Kids and Common Core

This time of the year always makes me think of one of my former students whom I shall call Paul.

He was one of those kids who sat quietly in the back of the room.  He didn't disrupt, often because he wasn't awake through the whole class.  He did his classwork, but there was never any homework completed.  He was skinny, pale, and rarely smiled.  He had dead eyes.

Nobody seemed to know much about him except that he came from a "good" family.  I wasn't too sure what qualified his as a good family.  The neighborhood they lived in?  The family name that was well-known in town?  The siblings and cousins who excelled at school?  He didn't look like a kid from a "good" family.  He was always tired.  Sometimes I had to buy him lunch.  And, he refused to remove his coat.  Many times he hunkered into it and dozed off in class.

Because I rarely let kids get away with doing nothing, I started talking to him. A lot.  At first we discussed school work. He willingly stayed after school for help, but his grades barely improved.  Eventually, I started getting him to talk about home.  When I learned this boy was being verbally abused, occasionally hit, and often not fed, I was angry. When he told me about the night his father locked him out of the house, I was furious.  It was freezing cold that night.  One of the girls sitting near him heard our "casual" chat, and she confirmed she'd seen him wandering the neighborhood that night. I reported this to the guidance counselor, and he got to work on it.

Paul went into foster care.  At Christmas time.  I took some gifts and went to visit him in his temporary home.  The family was nice.  It was a comfort to be warm, fed, and certain of where he'd be sleeping at night, but he was completely miserable.  It was Christmas time and his father had thrown him away.  He was mad at the world, probably at me too, and who could blame him?  He did not finish the school year with us as he began the bounce from foster home to foster home.  I never heard from him again.

 I have never forgotten him.  

When politicians babble about what has to be done in the schools, when politicians throw money into "accountability" tests, when politicians tie teacher performance to student results, I think of Paul.  There's nothing in the Common Core that addresses the needs of kids like Paul. No page in that curriculum can help a student whose foremost thoughts are of survival.  Yet, it is all the teacher's fault when they don't succeed.  I did what I could for Paul and it wasn't enough to bring him academic success.  I hope his life eventually stabilized and that he graduated from high school.  What politicians don't know is that there are many kids like Paul.  All students need to feel that school is a safe and welcoming place for them; not a place to cause them nightmares on the nights before testing.   What I wish politicians would learn is that the pressures of state testing and pushing every kid to attain the same level of academic achievement is not education.  What I wish politicians would experience is daily classroom life so that the "curriculum" they develop is realistic to the kids they force to swallow it.

Yes, and I wish for peace on Earth, too.