Last week in this space I suggested four changes I would make if I ran a public school. You can find those ideas described here and here. What follows are six more changes I would do my best to make. Please note that none of these require spending money!
- Create cross-age tutoring opportunities by enlisting older students to help struggling younger ones. This actually benefits BOTH age groups, and it’s effective. It teaches other lessons as well, including the importance of community and of sharing what you know with others. It will keep some kids from being held back and others out of special education. That’s better for them, and it saves your district money.
- Create ‘Early College’ opportunities, as many as possible for your ambitious high school juniors and seniors (and perhaps even some sophomores). Here’s a look at a successful program in Texas that we reported on for the PBS NewsHour in 2015. This district actually lured high school dropouts back to school with the promise of a more engaging curriculum that included opportunities to take college courses. At the high school graduation we attended, most seniors also had college credits, and quite a few members of the class also received their 2-year college degrees with their diplomas! Fewer high school dropouts, a clear and strong bridge to higher education, a better reputation, and cost savings…..what’s not to like?
- Extend ‘Homeroom Period’ from the normal perfunctory 5 minutes to a half hour or more. For most high school students, “Homeroom” is the equivalent of the starting blocks in a track meet. They touch base, listen to (or maybe ignore) morning announcements, and, when the bell sounds, dash off to class. In truth, “Homeroom” is important to school administrators because it gives them a head count. It’s a meaningless perfunctory exercise for kids. I wrote about this in detail here. This is an opportunity to create more “down time” inside the school day for students to think and do independent study work. Mental “breathing room” would allow students to stretch, think more creatively, and challenge conventional wisdom. Too often schools are draining the lifeblood out of students with a compulsion to “protect students from themselves” by scheduling every minute of every day. Why not let them grow up, take intellectual risks, and be genuinely heard by giving them the gift of free time?
- Encourage teachers to reach out to parents–in the first few weeks of school–to praise their child. Don’t wait till they misbehave. This resonates with me because I saw my daughter Elise doing it 25 years ago when she was teaching in a middle school in Harlem. Nearly all of her students were Hispanic, and she made a point of calling their parents very early in the year and praising their children — in her fluent Spanish — for something they had done in class. With a few kids, she admitted, it was a stretch to find something worth cheering about, but she felt that it was absolutely critical that her first contact with her students’ parents be a positive one.
For too many kids, school is rarely a positive experience, suggesting that schools failed them, not the other way around. This is one step, teacher by teacher, in the direction of breaking that pattern.
- Let Students Make the Classroom Rules: In 41 years of reporting, I visited thousands of elementary school classrooms, and I’m certain that virtually every one of them displayed–usually near the door–a poster listing the rules for student behavior. These were store-bought, glossy, laminated posters. No editing possible, and no thought required. Just follow orders! Here’s an example:
I can imagine teachers reading the rules aloud to the children on the first day of class and referring to them whenever things got loud or rowdy. “Now, children, remember Rule 4. No calling out unless I call on you.” Here’s a great opportunity to practice democracy. Teachers and their students can spend some time during the first few days of school discussing what sort of classroom they want to spend their year in. That is, what rules should we establish?
Teacher: Kids, let’s make some rules for our classroom. What do you think is important?
Skilled teachers will lead the conversation in certain directions: What if someone knows the answer to a question? Should they just yell it out, or should they raise their hand and wait to be called on?
Or: If one of you has to use the bathroom, should you just get up and walk out of class? Or should we have a signal? And what sort of signal should we use?
I watched that process a few times, and, no surprise, the students invariably came up with reasonable rules much like those on the laminated posters: Listen, Be Respectful, Raise Your Hand, Be Kind, and so forth. But there’s a difference, because these were their rules, and, because they owned them, they were therefore more likely to adhere to them.
- Make Parents Feel that the School is Theirs. Generally speaking, educators do very little–if anything– to make parents feel that the school is theirs, but there’s actually an easy way to start to change: Schedule frequent ‘Talent Nights’ with pot-luck meals, performances by students, live music, with child-care provided by other students. Once parents feel that it’s their school too, consider offering short classes teaching the skills necessary to help their kids become better readers or more proficient problem-solvers. No lectures, no ‘parent involvement committees,’ no window-dressing, but a genuine partnership that invites openness and commitment from everyone.
Because some parents have grown accustomed to educators saying ‘Leave the education to us,’ they’ll need help learning to accept their new role and responsibility. Because some teachers have grown accustomed to holding parents at arm’s length, they will have to learn ways to acknowledge that parents are essential. (They’ll have business cards to hand out!)
A big part of public education’s problem is its failure to recognize that most parents want their children to succeed but may not know how to contribute. Turn that around by accepting parents as valuable assets. Partners, not ‘outsiders.’
That’s six changes that will have no significant impact on the budget but will, if done well, change everything.
I have about a dozen more changes to suggest, so please stay tuned. And feel free to share your thoughts as well.
