(GLO — July 2010 — From about 2 years ago… I recently returned to work full-time, after 10 years as a stay-at-home-parent to our now middle-school-aged children. I’ll likely now be better able to relate to working parents and the challenges of involvement in their children’s schooling. A recent “Entourage” episode on HBO captured some of that where the character talent agent Ari Gold, unable to make his children’s parent-teacher conference, suggested that his wife tell the school that if they’re going to insist on holding conferences mid-afternoon mid-week, “say goodbye to Daddy”.)
Imagine what parent involvement would be like if children went to school with only a single teacher… and nobody else. Not a one-room schoolhouse, a one-teacher schoolhouse.
Imagine the delegation among teacher and parents. Imagine the genuine partnership. Imagine all the families getting to know — by working with them in turns — all the children. Imagine all the children getting to know all the families. Imagine what the teacher would learn, too.
Would accountability go up? Would there be anywhere to pass the buck?
What pressures (subtle and less-so) would be changed on the student in their work and their achievement? What on the families?
How much of the challenges and problems children face in today’s government schools comes from how they have built themselves… into their large castles, insulated from the outside world, most of what goes on churning inside them without anyone really answering to the outside? What if all of that was stripped away, and it was the educator, the children and their families? All the same resources for them all to draw upon (online or in-class). But nobody else to turn to except families.
What would that be like?
GLO
P.S. There’s a lot to be said for collegiality among professional educators, I’m sure. But what if collegiality with unpaid educators was given equal importance? What if that collaboration was given priority and resources? What if educators’ “learning community” actually and genuinely embraced,… the community?
Might as well wish upon the stars, I suppose.