A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to travel to Boston, Mass., to attend a Common Core Summit event on education in America.
I can honestly say that I had no idea what terrible shape in which our education system is in. Yes, it is easy to be fouled, and perhaps we are blinded by what we see and do and are tricked into thinking that we are receiving top notch educations when in fact not one single state has an overall grade of an A. That’s right, actually most of them are rather low.
Did you know that a teacher in California can receive tenure after only 18 months of teaching? That blows my mind. That means that after 18 months a teacher can work there for as long as they please, the school cannot fire them because they are under performing. What defines a good teacher?
Well, there are many characteristics of a good teacher but if you dig down deep you find two major things. They know what they are doing and they care about their student success. If you have a teacher who is uneducated or uninformed of what they are teaching you are setting the students up for failure. A good teacher knows the in and outs of their material without having to be questioned.
Caring about students’ futures is also key. The students will be our future and they will replace us as we replaced our ancestors. Building them up and setting their building blocks is crucial.
The next topic that was brought up at the meeting was happiness and what makes it. I was in the gift store in the hotel and I purchased a small key that says “happiness” and I wear it on my necklace.
To me, after attending these meetings I learned that the key to life is happiness. Did you know that 40 percent of your happiness is uncontrollable events that take place in your life? That 20 percent is your genetics and how you react to environmental setbacks – it is in your DNA. The last 40 percent is controlled by you and is broken down into four parts: your family, your community, your success at your career and life events you can change. I will always remember that speech as the speech that made me realize the key to life is happiness.
Tests were also a topic at the summit and one that every student dreads to hear. We all know that the teachers teach to the test but one of the speakers used a perfect example to put testing into perspective.
If we took out testing in education and you were going to fly on vacation – you have two options. Plane one, which is nice and fluffy, or plane two, which is strict and safe. On plane one, the pilots are not tested every time they do something wrong, the instructors pat them on their back and tell them they are doing just fine. These pilots don’t take tests they are just taught and praised.
On plane two, the pilots take tests and are the best, their instructors don’t give them happy feedback and they give them honest feedback. Now which plane are you going to choose?
It is the same principle with general education. We can cheer kids on but we can also tell them when they are wrong and help them.
If we take away state tests how will we know what they know? These tests provide guidelines in which we see where each child is standing.