Among the many pushes and pulls that impact the exchange between teacher and student we find an ever-growing list of elements that demand our attention.   Today our senses are being battered by any number of requests for “techno fixes” and ways to gain an advantage, or ways that provide the promise of being able to take a shortcut to the success of everything from student achievement to the prevention of a possible physical assault on our students.  Test prep programs, online tutorials, security systems, and the like represent multi billion dollar industries.

Legislators legislate fixes, companies send email after email promising a solution for that, a training for this, a savings for that, and a prescription for this.   It could be safer schools, less bullying, improved test scores, better teaching, and more.  In the wake of this onslaught we see the very nature of meeting the needs of students slipping from our very hands.  The time that it takes to consider new mandates, newfangled products or programs is time away from the true mission of public education.  Managing the classroom and the schoolhouse is about a commitment to each other; an individual classroom or community’s obligation to define and shape a culture that is a learning organization, not a repository of the next best thing since….

It is not a matter of standing still and refusing to face up to the reality of our time in history—a time that is rapidly shifting right beneath our feet.  Troubling times these are; a far cry for a seemingly gentler time and way of conducting ourselves in the schoolhouse of days gone by.   It’s not that I am hopelessly romantic about a simpler way of educating our youth.  In fact, I firmly believe in helping to steward young people towards a responsible and productive future instilled with the broad aspirations of our democracy.

Depending upon where you are, the incursion of such factors into the day-to-day workings of a school or classroom will vary—this may be due to wealth and other resources at the disposal of a community, and/or the culture of a school.  No two communities are identical.  What seems to be inescapable is the increasing presence of more and more factors that weigh on the ability of classroom teachers and administrators to focus on learning.

We can render checklist after checklist, audit all functions of a school, and standardize every waking moment of the learning process in the name of insuring equity and accountability, but this will not represent a winning formula that promotes the type of culture which is found in a successful learning community.  Trusting educators to account for the progress of their students is replaced by evermore-intrusive accountability measures.  These measures seem to account for everything, but sometimes count for nothing when we take the time to listen to our students and gain insight into their experience. 

Every moment that I am pulled away from an engaging dialogue with students, or with teachers because I am responding to the demands of outside forces I lose something of value to help move the agenda forward.  The value of dialogue that is focused on the elements of sound instruction, or the qualities of powerful learning experiences should not be pushed aside in the name of improving education.