This is Personal - an Update

Personal Passion Fuels My Work With Schools 

Recently, I went back and looked at my very first blog posting - FIVE years ago.  My company had been working with schools long enough to create a formula for helping them engage community members for the purpose of securing resources (students, money, partnerships, volunteers) needed to achieve their goals.  I had served as a founding board member of a brand new charter school not only getting it off the ground but helping to raise more than a quarter of a million dollars halfway through our first school year.  At the same time, my son, who was in third grade at the time, had already paid a heavy price for being "different" and "difficult."

I've learned so much since that first blog posting, and I could not have anticipated how both my personal and professional lives would intersect and lead me to pursue the path I'm about to jump onto.  I'll tell you more about that in a little bit.

What I've Learned About Schools and Education 

I have been blessed to have the opportunity to work with more than twenty schools and school districts all over Wisconsin in the past few years.  I've worked with private religious schools participating in the parental choice program, charter schools that were completely independent of a school district and charter schools that were instrumentalities of a school district, and entire school districts who were creatively using charter dollars to create programs that would benefit all students in the district.

Through my work over the years with these schools, I've become inspired and dismayed by:

• How real innovation and commitment to serve ALL students is happening, especially in small communities that are faced with real resource shortages and high rates of poverty.  The Montello School District (click here to visit their website) puts education in the context of overall health of the entire community.  Not only that, by simply being willing to reach out to people who home school their children and ask them how Montello Schools could be a resource, they created a program to fill in the gaps for more than 20 home school families.  It wasn't about getting dollars back; it was about genuinely figuring out how to be a resource to these families.  

• The fact that all the research already exists to tell us how children learn best, and that there also already exists models that align with this research.  We know that children learn best when they are engaged and learning is relevant to them.  We also know that children learn best through movement and hands-on opportunities.  Once you see Sir Ken Robinson's 12 minute RSA video on YouTube (he's a global thought leader on creativity), it will become so clear that most schools are still teaching according to a manufacturing model that pumps out graduates that follow the rules.  Click here to see the video.  It will blow your mind.  The bells, the rows of seats, the teacher seen as dumper of knowledge, the intolerance for being different, the response to children's rebelliousness (suspensions and detentions - that research proves doesn't work and actually harms children), are I believe a reflection of the fear by school leaders of letting go of control and being open to seeing their roles differently.   

• It doesn't seem right that schools in wealthy high performing districts take the credit for student performance when they have zero poverty, two-parent college-educated households, disproportionately high incomes and parents who are willing to spend whatever it takes on tutoring and supplemental education programs.  Would these school leaders and teachers be able to get the same performance in a low-income inner city?  I'm guessing not.  I'm so glad that this traditional model works for a majority of students, but I feel the real test of a school is how they deal with the children who are more difficult to teach or who don't fit in.  Unfortunately, my son has been that test, and his schools have failed the test.  

• I've learned that rigor without love and genuine belief in what children can achieve makes the difference.  Eastbrook Academy in Milwaukee is a religious school that has just been ranked #1 in Wisconsin in the High School Challenge Index and #10 in the nation.  Half of their senior class of 16 students this year got accepted into pre-med programs, and each year their high school graduating class of about 16 is awarded $1 million in grants and scholarhsips.  Quick!  Close your eyes and try to picture what the student body of Eastbrook Academy looks like.  I guarantee you're wrong.  One-third of students are low income, 58% are private pay, two-thirds are African American, 25% are white and 10% are Hispanic.    

What's Next for alinea 

So over the years, I've become knowledgeable about how schools are funded, what resources are available to them, research on how children learn best, what the 21st Century economy wants, the education models that already exist that truly engage students, and that many schools are NOT adapting and hurting some students in the process.  With all this knowledge, passion and personal experience, I have not been able to help my own son's schools understand how figuring out how to meet his needs is an opportunity to better serve ALL students in our community.  The teachers may not know exactly how to do this, but genuine desire and openness goes a long way.  

Well, those of you who know me know I'm inspired by having a positive impact on the world by helping people look at things differently and achieve more than they think possible.  I know my son is not alone.  Right now, I'm in the process of hopefully being accepted to Pacifica Gradaute Institute to secure a M.A./PhD in Depth Psychology.  I'm curious about what holds school leaders back from jumping on the chance to be more innovative and effective.  They say that people don't change until the pain of not changing is worse than the pain of changing.  In the case of my son's schools, there is enough demand for the school, and enough students who do well in that model, that there's not much motivation for figuring out a more effective way to work with children who don't fit in (except by putting them in special ed).  The only motivation would be love and genuine caring for children as individual human beings.  

“. . . we need to stop trying to address poor behaviors in the classroom, 

and instead address the root cause of the disruptive behaviors. 

Many active learners may be acting out of boredom or from being lost. 

Recognizing the gift of the active learner and meeting them with actively 

challenging lessons will surely go a long way in creating the optimal learning environment” 

(Clapper, T. C. (2009). 

Moving away from teaching and becoming a facilitator of learning. 

PAILAL, 2(2).

As part of my application process, I had to do a research paper.  I researched how children have been changing, how schools and others have been responding (suspensions, detentions, over diagnosing ADHD), the negative impact of these responses, and the research available on how children learn best and the models that are already available to implement.  I propose that it's fear that holds these schools back - fear of changing the assumptions we make about children and fear of letting go of control and changing the role of the teacher.  I would like to figure out how to help schools embrace the change that will help children feel accepted and blossom no matter who they are.  Can we create an educational environment that celebrates this kind of diversity?  If you're interested in reading my paper, just send me an email at deborah@alineaconnect.com and I'd be happy to hear what you think.  

As always, I love hearing success stories and other feedback.  

Deb