Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Instability

Three days into my second summer with Steppingstone Academy, the obvious differences between the program and the urban public school I work at are glaring. Some of it, if I'm honest, rests in the fact that my Academy students choose to dedicate their summer to learning but the public school students are forced to attend. But the most noticeable difference is the level of stability.
Since last summer, the Academy has experienced both growth and change. I am the only carryover teacher from the prior summer. Two key individuals in the "admin" office moved on. And yet, it is business as usual. The scholars show up and work hard. The routines have not changed. The vision remains the same.
Since last summer at the public school, our principal has moved on, a vice-principal has moved on, and our superintendent has moved on (all of this in the last month). We are losing teachers--still not sure how many because our education budget has yet to pass the town vote. And in contrast to the Academy, I feel a great deal of uneasiness. What is our vision? What is our purpose? Our students were not succeeding under the previous leadership with their own view of how to move forward. Now, we are going to change visions again, start all over?
Why is it that the students in our country who need the most stability, the most continuity, are given the least amount of it? It's just not fair.

3 Comments:

At 2:52 PM , Blogger education overdose said...

Changing the culture of a school is a difficult task. When a kid does not want to be at school, then they will not work. When I gave assignments last year, I chose a group of students to give more challenging work. The group was made up of ordinary students. So, I told them they would be getting more challenging work but they could opt out of it. Each group that made a commitment was successful, even the kids that were not 'smarter' than the others.

Consistency and commitment are truly values every citizen needs to keep.

 
At 10:50 PM , Blogger bun2bon said...

Well said.

 
At 9:14 PM , Anonymous Dissertation Help India said...

In numerous fields of study, the component of instability within a system is generally characterized by some of the outputs or internal states growing without bounds. Not all systems that are not stable are unstable; systems can also be marginally stable or exhibit limit cycle behavior.

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