Our Schools

Today's entry comes from David Wicklund, Pinewood Special Education teacher and Mounds View Fellow:

With more of an emphasis today in education being placed on the whole learner, non-cognitive skills, and our own “habits of mind,” we teachers find ourselves being pulled in so many directions. At times the job can seem daunting. Read teacher blogs, daily commentary in the news or opinion pages, or watch the political education rhetoric being produced and you know that we teachers and our students are consistently feeling the pressures placed on our schools.

The sense of urgency with which teachers teach should not be lost with those both inside and outside of classrooms. At our best, teachers are agents of change who engage all learners, work collaboratively within school communities, inspire creativity, continually seek best practices, embed technology for better understanding, and feel a passion to work for all students especially the most vulnerable in our communities. Celebrated success is all around us.

Although we know the daily expectations that are on all teachers, for the most difficult classrooms, we teachers can feel the opposite of inspirational or inspired. Most days it can feel like we are operating in constant emergencies. The never-ending need to adjust, find solutions, maintain growth, balance relationships, build consistency in the classroom and school, all while operating with a “growth mindset” can be overwhelming. What happens when school communities daily struggle to understand all students who enter their schools? How do school communities grow and create narratives that can be internalized for all students, for all in the community?

If we are to grow as a community and realize our full potential in the Mounds View Public Schools and beyond, we must first understand how to own all students. As any district, school, grade level, classroom, and teacher realizes, what works for most students doesn't necessarily work for all students. Too often the gap between communities that we serve and the way we “do” school is much too large.

Lisa Delpit (1995) called our classrooms the “arena” for the collision of daily realities that families, schools, and teachers face. Realities in education include alienation, family brokenness, poverty, guilt, and struggle. These are realities that our tests, data, and best practices only remotely measure. Our daily reality is to create school environments that heal, motivate, and engage our students who struggle the most.

To start strengthening our schools in Mounds View to become urban incubators of success in education, let’s begin by giving all teachers the tools to succeed, giving a vision for understanding all students and families, and by owning all students.

Lets give all teachers, especially our newest teachers, the tools to succeed. 

Thomas Rademacher, 2014 MN Teacher of the Year, in a Tedx Talk at St.Thomas University spoke about how “we don’t talk enough about how to make and keep good [teachers].”  Too often I see teachers in our primary schools, even tenured, excellent teachers, struggling.  All teachers as Rademacher states “should be given the chance to grow and become really good teachers.”  One step is to invest in mentorship and development that moves good teaching to be great teaching. It could be that the tools all teachers need is a healthy school that is supportive of teachers who struggle, protects and uplifts teachers who are vulnerable, gives support that empowers their classrooms and themselves as the teachers.

Let’s give a vision for understanding all students and families.  

We must be willing to try to understand all families who walk through our school doors. Communities that are willing to teach all students, see every family and student as an asset. Lisa Delpit (1995) offers insight for understanding students and families clearly: “We must be vulnerable enough to allow our world to turn upside down in order to allow the realities of others to edge themselves into our consciousness.”  If we can understand that a student who throws a pencil is more than just a behavior problem, or a parent that doesn't show up to parent teacher conferences is more than just a bad parent, or a student who is loud is more than just a disruption, then we start to see all students as imperfect but growing just like us.  

Let’s own all students. 

Owning all students is a willingness to struggle together, all teachers being committed to supporting and teaching all students in the whole school. Programs don’t own students. In healthy communities, all students feel connected, supported, worthy, and loved while teachers feel true collaboration that includes having honest conversations when their students or classrooms struggle. Nothing is more difficult for a teacher than to admit struggles and ask for help. When we truly own all students, admitting and seeking help becomes a strength for open collaboration because teachers feel the support and respect of colleagues working together toward the same goal.

Delpit, Lisa. (1995). Other People’s Children: Cultural conflict in the classroom. New York, NY: The New Press.

"Flipping Tenure | Tom Rademacher | TEDxUniversityofStThomas." YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 03 Jan. 2015.