My Personal Manifesto
As my school's teacher of the year, I was invited to speak at our local Rotary Club for their monthly luncheon. The people there were representatives from the business community. I was supposed to talk about my school, and myself , and my teaching, and how everything is all hunky-dory, but when it came right down to it I just couldn't stand up and lead those people to believe that everything is great in the state of American education. So I wrote this speech, which has pretty much become my personal teaching manifesto. A few of my BAT friends told me I should share it. The speech was very well-received at the meeting. I've posted this on my FB page, and it is on Mark Naison's excellent blog, With a Brooklyn Accent, as well as on the Badass Teachers' Association fan page on Facebook. As a matter of fact, with 33 shares and over 700 likes from its original posting, it is probably floating around in many places. But I thought posting it to my own blog would be a good idea too. I hope you enjoy it.
"As I considered what to say about my school, and myself, and education in general, I kept returning to one thing. Politicians, you know, would have us believe that education is a “race to the top,” and that schools benefit from competition with one another in a free market system. If there is one thing that I can say with certainty about education, it is this: if we are in a race, fully half of the participants never knew they were in a race to begin with, most of them never intended to enter, and some of them walked over the starting line, laid down, and were never heard from again. “Race to the top” is a TERRIBLE analogy for education, because the automatic implication is that there is to be a winner. Not everyone can win a race. There are losers. Whose children will they be? Which students will miss out on an education? How did we reach a point when education is a "prize"? I believe a boat is a much more apt analogy for education.
Education is like a boat. Some of us start out on it. The boat is leaky. It is understaffed. It smells. BAD. The food is horrible. Some of the crew members keep jumping overboard. From this boat, we cast out lines to the hundreds of fish around us in the water. Some of the fish bite readily; others are more cautious. As for me, I like to bait my hook with something meaty: To Kill a Mockingbird, Shakespeare, traditional English grammar, the Constitution, Patrick Henry’s speeches, Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail.
Some of the fish think the bait is too big to swallow. Some think the bait is too dry, or too old, or just not the kind of food they want. Some bite at first, but are convinced by other fish that the bait is “uncool.” Some have the bait yanked away from them by well-meaning adult fish. Some are eaten by sharks, dragged down by seaweed, snared by other nets (because this ocean is full of poachers, and they have much nicer nets than we can afford). However, we keep on fishing through it all-- storms, sharks, poachers. Sometimes, you catch a fish, and I wish I could say that makes it all worth it. And it does, sort of. But it’s hard to ignore the fact that every year the boat gets leakier, the smell gets worse, and the bites get fewer and farther between. The captain of the boat is not very interested in providing us fishermen with good bait, or allowing us enough time to take care of the fish we've caught. It goes faster and faster, and the closer we get to the end of our journey the less time we are allowed to spend on fishing. Mostly we are measuring our poles and writing reports on how well they are functioning.
You see, the ocean is where our students live. They are literally surrounded by circumstances which we cannot control. Poverty, apathy, unemployment, hunger-- all these are sharks which circle them. Self-doubt, fear, and bullying threaten to pull down others. And the ocean itself is ignorance. The lines we throw are not just to catch them, they are life-lines. We must make them see that the boat that we are on may not look like much, but the land we are going to will not only allow them to escape the ocean, but will also give them wings to fly.
I wish I could stand here and tell you all of the wonderful things my school is doing. I wish I could tell you the incredible outpouring of love, support, and FIRE that has been poured out this year from our staff to our students and our community. I wish I had time to tell you every story of a student who found his wings, just like I promised he would. I have the stories. They happen all the time.
But the truth of the matter is that education right now is a battlefield. Politicians are seeking to demoralize and destroy public education, corporations are circling to pick us apart and sell off the pieces, many parents are apathetic, and society offers a multitude of cures for the ills of an education. Teaching is being reduced to a set of data points, and all things that are not "measurable" are not worth taking time to teach.
