EP 30 - The “We’ve Got to See Our Way through this” Episode

On past episodes, George and I have talked about how happy most people are with their schools on the local level. Students and parents love their teachers and feel like their schools are headed in the right direction, but that love shifts when they talk about the state of the public school system on regional or national scales. Today, we’re going to talk about the people at the center of that discussion, the classroom teacher. In August, PBS reported that upwards of 20% of all teaching vacancies in the US for this academic year are due to educators leaving the profession entirely. While some attribute this to the “great resignation” that’s affecting the entire workforce, today we’re going to try to understand why teachers in particular are leaving the classroom, as we ask, “Where’s everyone going?”

Off air, George and I have often reminisced about the countless high school teachers who told us in no uncertain terms This will be the most important class of your lives. While we’re sure…if we could remember anything from any of those classes…that we would have ended up in vans down by the river if not for those teachers’ wisdom and, often, strict discipline, for this episode we’re interested in what really prepares students for success as college students. After spending four or more years preparing for college by taking classes, doing homework, creating projects and taking tests on repeat, many students enter college with good grades and good test scores, but they find themselves struggling when they get on college campuses across the country. So, get out your notebooks, create a dialectical journal, and yes, we’re going to need you to find your colored pencils because we’re wondering what schools need to do to prepare students for the realities of their college years.

While George and I remember tasting the paste as we muddled our way through arts and crafts in kindergarten, most people’s school culinary memories are of sitting on benches in crowded cafeterias, trading PB&Js for chocolate pudding, partaking in real or imagined food fights, and, of course, doing battle with the proverbial lunch lady. As the vast majority of American students are headed back to in-person school this fall, we want to open our fourth season talking beyond the classroom as we explore the importance of school lunch programs. Today, despite film depictions of trays of brown sludge and tiny milks, we’re going to discuss how the school lunch is integral not only to fueling our students’ bodies but also their minds.

With Memorial Day behind us and mid-June upon us, students across the country at various levels of education are donning their gowns, decorating their caps, and heading to the biggest arenas on their campuses to graduate. So, for those of you who just graduated or are about to graduate, George and I want to congratulate you and wish you the best of luck on your next steps, whatever they may be. Today, however, we’re talking about what goes on after the ceremonies and after the final bells ring in the summer for students and teachers. Today, we’re talking summer school in all its iterations, as we ask, “Is summer school such a bad thing?”

If, like George and I, you are a product of the American public school system, at one point or another you’ve probably heard of GATE or TAG. While these programs are administered in different ways in different places, they all have one thing in common: they’re tasked with identifying and serving students in our system who are deemed “gifted and talented.” Today, we’re going to talk about these programs and try to understand how they fit into the fabric of our education system as we ask: do we really need a GATE that lets some in and keeps some out of our educational programs?

As we’re coming out of spring break and into the home stretch of academic years across the country for students, teachers, administrators and parents from pre-K to BA, we thought it would be a good time for a thought experiment. Since the enlightenment in Europe in the 18th century, knowledge has become increasingly compartmentalized. In fact, in big high schools across the country, many faculty members may not know teachers outside their departments let alone what those teachers in other subject areas are teaching. Despite efforts to balance student workloads, our children often ping from the most important class of their day to the most important part of their day, which can be overwhelming, disorienting, and exhausting even while it’s inspiring. We’re not sure that’s the way to prepare students for our increasingly complicated world. So today is about wondering what would happen if our education system thought about knowledge holistically as we ask, “what if there were no more math or English or history or science classes?”

Three seasons into Education on the Rocks, we realized that we haven’t spent a moment talking about what happens when teachers aren’t in the classroom. Regardless of our educational experiences, we’ve all spent periods of entire days with substitute teachers. Often these teachers were nameless, their sole titles being any descriptor plus sub. The tired sub, the coffee-drinking sub, the newspaper-reading sub. We’re sure that you’re picturing someone from your educational past who came in to turn on the projector, press play on the VCR, insert the DVD, or started doing magic tricks to prepare for their night gig.

Today, because of increases in teacher absences, substitute teachers are in the news because the country has a shortage of people who can or want to do what we see as one of the oldest, if not the oldest, gig economy jobs in our culture. Today, we’re talking about what happens when the teacher’s gone and the sub’s in-charge and what happens when there aren’t enough subs to staff teacher absences, as we ask: “Is it the cool sub?”

Today, George and I are sitting down to record our 30th episode, and we wanted to thank all of you who listen in as we muse on the nuances of education, education policy, and what it means to be part of the American school system.

As we rang in yet another new year in the shadow of Covid, the Omicron variant, which a couple of months ago we probably would have thought was one of the minor evil superheroes in a Marvel movie, is changing the face of public education. Some schools are wide open. Some are fully remote. And that’s in the same town! In this episode, we’re going to ponder what we should do, as students, as teachers, as administrators in the midst of yet another wave of coronavirus infections, as we ask: how does the American school system recover from the pandemic, even as we’re still living in the pandemic?

Back in the day, George and I spent many nights in our acid-washed jeans with our bleached bangs dancing in our rooms…by ourselves…and one of the songs we loved was “Vacation” by The Go-Go’s. In fact, vacations were “all we ever wanted,” we dreamed about having that “time to get away.”

I know, you’re probably thinking what does your John Hughes film teenage fantasy have to do with education? While you’d be right to think that we often reminisce about our times as students in the 80’s on the pod, today we’re connecting our tangent to our theme.

Between the end of November and the New Year many schools have over 3 weeks of vacation, today we’re talking about what happens when school’s out as we ask, “What’re you doing for vacation?”