Monday, August 19, 2013

Can we really make kids want school to start?

Back to school: ubiquitous letters above the board
and maybe even some chemistry!
Los Angeles Unified went back to school last week and our students have been trickling in.  It's always fun for us to see them -- see how they have literally GROWN over the summer -- and get back into what feels like a normal routine for us.

But what about them?

As summer comes to an end, we hear a lot of groaning.  And, as most of our students have to be at their campuses before 8am, I can't say I blame them.

But one of our students, just starting 10th grade surprised me yesterday.  In response to the standard, "So how was the first day?"

She said, "Great...well, not really...I guess not that good."

When we pressed, it wasn't that anything bad had happened, but rather nothing really happened at all.

She explained how last year she was so excited to go to school, so excited to be a 9th grader and start high school... and how she presumed that feeling would come back: "And then in 11th and 12th, you're almost done, you're making progress, but 10th grade..."

It made no sense, of course, as 10th is still closer to being done than 9th grade was...

But, on the other hand, it made tons of sense.  What was there to be excited about?  Same old school, same old friends, a very long road until graduation.

What made me sad was, what about what she'd learn this year?  World History is one of the most fun and interesting and eye opening classes in the high school curriculum.  Chemistry is the class where you actually get to mix stuff in test tubes and live with the possibility of disaster.  French 2 means she'll actually get to speak a little French, the language of fashion, her first love.

And that's it.  We do not think of school in terms of what we'll learn.  We think of schedules and friends and environments. We obsess on location, whether a kid can handle a block schedule, if a teacher will be a good fit.  The last thing we tend to think about is the curriculum.

And we know the curriculum.  For each grade we know what every teacher in the state of California (and every state using the Common Core!) will teach.  There's no reason not to get pumped -- and help our kids get pumped -- about what they're learn this year.

Before she starts 4th grade, I want to take my kid to the San Fernando Mission and let her know that this year, she'll learn about the Chumash, and Father Junipero Serra -- and she'll probably build a mission of her own!

Before she starts 2nd grade, I want her to be excited to learn about fossils (and if the class doesn't go fossil hunting, I want to promise her a trip to the Newport Back Bay where I did my fossil hunting as a kid).

Before she starts 3rd grade, I want her looking forward to learning about electricity.  And, if they don't build circuits in school (oh please, let her go to a school where they will build circuits!), off to Radio Shack to get some circuit building gear (for anyone who loves electricity less than I do, Lakeshore Learning has some lovely electricity kits that you don't have to assemble from scratch).

Second grade: paragraphs!  Fourth grade: fractions!  Kindergarten: letters and words and addition and subtraction.

Why can't these be some of the things we get excited about?  Why do even we, educators, seem to focus more on the social than the educational?  My resolution: I will focus more on the learning.  Less on people, less on grades, more on what they learn (ok yes, and they need to get the best grades they can while they're learning... some things can't change that much...).

And, yes, it's true, the standards are vague and teachers vary a little (especially in science and social studies), so here's my other commitment to my someday-going-to-be-school-aged-daughter: when we go to Back to School night, we're going to stop by to see the teachers for the next year, to say hi and grab a handout.  Let's learn, from the teachers' mouths, what we can start to look forward to.  And then let's start looking forward to it.