But you should know that I, and all of the staff at my school, and countless others like us across the country, put on our combat boots every day, board the boat amidst the gunfire, and we cast our lines to the fish in the water, and we TEACH. Because we believe in this boat. We believe in its power. We believe in our kids, and most of all we believe that if we allow the war on education to continue, we will all lose, every one of us. Because we are all in this together, whether we are in the water, on the boat, or whether we have already arrived at a place where we have wings. We desire your support, we covet your prayers, and we need YOU to believe in us."
"As I considered what to say about my school, and myself, and education in general, I kept returning to one thing. Politicians, you know, would have us believe that education is a “race to the top,” and that schools benefit from competition with one another in a free market system. If there is one thing that I can say with certainty about education, it is this: if we are in a race, fully half of the participants never knew they were in a race to begin with, most of them never intended to enter, and some of them walked over the starting line, laid down, and were never heard from again. “Race to the top” is a TERRIBLE analogy for education, because the automatic implication is that there is to be a winner. Not everyone can win a race. There are losers. Whose children will they be? Which students will miss out on an education? How did we reach a point when education is a "prize"? I believe a boat is a much more apt analogy for education.
Education is like a boat. Some of us start out on it. The boat is leaky. It is understaffed. It smells. BAD. The food is horrible. Some of the crew members keep jumping overboard. From this boat, we cast out lines to the hundreds of fish around us in the water. Some of the fish bite readily; others are more cautious. As for me, I like to bait my hook with something meaty: To Kill a Mockingbird, Shakespeare, traditional English grammar, the Constitution, Patrick Henry’s speeches, Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail.
Some of the fish think the bait is too big to swallow. Some think the bait is too dry, or too old, or just not the kind of food they want. Some bite at first, but are convinced by other fish that the bait is “uncool.” Some have the bait yanked away from them by well-meaning adult fish. Some are eaten by sharks, dragged down by seaweed, snared by other nets (because this ocean is full of poachers, and they have much nicer nets than we can afford). However, we keep on fishing through it all-- storms, sharks, poachers. Sometimes, you catch a fish, and I wish I could say that makes it all worth it. And it does, sort of. But it’s hard to ignore the fact that every year the boat gets leakier, the smell gets worse, and the bites get fewer and farther between. The captain of the boat is not very interested in providing us fishermen with good bait, or allowing us enough time to take care of the fish we've caught. It goes faster and faster, and the closer we get to the end of our journey the less time we are allowed to spend on fishing. Mostly we are measuring our poles and writing reports on how well they are functioning.
You see, the ocean is where our students live. They are literally surrounded by circumstances which we cannot control. Poverty, apathy, unemployment, hunger-- all these are sharks which circle them. Self-doubt, fear, and bullying threaten to pull down others. And the ocean itself is ignorance. The lines we throw are not just to catch them, they are life-lines. We must make them see that the boat that we are on may not look like much, but the land we are going to will not only allow them to escape the ocean, but will also give them wings to fly.
I wish I could stand here and tell you all of the wonderful things my school is doing. I wish I could tell you the incredible outpouring of love, support, and FIRE that has been poured out this year from our staff to our students and our community. I wish I had time to tell you every story of a student who found his wings, just like I promised he would. I have the stories. They happen all the time.
But the truth of the matter is that education right now is a battlefield. Politicians are seeking to demoralize and destroy public education, corporations are circling to pick us apart and sell off the pieces, many parents are apathetic, and society offers a multitude of cures for the ills of an education. Teaching is being reduced to a set of data points, and all things that are not "measurable" are not worth taking time to teach.
But you should know that I, and all of the staff at my school, and countless others like us across the country, put on our combat boots every day, board the boat amidst the gunfire, and we cast our lines to the fish in the water, and we TEACH. Because we believe in this boat. We believe in its power. We believe in our kids, and most of all we believe that if we allow the war on education to continue, we will all lose, every one of us. Because we are all in this together, whether we are in the water, on the boat, or whether we have already arrived at a place where we have wings. We desire your support, we covet your prayers, and we need YOU to believe in us."
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