Former student sighting and education quandry

Tonight at the grocery, I ran into a former student. While in the produce section, a young man called over to me, asking if I used to teach at M middle school. As soon as I looked at him, I remembered his name. He is 18 now, which makes me feel very old. He was just a pup when I taught him.

I told D when I got home that I recall this kid as always being very sweet, very nice, but pretty thick. Well, I can't say if he was thick or just disinterested. His printing was atrocious, illegible, something that a colleague once attributed to students being exposed to drugs in utero. N's printing at age 4 is more legible than this kid's printing was at age 11. So maybe there is something to that drug exposure thing?

It is funny how being a teacher really changed my view about education. I still think education is critical to success in life, but I think the educational system is a joke, more or less. Or should I say it is a joke for some.

I never realized until I taught how educational policy tries to right the wrongs of poverty and class. The school in which I worked was a magnet, so it pulled in the brightest of the bright and the richest of the rich. It also pulled in the kids from the housing project directly across the street--the poorest of the poor, and the...well, I don't want to say dumbest of the dumb. A child brought up by parents who aren't well-educated and struggle on a daily basis to get by simply can't and don't value education the way upper middle-class parents can and do. They don't have the luxury to value education.

For example, I know that reading to my children is important, dare I say essential, in helping them learn to speak, read and write. But I read all the time about parenting classes for low-income folks and that they don't realize how important reading is to their children. Or maybe they realize it but never learned to read well themselves. Or maybe they want to read, but their lives are so complicated by poverty that reading just doesn't take priority.

I taught plenty of 6th graders who were functionally illiterate. Some were probably reading at a 1st grade level. And I mean I taught entire CLASSES of students who all were in a similar boat. So while I would have liked to have said, "Send them all back to elementary school," this just isn't feasible. So how do I grade students who are many levels below the reading level at which they should be? This always proved a quandry for me. They had to get a grade from me, and some were able to do the work, although not at a level that I required of my advanced students (the upper middle-class students).

It made me realize that grades per se aren't very important at all, which is funny since I was the kind of kid who nearly had a stroke if I got a 92% on a test (B+). I had kids who managed to pass my Language Arts class who couldn't read worth a darn. And I had advanced students who failed my class (and many others), but will go on to college and become accountants. There are many things that grades don't measure, such as effort, ambition, parent-involvement, to name just a few.

I think about my parents, who both came from very poor families. My maternal grandfather died when my mom was 6 months old, leaving a widow and 5 children under the age of 16. My paternal grandfather was an alcoholic who drank many, many paychecks away. Both of my parents graduated from high school. Mom took some college classes but always struggled. Dad completed his college on the GI Bill after serving in the Air Force. Both of them made education a top priority for my brother and I. Nothing else came first....except going to church.

Seeing this student tonight brought back all these thoughts I had struggled with while teaching. And it makes me wonder how I will be with N and G?

My gut feeling is that N and G will do well in their educational lives because they have 2 well-educated parents who promote education and reinforce what they learn at school. And if my kids struggle, I will use whatever resources are available to help them. But that is the benefit of being educated. I know there are resources, and I know how to access them and utilize them.

I also know there are many, many parents who don't have this knowledge or confidence at their disposal.