‘So you have the corner kids and the stoop kids in one classroom and you pretend to teach them both, when really you’re not teaching any of them at all’
Season 4 of the ‘The Wire’ explores the educational context of a violent American drug dealing community. Many school scenes reflect some painfully realistic scenarios of even our Australian teaching context.
Our ‘stoop’ kids are the wallflowers, the quiet, obedient kids who try to learn something amongst the rabble of the ‘corner’ kids who dominate and drain teacher energy and class time. These are often kids with sad stories, serious and tough situations who do not respond or benefit from traditional school methods. I’m a primary school teacher in Victoria and I’ve seen this time and time again. I want to see real change, not only for these kids but for teachers- we want to teach, and we all want to teach well, but sometimes, within our current system, we just can’t.
I don’t want money to be the motivation behind teacher strikes.
How about we petition for strucural change- where there is no need for unpaid overtime and ridiculous amounts of marking and planning?
How about we de-clutter the curriculum?
How about politicians making federal and state decisions have a background in education and teaching?
How about a simple reporting system, with more parent involvement and support in achieving education goals and less reliance on jargon-laden assessment and reporting documents?
How about we are realistic about the role of teachers? We are trained in education theories, methods, assessment, student learning and lesson planning. We study for 4 years. We are not crowd controllers or youth workers. We are not prepared to deal with many of the situations that we are confronted with, yet often this takes priority in the faint hope that some education will happen.
It is not like this in every school, but for where it is, on the fringes, we need to innovate and create a better strategy so students learn and teachers teach.
I hope we can refocus our industrial action efforts into changes that can reshape and redefine education in a true ‘revolution education’…beyond new school halls and pay bonuses.
I don’t want more pay until I feel that the system allows me to educate better.
Some lessons and ideas from the successful Finnish education system:
mjmwonders 