method designed around the principles of good teaching practices and professional development rather than the hack saw approach of "rewards and punishments" which relies upon little more than the vagaries of student performance on tests.

Why is this good for our children? Because Seattle teachers will not be forced, upon penalty of losing their jobs, to set aside everything they know about good teaching, and instead narrowly focus on their students ability to pass math and reading tests. The union made it clear that they welcome a rigorous, meaningful evaluation process as long as it takes into account the true measures of quality teaching; as long as it takes into account the full range of what we need our children to know in order to be fully functioning citizens; as long as it takes into account what is really best for our children.

It has seemed for the past few years that the push toward factory-like standardization was unstoppable. Maybe this will be our beachhead. Maybe this will inspire other educators to take their stand, not just for themselves, but for the future of all of us.

Way to stand up for our children Seattle teachers!

This video makes me laugh and cry. Thanks Jenny!