NBC hosted a panel where they asked students "what they think needs to be done to ensure that every student receives a world-class education." The list is both edifying and terrifying to me as a teacher. My superintendant recently posted this link in his district newsletter, whether to inspire dialogue or in simple agreement, I'm not sure. But I think this list deserves critical evaluation and discussion, so here's my two cents.

By the way, the comments in that article are a gold mine of self-absorption. Heaven forfend any people have a dissenting opinion; they obviously didn't learn anything in grad school.

( statements of interest )

Student input is as critical to shaping educational practice as teacher, administrator, philosophical, and political input. After all, students aren't just guinea pigs, and if we're teaching them to think critically, they should have the opportunity to put that skill into practice on issues that shape their daily lives. But let's really challenge our students to not just catalogue the ills of our educational system - after all, any halfway conscious kid sitting in a classroom can do that - but instead to suggest practical solutions that reflect their understanding of the world they want to inhabit and shape. Perhaps the problem is not just overcrowding and lack of attention, but expectations that are satisfied with vague and uncreative platitudes. If you want the classroom to be more exciting, bring your A-game. I'll bring mine, and together we'll explore the possibilities.

I'm trying hard not to take this as an omen, that Irene is currently battering my area and turned my backyard into a moat on the last day of summer vacation.

Tomorrow, the new school year begins, and as usual, I feel a mix of alarm and excitement. It thrills me that I have all the honors Seniors, because then I feel I'm not trying to give them a comparable experience to any other sections, but just a unique experience of my class. My sections of grade level Sophomores are delightfully small so far, which gives me hope that I'll accomplish something with them. And I'm of two minds about the Advisory: excited to have the chance to mold Freshmen, and nervous about teaching unleveled Freshmen, which I've never done before. So.

It probably would help if I did something constructive with my day, like finished the summer reading books or planned classes. But like the children, I'll delay thinking about school just one more day, and play FFXII instead. I'm at Giruvegan, and that takes some investment of time to crawl through that dungeon.

Hm. Now that I think about it, my procrastination is probably more of an omen for the year than the hurricane.

Good luck to us all! I have dragons to slay today.

So I just finished teaching "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (T.S. Eliot), one of my - and apparently Stephen Colbert's - favorite poems. Prufrock, a middle-aged man, feels his advancing years, and protests that there "will be time" to rise to greatness, if only he dare "presume" to do something worthwhile with his life. He "measure[s his] life in coffee spoons," which must be one of the great tragic lines of English literature. His existence gets measured in routine, mediocrity, and by minuscule dollops of stimulant.

I feel my life is measured in coffee spoons. I never feel the effect I have on students, I face only the daily grind and the daily frustrations and successes that stack up small against the lives of truly great people. Or even great teachers. I hear all the time from students and parents that so-and-so is the best teacher, or someone else has an amazing project, or some other accolades that I so rarely hear directed my way. I feel like I just hang on by my fingernails, clinging to the false idea that I do anything right or lasting in 185 days. These kids graduate in a couple of months, and they'll forget what they learned from me immediately, if they learned anything at all.

I mentioned this feeling while teaching "Prufrock" early in my career, and at the end of the year, I got a thoughtful and sweet letter from a student reminding me that I can begin to measure my life in the lives of students made better for the experience of having my class. I treasure that letter, and the young man who wrote it, and try to remember it when things get bleak. And they do; last spring was bad enough that I considered giving up teaching, and this spring does not look to be better. The socio-political climate of the U.S. nearly criminalizes teachers for wanting fair pay and affordable doctor's visits (I don't actually have dental insurance, and I haven't been to the dentist since I started teaching), and demonizes us for the failings of students, parents, and administrations as well as our own faults. Bitter coffee spoonfuls indeed.

Teachers are not saints. We are not monsters. We are people who work demanding jobs for little pay and less credit. In 50 minutes a day, we try to make your children better people, prepare them for life, and equip them with skills they need to be successful. Sometimes we mess up, sometimes we create disasters. We perform in front of a demanding and demeaning audience for six hours a day, then spend several more hours preparing for the next day. Sometimes we have a death in the family, an argument with a loved one, maybe get cut off in traffic on the way to work, and we're not at the top of our game. We're rarely given any slack. We try our hardest to meet impossible standards. People inexplicably expect us to really like 130 individuals every day, no matter how those individuals treat us. We want to see our students do well, even the ones we get frustrated with.

My department head told me once that for every one kid who writes a kind letter like my former student, there are ten more who are thinking the same thing but never tell the teacher. Tell us, please. We need to hear it. Like you, we want to know we're doing okay. We want to know we're making a difference.

I want to measure my life in moments that matter.

At my school, we require our seniors to think. Occasionally. At least once.

We ask each senior, at the end of twelve years of formal schooling, to think about what he or she stands for, what he or she believes in. Modeled after the NPR program "This I Believe," our senior capstone writing project provides a structure for students to express that maelstrom of insight and energy that bursts forth in rare, exciting moments - "Hobbes is full of crap," "I totally agree with Holden Caulfield," or even "I'm so tired of how this school is run." Righteousness is a part of the teenage condition, like acne, and this assignment seeks to harness that passion and sublimate it into an eloquent and illustrative piece of writing.

