Every year, before school starts, the building leadership teams (BLT) at local school buildings are recommended to undergo team training tailored to the members – including teachers, staff, principals, and parents.
During this time, the training team gave the BLT members an exercise on strategies and ways of thinking about the work ahead of everyone. Among these training exercises, one of them asked the BLT members to think about strategies to close gaps between two groups of children. These two groups of children were identified by their academic performances.
It was the building leadership team training for the 2021-2022 school year.
This exercise aimed to close the performance gaps and help the lower-performance group improve their scores to match the higher-performance group. The question was, what strategies could the BLT members think of?
Even though we understood the goal, something about that question was off. Before we figured out what it was, answers started to flow in. Among them, many suggested pushing rigor, shortening recess, etc. Rather than being busy giving answers, some of us realized what we were asked needed to be revised. So we spoke up.
The question was based on a problematic assumption. It was to assume that every student studied and learned the same way, understood and processed the information and subjects the same way, and progressed at the same pace.
But that's rarely the case.
Instead of seeing different students need different ways to connect with each subject, understand the same subject differently, and process information differently, this assumption asks us how we can make students to be more think, act, and behave the same.
Believing that setting standards is how children should study and learn is one of the reasons we can't fix the challenges in the school system. Instead of focusing on the micro level and solving the different needs of children, we have been blowing it off to believe efficiency and ease of management are the right focus for schools.
Because at the core of the challenge in our schools – instead of learning and understanding what it takes for kids to succeed and thrive in schools based on their differences, the school system only focuses on how to hit the goal of efficiency and getting enough students to fill school buildings.
Only keeping going at that goal doesn't work anymore.
The proof is backed by the continuous decline in enrollment and overwhelming feedback from parents asking for better schools.
We are at a fork in the road: to keep waiting for "Superman" for the rescue or figure out how to change the school system.
To stop talking in circles, what's important for parents to realize is that we are the ones who care about our children more than anyone else. It's not up to someone else to figure out what our children need to succeed and thrive, but ourselves.
Instead of waiting for "Superman, "we are the people we have been waiting for.
Welcome to 2024!
Great identification of the crux of the problem. On the school administration side, the solution will likely involve getting the right people on the bus, as Jim Collins, the author of “Good to Great,” put it.