That Helps Me Keep Plugging Along

I had breakfast this morning with two of my favorite bloggers, Gina Osher of The Twin Coach and Janet Lansbury of her self-named Janet Lansbury blog. Not only are they both even more beautiful and delightful than they are online, but they're also both as brilliant and insightful in person as on their blogs. I've found that's not always the case, when meeting people you admire in person (I always feel I come off as slightly disappointing, even if it's just because I don't typically wear the cape in my day to day life) but this was not one of those times.

Our discussion was wide-ranging (and at least until I ask them specifically, off the record) as these face-to-face meetings ought to be, but we did hit for a time on one topic I've been thinking a lot about these past few days: parents and schools.

Of course, being a teacher in a cooperative, I think about parents and schools every day. Specifically, I think about how blessed I am to live in a world in which we're all pulling in the same direction, learning together through their kids. But lately, prompted in part by Gina's recent post, I've been thinking about parents who live both inside and outside the progressive, play-based bubble in which I quite happily reside. I often think about all of us here in the online world and how it feels that we're at the heart of a kind of early childhood revolution, or that we could be, as our international web of like-minded people grows.

I see a revolution of classroom teachers, administrators, parent educators, and policy wonks coming together as a kind of grassroots movement dedicated to a future in which our progressive ideals become the mainstream. But every time I get a peek outside this bubble, say when one of my posts takes off and gets read by a lot of folks outside the bubble and I hear their responses, I'm slapped in the face by how hard this might be, that this future is not just right around the corner, that the purveyors of for-profit, drill-and-kill, fill the empty vessel, high stakes education are way ahead of us, especially when it comes to money, and they have no qualms about deploying fear to get their way.

At the policy level this fear is conveyed in sound bites like "the Chinese are beating us," or "our schools are failing," or "lazy, union teachers." At the classroom level it's about making teachers worry that if their students don't meet some arbitrary number on a standardized test or deviate from the state approved curriculum, we'll get the sack. And for parents it's the fear that maybe the Tiger Mom is right, that we are somehow gambling with our child's entire future if we step outside the traditional, corporate approved model. The fact that this is pure fear mongering with virtually no evidence backing it up, while we have mountains of research-based proof for our approach, makes it all the more aggravating.

When I think about that, when I take an honest look at what we're up against, it doesn't make me want to give up, but it sure lets me understand why some folks do. Sure, what Teacher Tom is saying sounds wonderful, but . . .

Then I read about something like this.

Angry parents and protesters have called off their occupation of an underperforming elementary school on Chicago's Northwest Side after they were promised a meeting with education officials before a vote on the future of the school next week . . . The protesters had spent Friday night and Saturday camped out at Brian Piccolo Elementary Specialty School, where teaching staff could learn this week whether they'll be show out the door . . . But Saturday afternoon, a member of the Board of Education met with them inside the school and agreed to grant the protesters a meeting with the entire board.

Specifically, the parents are upset with the school board's plans to fire the entire school staff and turn their children's education over to a private corporation. This article gives a lot more details about what's happening.

I don't know anything about this school and what's best for it, but I do believe that these brave parents must be listened to. Stories like this inspire me and let me know that not everyone outside the bubble is going to let baseless fear get the best of them. And that helps me keep plugging along.

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