The current community fuss over our school system is enough to
chase prospective citizens all the way to New Idria way down in
southern San Benito County. I am thankful that our children are
grown. They went to school in Morgan Hill when the district had
innovative programs like the
“Kleine Schule,” where the challenges that they faced gave them
a discipline that still pays off as adults.
The current community fuss over our school system is enough to chase prospective citizens all the way to New Idria way down in southern San Benito County. I am thankful that our children are grown. They went to school in Morgan Hill when the district had innovative programs like the “Kleine Schule,” where the challenges that they faced gave them a discipline that still pays off as adults.
I am not sure what the solution is, but it is surely not having an administration and a union facing each other with their sword drawing a line on the floor. When I see a weekly letter to the editor of this paper from a school teacher criticizing the school board, it can only be from an orchestrated plan. This is obvious when the same teacher’s union is using the recall of selected board members as a tactic.
That being the case, I would like to present the thoughts of some of the best school teachers and administrators I have ever met. I would hope that these are examples of what all school officials should be doing.
The first person I would like to cite is a woman who retired several years ago from a job as an administrator in a California school district. I won’t use her name for reasons of privacy, but is someone really wants to know, call me. She described that school as “a school of around 1,600 students … not huge … not small … didn’t qualify as ‘middle’ either … wasn’t ‘urban,’ wasn’t ‘small town,’ wasn’t a ‘farm community’ … no place for us to place our check mark on the multitude of forms needing to be completed in order to even be considered for More Money or Any Money At All.” That sounds not too different from Morgan Hill.
Given that environment, she practiced what business specialists call “management by walking around.” When the biggest challenge was to keep each department from fighting with the others for such money as was available, she sought to keep a balance. “However, there were very few weeks in all those years that I wasn’t ‘in’ or ‘through’ or ‘hanging around’ the ceramics classes … the music classes … the drama classes … because they were the subjects most vulnerable to budget cuts, which meant that they were the ones I needed to absorb in order to represent them as well as possible to those powers that be who might target them for loss of revenue.”
As an administrator, she would daily select a teacher, maybe the best, maybe the worst, somewhat at random, and as “What can I do to make your day better today?” Then, she would follow through. Every time. The real issue was how the administration could facilitate the teachers as they in turn facilitated the education of their students.
I find this administrator to be a model that I fear too few live up to.
There are many great teachers. It is not hard to find one who can be held up as a model. They all have a few characteristics in common. One is that they are not set in their own view of self importance. I personally would have wanted to study with a man from Minnesota who happens now to be the moderator of an email list for potters that I read daily. Mel had a unique view of his role with the students. According to him, “of all the psycho babble, education babble, terms, ideas about education and the general sense of curriculum in the world, only one important element must be present and learning will proceed, trust.”
I have never head any other teacher talk about this. There is a lot written about organization, curriculum design, teaching methods and styles. I never read about the role of trust. Still, when I read what Mel was saying, I thought back to those teachers from who I had learned the most. There is no question to me that trust was involved. When I think about those teachers from whom I did not learn, there was always a sense of doubt about what they were going to say or do.
Trust is not something that you are automatically given. It must be earned, carefully and over time, with each comment made, each student interaction. And it is easily broken. Once that trust is broken, it would take a long time to win it back. Combine energy and love of your subject matter with trust, and learning will take place.
As an observer of the MHSD it appears to me that the teachers do not trust the administration. The administration does not trust the teachers. The members of the school board at times appear not to trust each other. As students observe this, I wonder what lesson’s are being learned.
Mel’s students learned. He won their trust, showed them how, and then got out of the way.
I wonder what would be the effect on our school situation if every day, the school board, the school administration, the teachers, started off by asking “What can I do to make your job better today?” Then go do it.
“I find I have a great lot to learn – or unlearn. I seem to know far too much and this knowledge obscures the really significant facts, but I am getting on.” – Charles Rennie Mackintosh
