We rarely comment on other blogs, but a few in this country have caught our eye, including “Stump the Teacher,” which is written by Josh Stumpenhorst, a middle school teacher in Naperville, Ill., and the state’s 2012 Teacher of the Year. He documents his experiences as a real teacher on his blog.
Many teachers do this, of course, but Mr Sumpenhorst has the advantage of writing flare and a particular dedication to sharing useful information about classrooms freely with anyone who will read his blog. This is what I try to do as well.
A recent post on Stump the Teacher described Mr Sumpenhorst’s experience at the annual conference for the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, also known more commonly as ASCD. He viewed a presentation by some award-winning leaders at a high school in Milwaukie, Ore. When he asked how the group planned to disseminate information about their great work, they didn’t have an answer.
“We all have a story to tell and it needs to be told,” Mr Stumpenhorst concluded in his post. “Regardless of what space you use, our stories need to be told. Move past the notion that your story is not worth being told. It will have value to someone and we have an obligation to share what is working for us in an effort to improve education for all…not just those in our own school or classroom.”
To all you students, teachers, administrators, I say this now: We have unlimited space, and we want to tell your story, no matter how small you may think it is. Of course, there are big stories in education this year. In Illinois, we have several huge developments, many of which may affect every school in the state, even though some of the effects may be indirect. These include:
- The closing of Chicago schools
- A proposed parent-trigger law
- The incorporation of the Common Core
- Teacher evaluations that use standardized test scores
- Standardized tests and how they’re used
- The rise of charter schools
In Maryland, some issues that affect all of us include
- Percentages of teacher evaluations based on standardized tests
- School safety and gun-control laws
- Concussions, and the use of helmets in sports like girls’ lacrosse
- The Common Core and new tests, including the need for technology
- Bullying, cyberbullying, and what can be done about it
I agree with Mr Stumpenhorst: We have a moral obligation to share what we know works in our schools and classrooms. People are bombarded these days with messages, many of them sponsored by billionaires who want to make as much money as they can off our schools without doing anything to improve the quality of education in our classrooms.
And they’re getting away with it, too. That’s happening because educators have proven themselves ineffective and incompetent when it comes to spreading their message. A school newsletter posted on a district website can’t possibly compete with paid-for advertising and coverage in a newspaper that has an average audited circulation of more than 400,000. And before we know it, our laws will be changed, our schools will be closed, and the diversity and quality of course offerings will be narrowed.
This is already happening, and it’s why I developed and still maintain this website. It is a place for your voices. I will focus, with a little help, on developing stories and producing the web pages themselves, but the obligation to share the stories is yours—the educators, the students, the community members who have something useful to share about education.
Mr Stumpenhorst reported that one individual, who was not part of the group from Oregon, pushed back when the discussion of spreading the word came up: Apparently, he “did not think it was important that they share their story for others to learn.”
Come on, folks! We are all pressed for time, but I have personally dedicated my time to spreading this word. I believe that if there are no voices strong enough to counterbalance big money when it comes to running our schools, we’re in trouble, especially the kids who will miss out on a significant part of their education. And to be honest, our voice isn’t all that strong. All we can do, since we don’t have Wal-Mart’s or Microsoft’s bank account, is get together and collect our voices instead of spreading them out on hundreds of blogs and district or classroom websites.
If you have a story idea or an idea of how you can use some of the classroom utilities we have developed, write me at paul@schoolsnapshots.org. I promise to listen, and I ask you to keep in mind that we learn, almost equally, from successes and failures. I have no interest in promoting one school or one system over another, except based on what works. But I’ve got to hear the story. Let’s get going!
