Education on the Brain
What if...
The structure of the school was conducive to more personal interactions?
The system of the school encouraged more teachers to stay?
Most students truly cared to learn?
I don't know how to propose this, so I will just have to and adjust my posts to concise formats as you and I polish these ideas.
I believe that structure of a school sets the tone. I believe that people on the premises need escape routes in the face of danger. I believe that the teacher-student relationship is critical to learning and that students need a variety of roles in a classroom to prepare them for the world outside. I believe that most people are very intelligent, yet life circumstances cause them to venture down slippery slopes of denial, subversiveness, and dishonesty, which can thwart education. I believe that two-income families struggle for members thereof to find undivided attention for one another. Let's de-institutionalize children, starting with the structure itself.
1) A one-story structure with a large entry hallway down which doors to several classrooms are seen, above which sits a roof with rows of windows directly underneath, letting in light from two sides. Classrooms show banks of windows high on the walls that face into the hallway. The hallway has wall to wall industrial strength carpet and no lockers. Classrooms have only one door leading to the hallway and a small window panel. Perhaps at standing eye level, perhaps at an adult seated level, classrooms have one way mirror panels looking into each classroom. Classrooms have windows at the 10ft high mark where ceilings abut the hallway wall and slant down to 8 or 9 feet. Possibly one skylight in the ceiling of each classroom. Certainly, one window with ability to open and a door to the outside grassy court exist on wall opposite hallway side walls. Classrooms are 12ft wide and 14ft deep, with carpeted, soundproof, paneled walls in between that allow for opening between classrooms. Floors are carpeted with wall to wall carpeting. A sink and heat/air conditioning unit exist on outside wall of classroom. Chalkboards exist in paneled walls. A touch screen exists on classroom side of hallway wall. Grassy courts are open spaces enclosed by door sides of several classrooms lining two sides with the other two shorter sides windowed and doored looking onto mowed grassy area. With big enough grassy areas, one could plant a tree. Large carpeted hallways end at wheelchair-accessible ramped platforms that accommodate two sets of curtains that slide across tracks above, plus large descending screen. The platforms may be the width of the hallways and the depth of 20ft. Benches of 6 seats may swing out from the classrooms into the large hallways, creating auditoria of sorts for pod gatherings. A pod may simply be the classrooms that line one large hallway. An area of staff offices, a gymnasium or more, and a large uncarpeted cafetorium complete the building, plus bathrooms, utilities, etc.
2) Furniture: A semicircular table in each classroom seating 5 students on the wide side and one teacher on the narrow side. A touchscreen on the hallway side wall. Cubbies or hooks for hanging children's belongings and a locked cabinet for the teacher for his/her belongings. Chairs for all, plus comfortable mats/cushions/rug samples and a larger chair/cushion for a reading corner. Chalkboard panels on paneled walls.
3) System: 5 students per teacher, 5 teachers per vice principal, mandatory observations of teachers and by teachers on a weekly basis for several months, uniforms for students and teachers alike, lesson plans supplied by lesson planners (very experienced teachers) who wrote them based on local curricula. Lesson plans centered around student learning, with less emphasis on materials, and more on teachers tailoring lessons and examples in-the-moment for students, teacher-student eye contact and proximity, delivered via email each morning for the next day. Teachers adapting lessons to students' individual learning styles on a minute by minute basis practically, mandatory updates from teachers to parents, daily for elementary ed, weekly for secondary ed, mandatory practice testing every Friday, with vice principals tweaking lesson plans for classes accordingly. The classrooms closing at 4pm for staff, but large uncarpeted cafeteria room and gymnasia and corresponding lockers open until 5:30pm for extra-curricular activities. Teachers not tenured, but not easily dismissed either, excepting law-breakers. 401ks like everyone else. Increases to salary over time, and modest increases for increased education.
4) I know - why? So many, many reasons.
Structure - When faced with a lockdown, the one thing that students and staff do not have at their disposal is any means of escape. Threats may approach them and all they can do is pretend not to exist. There are too many sad examples of this. Students don't practice leaving the building because that is just too much responsibility for a teacher to coral 25 children outside who aren't grouped with the rest like in a fire drill. Nor can teachers take students off the premises for practice, but under real threat, there is really nowhere to go currently. Everyone agrees that natural light is best, especially for children stuck in a building, but the solution has been to build HUGE classrooms with HUGE windows which leaves a lot of distance a) between teachers and students b) between students and the boards/materials/demonstrations or c) among students.
Furniture:Everyone wants students to focus in one direction when material is being presented, but that has meant bigger and bigger screens to grab their attention, probably in the dark. Some of the most successful classrooms use transparency machines, but why can't we just have proximal learning? Why can't students just look at materials up close? Why does the teacher have to be so far away? What if the power goes out? How often do kids in a science classroom ever get to approach the chalkboard? How often do math students touch the teaching text? See exactly what the teacher sees in the same space? How often do teachers and students write on the same space? Oh sure, some kids do, but how many in a class of 25 for a 45 minute period in secondary schools?
System: The first challenge of every teacher is getting to know the students. For the secondary ed teacher, with 25 kids per class average and 5 classes a day, this translates to 125 students per day, give or take a few depending on area, system, etc. Teachers are taking attendance and trying to find "busy work" for students while they give their undivided attention to individual students all day long. Or, they address the class as a whole and "hope the kids got it". The system is against them from the beginning. Just as secondary teachers might know their students eventually, they encounter new students the next semester, or worse yet, the next quarter. These slights of attention are not made up by the care-givers who often both work. The lack of personal attention given to students is only going to hurt our society. People, children, teachers, staff need to know that they all count. Teachers need to focus their personal time on people in their lives outside of the school, perhaps their own children, as caring adults in the world, instead of applying countless hours of tailoring lessons to so many, many children. And we are headed in the direction of every child counting - No Child Left Behind, Individual Education Plan - these policies are non-negotiable. What will a teacher do with 20 out of 25 children having an IEP? How can a teacher reach a student who barely has communications with the adults in his/her household? It is on the teacher to reach/teach the children whom they spend 6 hours a day with, especially in elementary schools. Teachers and students benefit from undivided attention with one another - teachers tailoring lessons appropriately, students actually learning, both making eye contact with one another, with assurance that both see and touch the same teaching materials. Yet groups of 5 students can lend themselves to partnered activities, small groups, and leadership opportunities. Instead of an elementary student trying to perform in front of 24 other students at once, he or she can do so in front of 4 other students without the caucophony of 4 other students doing the exact same thing in 4 other groups. Students or children? We say students, but the first thing parents want to hear is that we CARE about their children. We should face the duality without confusion - we teach them as students, but we show that we care about them as people or children, by not crowding too many into one space. The current structures are strong and grand. It is hard to ignore the big beautiful windows or the very high ceilings which were so correct for the beginning of the 20th century, but so much has changed since then. Let's show that we care about our youth and our teachers alike by bringing them closer to one another, before we lose them all to distance and technology.