Student Heroes

I have met a lot of students over the years and it never fails to amaze me how resilient they are. I remember one from many years ago that came from a single-parent low socio-economic home. She was incredible. She dressed top notch, got great grades, lived a principled and upright life. She ended up improving her status immensely and was a successful college student.

There was one that could not read. He would memorize the same set of words over and over again only to forget them in a few hours. He was persistent and eventual got a job and has done well in society. He does better that a lot of his more capable cohorts.

Recently, I have been impressed with a number of students who have set a goal to lose weight and become more physically fit. Some of them don't even look like the same individual.

There are those that have made bad choices then realizing their errors get back on course. They have left drugs or alcohol and have moved forward with their lives. There are those who have left bad relationships and are now focusing on improving themselves and not being dependent on others.

Yet, there are still others that have very few obvious struggles and they just continue everyday being the great individuals that they started being.

This school, this city, this state, this country, this world is full of great people.

Student Freedom and Responsibility

I was just reading a book about communism and thinking about high school students. How much freedom should we give them? At what point do we stop their destructive behavior and at what point do we let them govern themselves? To me there needs to be a balance but I am not sure where that balance is. At a high school level, it is a continuum because 12th grade students are ready to handle more freedom and responsibility than freshman. What are your thoughts about how much they can handle?

Changes in Education

As is usual after attending a conference (I attended UELMA today), I am wondering how we can implement sweeping changes in the way we educate students. It is a catch 22. We can see that things need to change, we talk about them, and then we return to the same system and keep on doing what we have always done. The problem is we are not given the opportunity to change the structure. We need time, a lot of time, to create a different system. It is like we are trying to repair the car whose engine needs overhauled while we are still driving it around. We aren't making much progress. Over the weekend or even over the summer we make minor repairs. As we start to make small amounts of headway we realize it is August and we have to throw things back together and start driving the old clunker around again.