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Education Ramblings

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I’ve written on here many, many times about the frustrations of working as an educator and the many failings of our current system.  Over the next few weeks, I will attempt to chronicle in more detail just how badly we as a nation have crippled our future.  The system is broken beyond repair, and professional educators such as myself are being driven from the field because of the inhumane working conditions, tremendous workload, and nonsensical, overbearing regulations enforced by bureaucrats who know little about the true craft of teaching.  True education is about more than stuffing minds with quantifiable data and then measuring their retention of that information.  True education is about preparing human beings to function in the real world as productive members of society.  It’s about instilling work ethic, personal pride, self-motivation, self-discipline, and accountability into individuals while simultaneously providing them with complex skills necessary for success in the workforce and in life.

Here’s one example of our inhumane working conditions.  Today, I got ten minutes for lunch.  That’s ten minutes to heat up a bowl of soup and scarf it down between classes.  Ten minutes is not a reasonable, humane way to treat unskilled labor working at menial tasks.  It’s definitely not reasonable for highly skilled professionals charged with training people how to write, yet that is my reality every Monday and Wednesday.

On paper, my workload is 30 hours a week.  On paper.  Counting Sunday’s marathon grading session, I already have logged about 34 hours with at least 18 to go, and this will be a fairly light week in the semester.  This week alone I have graded 21 essays and a few hundred cold writing responses.  No exaggeration, a few hundred.  Oh, and I’ve taught, too.  And responded to dozens of emails.  And tracked attendance.  And completed several menial tasks that have virtually nothing to do with educating students.  An optimal workload for teaching students how is write is fifteen individuals per course and four courses per semester, or sixty students per semester.  Right now, I have 146 students in six courses.  There is no realistic way I can truly teach that many people how to write.  I can provide them with some generalized information about writing concepts, but I cannot learn their individual strengths and weaknesses and teach them how to improve their personal writing skills, at least not in a substantive way.

So for the next few weeks, the focus of this blog will become my effort to catalog the fundamental flaws within our current system and offer suggestions for how to fix these problems.  I have little hope that any of my suggestions will be taken seriously by those in power because I don’t represent a powerful lobbying group that can donate millions to their re-election bids, but maybe someone somewhere will find this blog in a hundred years and know that in America in 2013 there were professional educators who did care about students and did know how to teach.

Inspirational

Wednesday Morning Ramblings

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Only someone who has been torn down to nothing can fully appreciate getting back up and pressing onward. Only someone who has been wounded to the core of their being can understand the slow process of healing. People who have been through desperate trials and have come through the other side possess a wisdom and regard for life that fills us with soft light. We often recognize each other with little more than a glance and subtle nod. I’m not talking about run-of-the-mill heartache or grief. Everyone goes through that stuff, and while it usually grows and matures the individual, it rarely fills them with the soft light. For it, I’m talking specifically about the people who have been through overwhelming grief, complete loss of self, or a literal near death experience. Those of us who have been through those fires and come out reforged as better human beings understand and relish life differently from most.  Today, I’m asking my friends and readers who have been through those difficulties to step forward and help our country heal.

America is wounded right now, not just from the attack in Boston but from decades of political divisiveness and economic stagnation. As a nation, we are hurt and angry and on the verge of a complete breakdown. Our so-called leaders have failed us, concerning themselves more with special interests for the few than the well-being of the many. The church has failed us, focusing more on homosexuality than the care of the needy. Corporations have failed us, attending more to short-term profits than long-term sustainability. We as American citizens cannot count on these entities to help us rekindle and heal the American spirit. That onus falls to us as individuals, especially those of us who have survived real ordeals. We must reach out to each other on a personal level and communicate as individual human beings.

I ask each of you who understands what I’m talking about to reach out to someone in your community who opposes your viewpoint and have a real conversation with them. Not a political shouting match but a basic conversation about their children or grandchildren or jobs or dreams. Don’t push your ideology on them. Just listen. Share a story from your life. Those of us who have been through real ordeals can do a lot to help heal our communities by reaching out to those around us because we understand that healing doesn’t come from external sources. It comes from the inside, and the only way we will heal as a nation is on a grassroots level. It must begin with individuals.

Whatever darkness we now face, we can overcome it. People have faced much worse in the past. Whatever fractures in our society can be mended if enough individuals reach out to each other and find common ground. There may be difficult times ahead, but the basic human desire for individual freedom is still alive. The Civil Rights movement taught us that kindness and compassion can be contagious and are the best weapons against darkness and anger. Those of us who are filled with the soft light already know this, and it is our time to push back against the forces that want to rob us of our liberties and drown us in fear. Those of us who still believe in the promise of America must come together, regardless of political ideology, and help each other heal. The soft light is a powerful force. If you have it, now is the hour to let it shine.

Inspirational

Boston Marathon Ramblings

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I’m just a small voice from a small corner of a rural part of this big nation.  I have no delusions that my opinion carries much impact or will be noticed by more than a handful of people.  But a part of me hopes that somehow this message will reach the eyes of the person or people who planted those bombs yesterday.

You may believe you are carrying out some grand scheme designed to cripple my country, but you are simply a coward.  You may believe that we will fall to our knees and quiver before your cause, but we won’t.  I don’t care who you are or what purpose you had for this attack on unarmed civilians.  Your plan has already failed.  Sure, you may have taken lives and bloodied bodies, and we will mourn for those who died and cry with those who lost arms and legs, but we will not cower before you.  Your plan failed because you don’t understand the human spirit, the American spirit, and certainly not the Boston spirit.  You will be surprised by our response.

Since you don’t seem to grasp our spirit, let me explain it to you as best I can.  In this nation, despite our fractured politics and very real problems we now face, we are a people bound by a sense of optimism.  Nearly everyone who came to these lands did so to escape some form of tyranny, and we still carry the imprint left behind by our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents that America symbolizes something important.  Our forerunners often faced situations far more dire and sinister than anything we face today, and if they can overcome the darkness they endured to reach this country and build better lives for their children, we can overcome the darkness of today.  Their spirit lingers in us, whispers to us in our times of need, reminds us that liberty matters.

Sure, we quibble and disagree with each other, sometimes to an obnoxious level.  Sure, we often appear disjointed and chaotic, but one thing I know about my country is that in our darkest moments, we pull together.  It’s happened so many times I won’t bother recounting them to you, but yesterday is as good an example as any.  Despite the fear, despite the chaos, despite the uncertainty, people helped each other.  People, some first responders, others civilians, helped the wounded, carrying them to ambulances and getting them to safety.  Many rushed to the hospitals to donate blood.  That is America, and you will not change us.

America is not a land of laws, despite the beauty and precision of our Constitution.  It’s the spirit behind that Constitution that makes us who we are.  We are not a land of blind allegiance to one person or one way, no matter how our politics looks sometimes.  In America, we are a people of courage, love, and compassion because nearly all of us are just a generation or two removed from famine, persecution, and tyranny.  In our hearts we know, you might break our bodies but you will never break that spirit because it is the natural wellspring of humanity, the desire to live free.  Whoever you are and whatever your plan, you will never extinguish that desire.  Your cowardice will be rooted out, exposed to the world, and punished accordingly.  Your failed ideology will wilt under the shining beacon of liberty that illuminates the souls of my fellow citizens.  We will not quiver before cowards.  We will stand tall, bind together, and build a better future for ourselves.  We will do so because this country symbolizes something more than you will ever comprehend and because we are a stronger people than you will ever understand.  We are the sons and daughters of freedom.