I grew up in a house where might won over right, so with my own children I tried to make sure that every present, every treat, every privilege was equal as best I could. I may have gone a little overboard; the family joke is that I carefully counted and sorted the M&Ms before handing them out.

My daughter is right–life is not fair, at times shockingly so. Some babies hit the jackpot, some lose before they’re born; some will have the will power to change their luck, others will be defeated before they ever stand on their own two feet. I see it in schools all of the time.

I’ve worked with kids who hit the jackpot with loving parents who have the financial stability to offer support to their children well into their adult years. Others have loving parents but money is a constant struggle. I’ve know children who grow up financially secure but with parents who are emotionally or physically abusive. And then there are the kids born to drug-addicted parents who cannot provide even their most basic needs.

None of us has a choice about the circumstances of our births — like the lottery, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

But there is such a thing as luck, and often it appears in the form of a gifted teacher. Teachers can tip the scales, even the odds, level the playing field. In this country we have public schools that open their doors to all children, regardless, so at least every kid has a chance.

To be “unschooled,” a child must have parents who are motivated and capable of making that happen. When we pull these children out of the public schools, we also remove the motivated parents–the ones who show up on a regular basis and volunteer to provide activities and services that the schools can no longer afford. When I taught in a rural school district in Tennessee, I was advised by several of my peers to pull my girls out of the public schools and place them in a nearby private school. It wasn’t that my salary did not allow for extras like tuition; I knew that if my children were enrolled in the schools where I worked, attention would be paid. I was always motivated to do the best I could for my students, but my focus was on my classroom. However, when my three daughters entered the school system, the stakes were raised. I no longer viewed the primary, elementary, and junior high schools as an employee of the district; I watched what was going on in those schools with the eyes of a mother. It matters.

I’ve kept several books that influenced me as a beginning teacher—I can see them on my bookcase right now, their yellowing, dog-eared pages a testament to their worth. Most were written by Jonathan Kozol and Ken Macrorie – Death at an Early Age and Uptaught spun my head around and changed the way I entered a classroom. I also valued John Holt’s practical books about What do I do Monday and Why Children Fail. But if I had known he coined the word “unschooling” and had pulled his children from the system, I’m not sure I would have brought them home. It’s kind of like the owner of a restaurant who eats elsewhere—just doesn’t speak to confidence and commitment.

I’m still in love with the public schools—there is no more potent symbol of the American Dream than the belief that all children, regardless of the circumstances of their birth, can enter a building where they are guaranteed a safe environment in which to acquire the skills that will open the doors to their dreams.
Think about it: If for just five years, every politician, every teacher, every administrator would entrust their children to the public school system, I believe we could turn this ship around. And while we’re at it, if the members of Congress had to use the same health insurance as the average American, we’d fix that mess, too. Don’t criticize what you don’t understand—these times need a’changing.

In my workshops, I begin by pointing out that teaching is all about sales and performance art. Inevitably I’ll get some nods of agreement and a few who visibly take offense at this statement. I don’t mean to imply that we teachers are in front of the class singing/dancing/juggling vaudeville-style. I just mean that we have to be interesting to listen to and that we have to believe in our product. This goes two ways. First, our curriculum is our product. It should be clear to our students that we are passionate about what we teach. But in another way, our students are our “products” — not empty vessels by any means, but hopefully we enrich their knowledge, expand their view of the world, and help them master useful skills. And then we send them on their way. We have to believe in the kids; even when our students are throwing up smoke screens by clamming up or acting out, we have to help them recognize themselves at their best and demonstrate our complete faith in their ability to do well in school and in life.

To save money, some schools and colleges are embracing online education. I can see this as an effective way to disseminate information and help students master some skills, but I still believe that nothing can replace spending time face-to-face with an inspirational teacher. Just as with sales, shoppers who already know what they want will motivate themselves to acquire the goods. But for those who are browsing or who don’t even want to step into the store, a gifted salesperson who is in love with the product can pull them in and make them believe their lives will be better if they buy what we are selling. For me, that defines the Art of Teaching.

Then it just got hard. We went back to class, got our degrees and started families. Some worked to improve the lives of others, others worked to improve their stock portfolios. It’s easy to just give up and take care of your own, but none of us is on our own; what hurts you, hurts me. The recent earthquake in Japan has made that crystal clear.

