Summer vacation is already half over; woe is me! I love
teaching, but I love summer even more. I love the fact that I can
take my kids on outings, or fix them crepes for breakfast, or read
a book for pleasure, or go for a swim, or frame a picture, or go on
a family camping trip. During the school year, my default response
to most requests is,
”
we will do it in the summer.
”
Summer vacation is already half over; woe is me! I love teaching, but I love summer even more. I love the fact that I can take my kids on outings, or fix them crepes for breakfast, or read a book for pleasure, or go for a swim, or frame a picture, or go on a family camping trip. During the school year, my default response to most requests is, “we will do it in the summer.”
Of course, the summer list is longer than there are days to accomplish it all, thus the perennial angst that accompanies the passing of each week.
But for those of us with a passion for teaching, there is never any real pause in grappling with the large problem of how best to educate society’s children. Even during the summer, when we have the luxury to forget for a few weeks, questions and ideas and even inspirations work their way into our thoughts. I find myself thinking about how I might restructure my lessons in the coming year, what policies I might revise, what new methods or materials might help struggling students, how I can find the time to provide more individual feedback despite ridiculously large class sizes and ever-increasing demands on my time.
After the first week or so, when I am still involved with cleaning up my classroom and organizing materials, these thoughts are infrequent and fleeting. But as the summer progresses, and the new school year approaches (looms?), they become more prevalent.
This year, with the state budget in limbo and the district already faced with deep budget cuts, there is also uncertainty and an underlying concern for the future of all of our public institutions, including our schools.
With the economic recovery languishing and unemployment running high, many people are reluctant to agree even to minimal funding levels, seeking instead justification in either the belief that taxation itself is undemocratic, or that schools have plenty of money but are wasting it.
As a U.S. History teacher, I would like to point out that our founding fathers did not object to taxation itself. Their rallying cry was not “no taxation,” but rather “no taxation without representation.” They objected to the fact that taxes were being imposed by a parliament to which they were not allowed to elect representatives. It is true that their first attempt at a national government, the Articles of Confederation, did not grant that national government the power to enforce the collection of taxes levied upon the states. But it is also true that they soon discovered that the weaknesses of the government under the Articles were too great to overcome. (Remember the suffering of Washington’s troops at Valley Forge?) And so they threw out the Articles and adopted in their place the Constitution, in part so that the government would have the power to collect taxes and “promote the general welfare” of the people.
I think there is a lot that people do not understand about what goes on in schools, and so they try to piece together an understanding from the little bits of information they do have. People know the most about what happens in their own children’s classrooms, and incidentally most people report that they are satisfied or happy with their own child’s teacher and school.
But they are concerned about the system overall. They hear stories and conclude that everything is going wrong.
One online reader of my last column posted a comment that “we are no longer going to keep giving money to a failed system.
If you stop with the excuses and start performing you might get the voters attention again.” In a later post, this reader clarified that he or she was not referring specifically to me, or to anyone in particular, but rather “to the teaching profession and educational system in general.”
Clearly, there are problems with our schools. Those problems are not going to be solved simply by telling people to work harder with fewer resources.
Thankfully, there are also talented and dedicated people who are trying to address the needs of our students. If we all try to work together, instead of blaming one another, if we approach each issue with an open mind, and if we agree that our children are worth the investment of our resources, we can create a brighter future.
Jeanie Wallace teaches social studies, and math when needed, at Ann Sobrato High School. She has two children who attend schools in the district, and writes on behalf of the Morgan Hill Federation of Teachers. Readers are invited to send an email with questions or issues they would like to see addressed in a future column to je************@********ca.us.
