I’m noticing that my titles are a bit vague and nonspecific when it comes to what I’m going to be talking about. Partly because, the nature of these are very much unplanned, very much stream of thought. I’m not aiming for a well-researched essay. I’m just trying to put the thoughts I’m having about the state of education into mini-essays that are just a little more specific than a tweet. And partly because, these topics are very metonymic (okay, maybe I’m stretching that) towards what I’m thinking about. They’re very much small portions of much larger ideas, and I’d like to think they’re well-suited for a blog.

We’ve had one good big “brand new” idea in education this millennium, and it wasn’t even new. It was just a wide expansion of existing pedagogical arenas. Ever since, we’ve mostly lost the plot about the purpose of public education. Anything that strays from making students “college and career ready” is a distraction, and the only way to make a student “college and career” ready is to focus on the foundational skills that will get them there.

It all started with the Bush era “No Child Left Behind” which is a mix of well-intentioned and dastardly ideas towards the destruction of public education. It’s always been hard to argue against, and so we’ve seen it strengthened in some cases and moved into a more positive direction in others. Ultimately, the idea is way too flawed. One of its key tenets is the idea that all children regardless of socioeconomic status can be successful, and that it is the job of a school to make all students successful.

I have a student teacher this semester, and this post certainly isn’t about how great she is. She’s great. And that’s my last student teacher was great. I was great as a student teacher, and then every now and then, we get a Karen who is not so great. All of these points are not at all the point.

Out of the classes that a teacher-in-training takes in their three and a half years of traditional classes, the only ones that are actually really useful are the classes that they take for their subject matter. Okay, maybe, I’m exaggerating. The first class you take in the field of education is definitely valuable. Notice, I didn’t specify which class that is? Because it doesn’t matter. The other 6-10 classes are generally rehashes of whichever class you take first. But there is one “class” that does matter, and it’s the bane and the jewel of the program.

I mean once your in a classroom. It actually does kind of make sense because when we have in-service days of training, the key is: can you find one thing of value to keep? And if you can find one thing of value in the six to seven hour training day, it wasn’t a waste. So as long as we apply that rule to the entirety of the teacher training curriculum, it’s all good! Right? Right. Kinda. Not really.