For years I’ve begun every school year by displaying big posters that group my students by their common career goals. From the mid-80’s until a couple of years ago, the bulk of my students wanted to go into either Professional Sports or Business. I’d always ask, “What business?” Often the student would reply, “Whatever makes me a lot of money.” So we’d spend the year seeking enlightenment by trying to answer the most basic of questions: “Why were you put on this Earth and what are you going to do about it?”.

In the last couple of years I’ve noticed a change–my students are interested in work that’s not all about them, like teaching, law enforcement, health care. They spend their vacations working for Habitat for Humanity or other volunteer activities. And it’s not just for their college résumés–I get the sense that they think it’s the right thing to do. Power and greed have been exposed for what they are: pathetic attempts to make the weak appear strong. Most of my students’ and colleagues’ families have been harmed by a minority who has no concept of when enough is enough. I think my students are saying, “Enough.”

I hope so. It isn’t that we need to change–we just need to redefine power and success. It’s an exciting time.

In my Introduction to Teaching class, I keep pressing my students to explain their choices. Sometimes I sound like a two-year-old–why, why, why? If you think about it, that’s how the human brain works, “Why is the sky blue?”–toddlers come up with that on their own; it’s natural that our students will ask. Why should kids learn how to write, read, memorize facts, compute, create, sing, act, speak another language? The answer we teachers give is all important and sets the tone for the class. The students will run it through their crap detectors and either buy into our curriculum or mentally check out.

I’m convinced our response to this question and our ability to sell our answer is at the root of most discipline problems, student engagement and progress, and overall job satisfaction.

When we’re brainstorming with our colleagues, seeking authentic answers, our eyes should shine with passion and we should be swept away with the thrill of the possibilities. And that’s what we sell.

I’m going to skip right over the irony of “best” and “cheaply” being in the same part of the sentence, and instead focus on solutions.

I’m a Baby Boomer. We’re often portrayed as the giant lump moving through the anaconda of our social system. We’ve always attracted attention; we’ve been used as barometers and guinea pigs; we’ve protested wrongs and demanded rights; we’ve gotten things done and we’re retiring in droves.

We need to tap in to that power. My Introduction to Teaching students have been working with kids in the elementary school next door. I’ve let them go in on their own, observe, make decisions, get frustrated. As a student teacher, I was thrown in front of a class the first week of school with no preparation, and I still say that was the best experience I could have had. Lately, I’ve been dropping in to help my students with their students, and I find myself obsessed with a couple of children who are struggling at a very young age. My students need the practice, but I’m dying to help.

There are kids like this in every elementary school in every town in our country. What if the Baby Boomers would donate just one hour a day to work with a child who needs some extra attention and encouragement to get on track? In order to balance the budget, many districts have increased the class sizes in primary and elementary classrooms to a 30:1 ratio of students to teacher. I am in awe of anyone who can manage a group of fifteen first graders, much less double that size–these teachers are truly supermen and women. But they can always use help. And Baby Boomers are known for their desire to help.

Theoretically, I will retire in the next year or two, and I plan to walk to the nearest school and offer to work with a child who is behind. “I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.” -Rabindranath Tagore, philosopher, author, songwriter, painter, educator, composer, Nobel laureate (1861-1941).

Fear is prevalent throughout our country–neighbors turn against neighbors, colleagues against colleagues; life-long friends on different edges of the political spectrum dare not talk about the upcoming elections for fear of saying something that will end the relationship.  Everybody has a frustration, everybody has a solution, everybody is a little bit right and more than a little wrong.  Especially when it comes to national or world politics, we cannot possibly know the facts first hand.  We rely on the news to research and summarize the truth, then give it to us straight.  That is not happening right now.  Everything has a spin.

The LA Times ran a series of articles in September to expose teachers in the Los Angeles school district who were not improving their students’ test scores satisfactorily.  It’s believed that a young teacher who worked for years in one of the poorest schools with some of the most challenging students killed himself when his name was listed in an article as “less effective” based on standardized test scores–madness.  My students and I have spent a great deal of time talking about the difficulty of evaluating effective teachers.  They were all for publishing test scores until they wrote all of the qualities that they felt made an effective teacher on our white board and noticed that not one of the 38 qualities listed had anything to do with curriculum or test scores.  All of the adjectives they listed had to do with traits like patience, motivation, intelligence, a sense of humor, an interesting personality–qualities that will get you a job in any business.  To attract the best, we have to treat teachers like valued employees and make sure our schools reflect our pride in this business of educating our country’s children.

