Dream Schools

It seems like every newish, passionate teacher I know wants to start a charter school. I don't blame them, of course. I daydream about the perfect school environment as well. My dream school is, in part, inspired by what I know of Buddhist monasteries and how they educate young monks. Rather than learning to the test or to get into college, they learn to become wise, knowledgeable people. They absorb book after book, spending long days reading. Learning for the sake of learning sounds fabulous to me.

Okay, I'm going to stop the comparison to the monasteries before I get it completely wrong. I have a million ideas for the "perfect" school, and that's the pain of being an idealistic teacher in the established school system. We're intuitive enough to know how great it could be, but the system's crushing. It's soul-sucking. It takes amazing, motivated, intelligent, caring, creative teachers and slowly stomps them into the ground until it's almost too much for them to drag themselves to school each morning so that they can, once again, be told that they're just not doing their jobs well enough.

I haven't had my soul sucked yet, and I would do almost anything to avoid that, but how? I've seen it over and over. Half of the people I went through my certificate program with have already either quit or are seriously considering quitting after their first year. I've met older teachers who have multiple master's degrees and two or three certificates who have resorted to handing out worksheets every day out of sheer hopelessness. I know they weren't like that in the beginning. I know they didn't get into teaching for summer vacations.

Many city schools are in disarray. They have the appearance of schools as we know them - rows of desks, a principal's office, even a few (outdated, falling-apart) textbooks. An outsider might even be fooled into thinking vast amounts of learning are going on inside these buildings. It's easy to just ignore the fact that half the school doesn't show up for first period, that the administration pressures teachers to cook the grades so a certain number of students pass (hello funding), that seniors read at fifth-grade levels, that students cuss and scream and fight in the hallways, that the students may not have books to take home, that the cops wait outside the schools every afternoon, that teachers may have to pay for their own copies (not to mention spend a quarter of their tiny salaries on other materials that might give their students an inkling of a chance to learn something meaningful), that most students have no idea that they're as smart and capable as students in any number of highly funded suburban or private schools.

Anyone involved in education knows that the solution to these problems is hugely complex. We have racial and socioeconomic issues, apathetic parents, standardized tests, a whole system to unravel and recreate. The best thing I can think to do at this point is tell people. Schools go to great lengths to hide their weaknesses, and it can't be that hard. I think most people only have a passing interest in the school system. They want their children to get the best education possible. They want justice for all students, in theory. But it's not the issue of the moment. It's not global warming. It's not health care. It's not something most of the population is confronted with daily. I think it should be. These kids are the future. Everybody should be able to see them.

I wish I didn't have to daydream about my future charter school. I wish the communities already cared, that the government didn't judge success from statistics, that those of us who cared had the power and freedom to do something about it in the free and public school system.