Techlearning blog

I'd like to follow up my last TechLearning blog post with a letter I received from Stacey, a parent of a middle school student, who gave me permission to include it here:

Georgia is a 6th grader who has always been interested in social justice. Since a very young age she has created projects, raised funds, performed, and written to elected officials in order to help people she felt were in need. Her enthusiasm is contagious, and she has often succeeded in getting the adults in her life on-board with their support for causes. Last year was her most satisfying when, with the blessing of her school principal and the school board she formed teams of her classmates to bake and sell home made dog bones after school to raise money for the Heiffer Project. When sales on dog bones tapered off they formed a newspaper staff who wrote and sold a bi-weekly school newspaper for .25 a copy that sold out each edition of 200. In the end they raise $1500 for Heiffer.

Everything changed for Georgia when she reached the Middle School this year. First of all, we were shocked by the very difficult transition she had to the Middle School. She was bored in her classes, felt a tremendous sense of dis-connect with the staff and administrators and began to ask to be home schooled. At this point I should mention that she is identified as a gifted and talented student and has always been on the high honors roll since reaching the age when letter grades were given, so we knew the issues weren't academic. After much hand-wringing on our part, tears on Georgia's part and many late night talks we decided that what would make her feel better was to initiate a project that would make a difference in the world.

Georgia decided that she would tackle the issue of excess packaging, focusing on the large plastic boxes that DVD's are sold in. She measured the current DVD boxes and figured the difference between those and a smaller CD case which would work just as well. She then figured how many more DVDs could be packed in a box, how many more could fit on an average size truck and how much gas the average truck uses on a 1500 mile trip. She then figured the cost savings to a film company on a run of 500,000 copies of a dvd.

After all this she located the addresses of the 3 major film distribution companies and wrote petitions for students to sign, encouraging the corporations to downsize their packaging for distribution as it was a win-win situation for everyone. She could hardly contain her excitement when she went off to school the next morning. However, when she walked through the door at the end of the day I could tell by her body language something had gone wrong. She had showed her petition to her homeroom teacher who thought it was a great idea. He referred her to a guidance counselor who responded with equal enthusiasm, but offered to run it past the assistant principal before they started collecting signatures. To everyone's surprise the assistant principal forbid the project. Even the guidance counselor was stunned. When asked for an explanation, the administrator replied, "Because I said no."

My concern is this: where is the logic in discouraging students from reaching beyond the frighteningly minimal learning results goals we set before them? Where is the encouragement and just as importantly, the funding for our brightest students? In a world ruled by No Child Left Behind are we neglecting tomorrows leaders? Statistics show that gifted and talented students are at very high risk for dropping out of high school due to boredom and lack of support in the educational community. When outsiders offer their skills and time they are often shut out by over-loaded administrators. I can see the light of enthusiasm dimming in my daughter's eyes and I am concerned. We have considered many options, expensive private education, home-schooling (ugh!) and forming a charter school. These are all over-whelming for a family with three children and two working parents. Plus, I believe in public education. Where can we go from here?

Our mission is to empower all students through individualized instruction to become literate, critical thinkers and problem solvers committed to civic engagement.

Here's an exemplary student who is doing everything that we want students to do. She's empowered, self motivated, challenges herself, and is committed to making the world a better place. She's already done the work (i.e., creating a higher-level lesson plan) for the school. She should be applauded and thanked, not shut down.

If we look at the emerging "crowdsourcing" business model that I discussed in my last blog post, it just shows how far behind much of education is from the rest of the world, and how little rights the "clients" (i.e., students, parents) are allowed. For instance, why is this a decision to be made by one individual? Why can't we allow for the community to help "build" the pathways and journeys of our children's education?

Education will paint itself into a corner with this antiquated approach, because the first thing that screams in my head is, "Well, she needs to do it anyway!" We don't really need this "institution" to put up these barriers. We rely on it to assist us; not stand in our way. Though harder, I hope Georgia can realize her vision outside of school. Unfortunately, doing so would establish that school is unnecessary for such social/global/environmental change (and clearly not interested in being a part of it... or the larger community). Is this what we want our schools to be? Following that path could indeed make our schools obsolete and unconnected to what really matters to its clients.

I would guess the decision was produced out of fear: that the petition would be seen as "political", but again, shouldn't the school first serve the clients, and then worry about the critics?

Georgia may in fact accomplish her dream outside of the school, but she shouldn't have to. School is her workplace... it's where she works six-plus hours a day, whether she wants to or not. Like all people, she wants the work she does to be meaningful, to count. She shouldn't have to go outside her school to find that. It should be incorporated into the hours that make up most of her day. She shouldn't have to live two realities: "School" and the "Rest of Her World". Do we really want this dichotomy to exist for our children? What are we teaching with this? That learning is only going to be dictated by the few and is not allowed to be chartered at least in part by the student who's supposed to be doing all the work?

Where can we go from here? I'm sure Georgia has a few suggestions.