Social Studies Coordinator - the Maytag Repairman of the School District

Someone finally came out and said it. It was a school district coordinator, so I guess it counts for more. I was at a training and he said, "There's not enough time in your school day to teach the entire core. So social studies is pretty much relegated to whatever a teacher can get around to." The legislature in Utah along with the federal government has mandated this and mandated that to the point where teachers have little say in how their day is organized. Reading - important. Math - really important. Science - sort of important. Social studies - way down there. (Don't ask about the arts.) This is a sad state of affairs as we are supposed to be raising the next generation of citizens. With the push to pass reading and math tests no teacher has the time luxury to present social studies (or any other topic, for that matter) in any depth. Sure, we try to integrate history and civics into our reading lessons. But we no longer have a learning environment in which children can explore the richness of American culture, or the importance of its history. We say the pledge (mandated), but we can't take time to explain what it means. We post a sign in our hallway saying, "In God we trust," (mandated) while not trusting teachers to do their jobs. We'll celebrate Lincoln's Bicentennial (mandated), but without the requisite understanding of why his life and death were important. It's kind of social studies fast food. Spit out the salient points and dump the rest.

It may sound like I'm disheartened by what the man told us today. I'm not. It was the first time someone spoke the truth about this issue. Doing so put this district specialist on our side. He is willing to help find resources and help us carve out a little time to take back a subject that is incredibly important. No one should dumb down history.

Hooray for UEA

It's so nice to have a couple of days off. The convention coincides with fall break at the U so Sean and Kimmi are on break as well. I'm going to see a speaker tomorrow - Alfie Kohn - who writes books on how teachers screw up their students. Well, not really. But he does have some pretty wide reaching criticism of everyday practices. His book, Punished By Rewards, talks about how making rewards extrinsic doesn't allow students to develop their own reasons for working hard. The latest installment is a book about how homework doesn't work. I'm curious because I see homework as a necessary part of education, particularly for students like mine who need to catch up. We have so little time and so much for them to learn. Practice becomes something they must do at home if they hope to compete with students raised in better circumstances. I wonder if Mr. Kohn can tell me what I should do about that if, indeed, homework isn't effective. And, of course, I want to wander through the vendor area where you can buy stuff for your classroom. Not that I need anything else, but it's lots of fun and I always seem to find something to buy.

My kids having fun in the rain

Sean, Taylor and their friend Mike decided to go to the "lake" Saturday. The news crew was coming back from covering some flooding west of us. We stopped by in time to see them videotaping the boys trying to navigate Lake Constitution.