So let’s pretend for
just a moment that you have done the same job, with some advancement in
technology and procedure along the way, with the same expectations of you for
the last 5 years. You’ve seen the same co-workers for the same duration of
time. You’ve eaten lunch at the same deli across the street four days a week
because of Friday all the staff eats out together at that little Mexican place
downtown. Once every few months there is a training meeting to keep everyone
fresh and up to date on software upgrades and new building expansion projects.
So on a nice warm August day, you go into work. Everything seems like a regular
day. But as the month pushes forward and the fall becomes winter, you began
feeling like you’re being criticized by your superiors for your work. The same
work you’ve always done, if not better because you’ve been really focused
lately, but nonetheless, you are not performing well. You request a meeting
with your supervisor. At the meeting, your supervisor brings his colleague from
across the hall, the CEO of the business and a Human Resources Administrator.
As you sit in the room, quite uncomfortable, not knowing it was a full on staff
meeting, you begin to speak. You ask questions about the recent denigration of
your work and ask, while taking notes, ways you might improve your production.
You assert that you feel you have put forth extraordinary efforts, not only
this last quarter, but in all quarters preceding. And after you feel you argued
your relevance and quality to the ‘team’ sitting before you, the Human
Resources Administrator says to you, “We have changed the way we are doing
things here. We expect something different from you from now on. As a matter of
fact, the new program has been on effect for over a year and you really are not
excelling at it. And we have been scoring you on your performance and putting
it into your permanent employment record. And we have to say, it’s looking
bleak.” Then your immediate supervisor chimes in with “I have had to learn the
new procedures myself. And while I find them trying and a little unorthodox, it
is the rule now. We are going to have to test your ability to continue on the
career path you have laid before you. We are going to see if you know enough
about the new procedure to consider you for promotion. If you fail to meet the
requirements, it’s okay. We can offer you some extra training 3 nights a week
for the next six months. You won’t be paid for it. You won’t have any less work
to do at home or during the day, but we are confident that you will manage it
somehow.” So you sit, stunned. How could
this have happened? There was no interoffice memo. No staff meeting. Did you
simply fall asleep all day for the last 12 months and not know it? So, the CEO
hands you a written test, part of which is in Mandarin, because well, fluency
in Mandarin is now required. So you take the employment exam. You clearly fail,
as you’ve never spoken Mandarin a day in your life, and you are offered
choices. Stay after work for 2 hours 3 days a week for a year, and do the exact
same job you’ve been doing, but hopefully it will somehow be better work than
before, or you can transfer downstairs to the mail room, but just until they
think you are intelligent enough to absorb the new procedures, without having
been shown the manual. When asked by the others demoted to the mailroom “What
are you in for?” You simply answer “For doing exactly what I supposed to, or
used to....?”
Can you imagine that our children might feel quite the same
way? Confused. Incapable. Concerned. Fearful of failure. I imagine they do to
an infinite degree.
Back to the READY initiative, or the Common Core Standard,
as most of you have heard it called. In the recent months, parents, educators
and community leaders have been fighting to get out from under the federal mandate
for standardized testing. A mandate we, meaning our lawmakers, agreed to adopt
and abide by in our state. Each state had a choice whether or not to
participate but if you didn’t choose to play on the playground with the new “In”
crowd, then you didn’t get the Race to the Top money. So you had to pay to
play. The program development started sometime back in 2008. Yet the
implementation of the standards began during the 2012-13 school year. And it
has had sizzling attention to put it lightly.
As a mom, I get it. I am doing the homework. Watching the
grades fall. Seeing the child confused and crying. I am confused and crying. So
on and so forth. But in other news, according to some garb on the web, North
Carolina is well on her way to make some serious alterations to the recent
change in curriculum. The senate and house don’t yet agree on what the final
result will be but major modifications are expected. Whether or not we
completely negate the initiative or make radical changes to it, parents,
educators and most importantly, students should, in theory, feel the effects of
recovery by the 2015-16 school year.
So here’s the thing. While educators, community and
political leaders are beating this dead horse, the kids are still suffering
through this nonsense. As to not start an all-out war here, I say nonsense in
reference to the confusion and discord among our individual schools and
districts. School boards are meeting, parents are coming to public town
meetings with a mouthful to say (go moms!) and the children are dumbfounded.
They are dazed about the buzz surrounding their daily routine. Let’s think
about it people. Our children spent nearly a full work days’ time at school
each day and all week long. The relationship between a child and their school
environment could be related to an adult’s relationship with their work
environment. How many of you would say that your job or workplace accounts for at
least half of your identity, or your overall personal development? I think most
would say that spending 40 hours a week at a job, especially a job that you
have spent 5-10 years at, would have some kind of bearing on your personal
growth. So let’s put this into perspective for the child. The child attends,
most likely, the same school for at least several years in a row, with probably
70% of the students they began the earliest year with and sees likely the same
staff, with little turnover rate. Cafeteria staff, janitorial staff, library
attendants, office administrators and bus drivers are the faces the child
interacts with each day for a period of potentially years. Children are very
resilient but they are also very supple and pliable little creatures. They are
easily built up and just as easily torn down. The children feel like failures
because they are struggling with the work. They are, quite suddenly, not good
enough. They need tutoring, extra homework, more instructional time and still,
they are not excelling as they once were. I’m not saying we shouldn’t increase
the standard by which our youth are expected to grow and learn. I’m just
saying, when did you tell the kids that their world was changing? Did we inform
them of the policy changes and offer support through this most difficult of
transitions? I speak personally now. My child didn’t know. I was caught by
surprise. Halfway through a school year my bright over achieving child became a
low self-esteem poorly performing child that wondered what she had done wrong
to receive such low grades on her work. And all she can say is “I did what I
supposed to, or used to....” R a n t O v e r.
(On louderspeaker) “Kindly exit this ride to the right and
those of you who wore ear muffs to protect your delicate ears, place them in
the tub. I’m not going to tell you where it is. It's not where it once was. It has been moved. I tell you this now, after the fact. It is up to
you to figure out where it is. And there will be a test on it.”
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