I imagine you're as shocked as I am, especially considering the inexplicable timing of this whole thing. We have two months of school left. Why now? Where will the students go to finish up the year? Who will teach them? Where will they go next year? These are a few of the myriad questions racing through my mind. But before we speculate, let me divulge everything I know about this incredible misfortune, this breach on everything at least halfway decent, this unjustifiable decision.
I received an email, as did all staff members in my school, from the district office that oversees all Hartford schools, including mine. Mind you, I am on spring break, and I was not tipped even a wink of this dire decision. In the email, whose subject was, "How Your School Closure Will Affect You," as if I knew all along that this was coming, a woman, whom I wish not to name, wrote this as her opening sentence, "It is with great sympathy that [my school] will be closed indefinitely due to a consistent lack of performance, as decreed by the Board of Education of Hartford Public Schools."
I've read that sentence a thousand times, physically and mentally, since my first reading earlier this morning, and I'm still unable to digest the purpose, the cause, behind those words. Is this a poorly written dream, in which the bearer of such news offers sympathy and not any goddamn empathy, whether she feels it or not, to a staff of good people and a body of good students whose world's will unalterably flip in a matter of two weeks? Is this truly the best option we have?
As the email continued, I became more and more inflamed with the hot embers of injustice: "Effective April 17, [my school] will cease service to its students. Those students that attend [my school] have spent nearly three years under the current model of education, and that model has not paid the deserved educational dividends that this district vows to all its students."
How does one measure 'deserved educational dividends?' I think that phrase in and of itself represents a glaring problem with this dying system of education. A child's brain is not a bank. One cannot make deposits into it. A good teacher does not fill a brain with dividends–she tickles a brain, exciting it with new perspective or enthralling it with simple kindness, all done with the hope that the child will then elect to excite other brains and share and revel in kindness.
I surmise that a hefty factor in this ridiculous decision is test scores, which are markedly low in my school, but I tell you, test scores could no more quantify inspiration, companionship, or kindness than a bubble-darkened sheet of paper mired with multiple-choice questions could quantify a child's personality.
But don't tell that to those who made this decision.
The email continued, "Thus your students will be put on temporary home-schooled leave as the district instills a new course of action that will bring a fresh model to the school building, and will employ an entirely new staff for the students. Many of your staff will be placed in new settings, but that will be contingent upon a final analysis over the course of the next two weeks and an exit interview with the school district."
Luckily, I need not fluster myself with such inappropriate and inaccurate methods of evaluation, as I won't be teaching next year, but I sincerely empathize with my colleagues. It is a grave thing to be scrutinized by an outsider of your classroom, who pokes in once every week or less, basing such a significant decision on a grossly small sample size.
And regarding the students in my school, the last thing they need is reshuffling. I have had so many ask me, "Mister, are you going to be here next year?" Or, "Mister, are you going to coach basketball again next year?" They are so accustomed to being dropped, ditched, left for something better that they suspect I'll leave them as well. I can sense it in their tones when they ask me these questions. My answer has always been that if it were up to me, I'd be with them next year. But it isn't up to me, and it appears it won't be up to the rest of the staff in my school either. That, to atrociously understate, is a problem.
For more information that is absolutely imperative to this story, click here.
I received an email, as did all staff members in my school, from the district office that oversees all Hartford schools, including mine. Mind you, I am on spring break, and I was not tipped even a wink of this dire decision. In the email, whose subject was, "How Your School Closure Will Affect You," as if I knew all along that this was coming, a woman, whom I wish not to name, wrote this as her opening sentence, "It is with great sympathy that [my school] will be closed indefinitely due to a consistent lack of performance, as decreed by the Board of Education of Hartford Public Schools."
I've read that sentence a thousand times, physically and mentally, since my first reading earlier this morning, and I'm still unable to digest the purpose, the cause, behind those words. Is this a poorly written dream, in which the bearer of such news offers sympathy and not any goddamn empathy, whether she feels it or not, to a staff of good people and a body of good students whose world's will unalterably flip in a matter of two weeks? Is this truly the best option we have?
As the email continued, I became more and more inflamed with the hot embers of injustice: "Effective April 17, [my school] will cease service to its students. Those students that attend [my school] have spent nearly three years under the current model of education, and that model has not paid the deserved educational dividends that this district vows to all its students."
How does one measure 'deserved educational dividends?' I think that phrase in and of itself represents a glaring problem with this dying system of education. A child's brain is not a bank. One cannot make deposits into it. A good teacher does not fill a brain with dividends–she tickles a brain, exciting it with new perspective or enthralling it with simple kindness, all done with the hope that the child will then elect to excite other brains and share and revel in kindness.
I surmise that a hefty factor in this ridiculous decision is test scores, which are markedly low in my school, but I tell you, test scores could no more quantify inspiration, companionship, or kindness than a bubble-darkened sheet of paper mired with multiple-choice questions could quantify a child's personality.
But don't tell that to those who made this decision.
The email continued, "Thus your students will be put on temporary home-schooled leave as the district instills a new course of action that will bring a fresh model to the school building, and will employ an entirely new staff for the students. Many of your staff will be placed in new settings, but that will be contingent upon a final analysis over the course of the next two weeks and an exit interview with the school district."
Luckily, I need not fluster myself with such inappropriate and inaccurate methods of evaluation, as I won't be teaching next year, but I sincerely empathize with my colleagues. It is a grave thing to be scrutinized by an outsider of your classroom, who pokes in once every week or less, basing such a significant decision on a grossly small sample size.
And regarding the students in my school, the last thing they need is reshuffling. I have had so many ask me, "Mister, are you going to be here next year?" Or, "Mister, are you going to coach basketball again next year?" They are so accustomed to being dropped, ditched, left for something better that they suspect I'll leave them as well. I can sense it in their tones when they ask me these questions. My answer has always been that if it were up to me, I'd be with them next year. But it isn't up to me, and it appears it won't be up to the rest of the staff in my school either. That, to atrociously understate, is a problem.
For more information that is absolutely imperative to this story, click here.