All levels, all English classes, AP to remedial, write this essay. And traditionally, the most invigorated, impassioned speeches come from the non-academic kids, the ones who won't turn in a piece of work all year, but who take to the opportunity to express themselves like a puppy to a chew toy. It's fantastic to hear superficially disconnected, apathetic students read, sometimes in voices wavering with emotion, about their beliefs in second chances, a parent's kind word, or the freedom of having a car.

We collect essays that stand out and ask the students to voluntarily record themselves reading them, a la NPR. The podcast of our This I Believe is open to the public, and showcases some great writing and enthusiasm, not always paired.

Today I started teaching the curriculum that leads up to This I Believe. In my senior classes, I have some great thinkers and some kids I expect will rise to the challenge of a thoughtful, interesting essay about their beliefs. I'll get some great essays this year, read by some amazing kids.

This, I believe.

This year, my Honors English seniors have been responding to semi-weekly blog posts. I'd started this last year, with mixed results, but this year, with a small class size of 20 and some very focused and autonomous individuals, it seems to be working well. I post an assignment that they respond to, although as the year progresses, I'll be posting more general topics and having them do more of the heavy thinking.

So far, the biggest success was asking the class to come up with probing questions for their test on Woolf's A Room of One's Own. Their responses were articulate, salient, thoughtful, and often harder than I might have come up with. With access to the blog, they could prepare the answers ahead of time and during class provide focused, thoughtful essays. I grouped the questions according to theme (Psychoanalysis, Feminism, Language, etc.) and asked students to choose one from each section to answer for a total of five. That proved too much for 56 minutes, so I dropped one for a total of four questions - a reasonable accomplishment for this level of analysis.

The blog as a discussion board is useful to provide an opportunity for the quieter students to participate, and the slower thinkers to add their insights without being outpaced by those lighting-quick on their mental feet. While a number of discussion board tools exist, including those on education-focused sites, I've been using Livejournal privately for five years or so, and I like the interface that allows me to easily see threaded comments and customize the presentation of the blog to suit my needs. LJ allows OpenID login and login via Facebook, which almost all the kids have. If neither of these options suit, creating an account on LJ is free and easy.

I have heard proponents of school blogging state that it's just as good as writing essays. Um, no. It really isn't. However, it's a useful tool for regular, brief, thoughtful writing, or as a mechanism for discussion among students that leaves an accurate written record they can access later. It can't replace the intensive process of a paper or the give-and-take of class discussion, but it gives students an opportunity to communicate in a slightly different format than they're used to doing in class. Online communication has few boundaries, intrusive and informal and misspelled and often riddled with a complete lack of awareness for either audience or tone. Blogging, meanwhile, is all about audience, and catering to the desires of your readership. By incorporating blog assignments into my curriculum, I hope to fight the trend of thinking that what one posts on the Internet isn't subject to proofreading, criticism, or effort. After all, the Web is a communications tool, so why shouldn't students learn how to communicate effectively using it?

To me, education is not job training, that's what you get after the drug testing and before HR bothers to load you into payroll. So when I read or watch bits about how teachers should be focusing on skills that are meant to make students globally competitive in terms of knowing how to make spreadsheets (who does that anymore, anyway?) or build flashy presentations, I sort of cringe. I get it, American students lag behind other countries in all sorts of technical skills, but let's take a closer look at the systems and values in place to support these students.

Take China, since almost everyone agrees that it's poised to blow the U.S. away economically and influentially if it could only cut down on those pesky human-rights abuses. China's school system is rigorous by anyone's standards. Public education is mandated for nine years, and around what we would call ninth or tenth grade, students are tested to determine if they will be educated further. The top whatever percent goes on to high school, while the rest go to vo-tech or head out to farm, mine, and make the million little things the U.S. consumer can't live without. More testing determines eligibility for college or university-level education. This means the smartest, most diligent, most capable students are granted positions in the classroom, with the others weeded out at every opportunity.

The American model is No Child Left Behind. We will bend over backwards to educate everyone, regardless of ability, interest, socio-economic background, or goals. Our focus is to make sure the least capable students are granted positions in the classroom, with the expectation that the others will manage themselves, more or less. Everyone has a right to go to college. Everyone should at least graduate high school.

See the difference? Now, I am not at all suggesting that the U.S. should deny education to anyone. I like our inclusiveness, and the spirit of achievement and community it means to engender. But folks, it's rather difficult to mass produce brilliant and motivated top-level students when the majority of time is necessarily spent chivying the others aboard the bus so they don't get left behind. The Chinese model doesn't work for the American social philosophy, so why are teachers and students held to the Chinese standard of results?

I see my role as a teacher to be not about training, but rather about fostering intellectual curiosity, developing problem-solving and communication skills, and directing young minds to think critically about the world around them. I don't care if my students know what a Prezzi is or how to make one; I care that if their life choices require them to build a multimedia presentation, they know how to figure out the best way to do that and are creative enough to play around until they make one that'll knock their colleagues' socks off. It's a subtle, but important difference.

We aren't China. We don't need to be. We need to imbue our students with the desire to make the world around them a better place, and give them the fundamental skills that will enable them to do so. We need to show them how to figure things out for themselves, instead of creating checklists they must match. We need to show them how to think, not what to think.

Job training will take care of the rest.