I was looking at a photo the other day taken in 1926 of a group of school children sitting on a lawn with handmade crowns on their heads, obviously getting ready for a festival or celebration of some kind.  Their faces are so open, so hopeful, so trusting–I see these same faces every day in our classrooms.  We don’t want to let these kids down.  We don’t need Superman to rescue us–our schools are filled with remarkable adults who do extraordinary work every day.  We need to take care of them.  Let’s restore the sanity, treat other people’s children like we would like our children to be treated, and embrace some good old common sense.  We can do this.

Yesterday I talked to my students about finding their passion for the subject(s) they’ll teach.  Several of them had a difficult time putting into words what they loved about math, science, literature, art, writing, etc., but our conversation was filled with earnest laughter and emotion.  I told them that it’s easy to get buried under the pressure of standardized tests and textbook outlines and state standards, but at the end of the day, their students should clearly see this passion.  Like parenthood, teaching is too difficult a job to do well unless it is filled with joy.

What snagged me this year was Ken’s request that I facilitate an Introduction to Teaching class for 11th graders.  I’ve been able to design the curriculum, using my common sense and experience to create a seminar for studying the Art of Teaching that includes real-life experiences so the students can apply what is learned.  This excites me to no end.  And it gets even better.  I have seven high school juniors who have chosen to take this class because they would like to become teachers some day.

From the first day, the class has come alive for me–the students and I are exploring research, current trends, and best practices to try to visualize education at its best.  How lucky are we?

But Paul Lim, their Business Director, is patient and persistent.  When he contacted me again in 2009, it sounded more like a call to adventure than a crazy idea, so I accepted.  Instinct won out over reason, and even though I tend to think carefully before I make a decision, I’ve learned that I can over-think, taking so much time to weigh the pros and cons that I miss my chance.

When it got down to the hard work of planning the trip and the workshops, I briefly regretted signing the contract; but a more powerful voice was telling me, “If not now, when?”– I am so glad I went.

We built in a week on the beaches of the South China Sea in Indonesia so I could adjust to the time change–a brilliant move.  By the time we returned to Singpore, I was rested, but still filled with the same worry that dominated my thinking as I prepared for the presentations.  My inservices are usually about Classroom Management–how to get those kids to settle down and go along with your program.  But the international students I’ve had the privilege to know over the past 30 years are almost without exception polite, dutiful, and driven–especially the Asian students.  I was sure that I would get up to talk about common discipline problems and how to deal with them, and the Singaporean teachers would smile, nod politely, but walk away thinking “what a waste of time.”  I can’t stand to waste people’s time.

But within 15 minutes of the first workshop, I realized that these teachers were dealing with many of the challenges that we face every day in our classrooms in American.  As they described some difficult students, I breathed a sigh of relief–kids are kids all over the world.  People are people all over the world.  We have have much in common, and after you peel away some cultural differences, we’re just talking about human nature.

So I spent two days sharing with intelligent, sincere, thoughtful educators who care enough about their students to take the day to listen to an American teacher tell what she knows.  It was an exhilarating experience, and I walked away with a renewed sense of conviction.  We can solve these problems that plague countries all over the world.  Peel away the fanaticism, greed, and lust for power and what you’ll find are people who pretty much want the same things:  a safe place to raise their families, meaningful work that pays enough to provide for their families, and a sense of respect for their culture.

And we teachers are in a perfect position to do that.  I don’t care what subject you teach, if you are not incorporating the Big Picture — the answer to “why should I learn this?” — you’re wasting time.  Every skill our students practice should go far, far beyond passing a test or building the perfect college résumé.   Our students should leave our classes with a clear picture of how these skills will prepare them to create safe communities to raise families, develop meaningful work, and embrace cultural diversity worldwide.  We can do this.

In my 61st year, I flew to Singapore.  I’m so glad I did.