I was embarrassed last night to be counted among the ranks of parents at the school board's parent meeting.
Granted, my sons have not come home crying after school because of pushing in the hallways or un-monitored encounters at recess. My kindergartner has never run home by himself across Highway 52 or any other major thoroughfare and begged me in tears to home school him. Last night, I felt compassion for parents and children in those challenging circumstances. Logically, I acknowledge that there is certainly potential for improved student outcomes given a smaller student-to-teacher ratio and possibly even greater square footage per student in which to learn each day.
Nevertheless, I was embarrassed to hear parents accuse with such animosity those very public servants who have devoted so much effort to fighting our fights and securing solutions to our problems---solutions, I realised from the truly informative portion of last night's meeting, over which they have limited control. Alberta Education, overseeing the needs of an entire province, allocates the tax dollars that build, modernise, and enlarge Alberta schools. The school board may study, propose, and petition, and it appears evident that they have. As a result, our school will likely receive the best Alberta Education offers any growing community: two additional modular units, a boon we might do better to acknowledge than to resent.
We didn't treat our own administrators any better than we treated our school board. Admittedly, it appeared that parents' justifiably sensitive feelings had been hurt by administrative responses, real or perceived. But as parent after parent railed against our authorities, we rightly remembered to thank our tireless, talented teachers but failed to extend that gratitude to our administration. They are perceptive and capable individuals who dedicate their years of education, experience, and understanding not to griping about our school's growth but to capitalising on it. If our administrators failed to consult us in their problem-solving, perhaps it was because they feared we would respond just as many of us did, magnifying the problems rather than synergising solutions.
I was reminded of my three-year-old, tantrum-ing Wednesday morning that when I cut his waffle, I overturned a few pieces. He didn't thank me for making the waffle or whipping the cream that bedecked it. He zoomed-in on three over-turned pieces and cried so long and so frantically that by the time he settled down, the whipped cream had melted, the waffle was soggy, and he'd traded his breakfast for a breakdown. Last night I had to wonder if the parents of Raymond Elementary School students weren't making the same exchange.
The concerns parents expressed last night are real and valid: no one wants her child to be shoved under the coat hooks in a hallway gone to bedlam. No one wants his child's needs lost in the chaos of over-stuffed classrooms. No one wants his child to lose educational opportunities because limited resources can't stretch sufficiently to sustain a school's burgeoning population. But as real as these problems are, we must ask, "What more can reasonably be done?" and even more importantly, "What can I do to help solve the problem, and what is the most useful manner in which to approach it?" Parents might well ask themselves, "If my child were at last night's meeting, witnessing me, what would my actions have taught him or her about solving problems?" There will always be problems. If we go no further than making demands, we will never make a positive difference.
So much is right in our school and our community! I am so grateful that my kindergarten student has come home every day this week, bursting his buttons to tell me, "Guess what I learned today!" He told me fact after fact about owls and detailed how he had stroked a taxidermied one, demonstrating the proper and improper direction for stroking owls' feathers and explaining why direction even matters. He is one of forty-seven students in the morning kindergarten, and he is a shy one at that; but even (or especially!) in a collaborative classroom with forty-six other pupils and three top-notch, phenomenal teachers---not to mention the attentive, supportive EAs---he has learned about owls and obedience.
He is my fourth kindergartner to attend Raymond Elementary School, and though I sent him to school with greater trepidation that I sent any of my other sons (he is shyer, younger, and less prepared academically than they), he has attached to three marvellous teachers, he has made friends of students he didn't know outside of class, he has faced and worked through adversity, and he has begun to read. When he wet his pants at school, his teachers called me: not to chastise me, but to ask if there were anything they could do to protect his dignity and increase his sense of safety, success, and self-worth. He was not my first son to wet his pants in kindergarten, but his teachers were the first to notice and take action, even with forty-six other students in their care. When I spent the day in the kindergarten classroom, as I have done each time I had a kindergartner, I actually saw greater order, better time-use, more carefully-monitored and individualised learning, and less-frazzled teachers than I had ever seen in kindergarten before. "Satisfied" would understate my respect. I have been overwhelmed with gratitude for the Phoenix our school has engendered from its space-crunch ashes.
My gratitude extends beyond the kindergarten. My sixth-grader shares at dinner each night his enthusiasm for the simulations his teachers have created of governments from Ancient Greece to modern Iroquois. He demonstrates science experiments, teaches us art techniques, initiates family discussion of current events, and looks up You-Tube videos about the James Webb telescope. My third-grader poses the logic challenge his teacher posed to him in a three-person learning group composed of students who needed that extra challenge. He demonstrates the strategies he has learned to solve multiplication equations. His problem-solving rivals mine, and not because I've taught him, but because his teachers have reached him at school. My first-grader participates in a school-sponsored Book Club to enrich the experience of students his age with particular needs. All of my children are eager to start logging their miles for the school's marathon club and the annual Cardston Kids' Marathon. And every one of my four children taught me the "Make Lemonade" song their music teacher taught them for One School, One Book --- an initiative that has brought our family together every afternoon in delightful shared reading, problem-solving, and discussion. These are the parental versions of those moments Mrs. Sue Heggie referenced last night: the moments when you stand back, beam, and exult, "They're learning! They're growing! They're becoming!" For all of these moments, from the depths of my heart, I thank the school board, the administration, the teachers, and the parent council, working in concert not to complain, but to create.
I think it's time to take a page from One School, One Book and Jacqueline Davies's Lemonade Wars. Our school board, administrators, teachers, and parent council have made a lot of lemonade, lately. I will do more good in my family, our school, and our community by joining forces and partnering with them, rather than waging war.
It is time for me to accept responsibility for the education of my children. It is time for me to determine what growth and goodness I can create from challenges my children may encounter at school. It is time for me to change those things over which I have power, beginning with my attitude. My personal response to the challenges (and opportunities!) inherent in our community's growth will have a greater effect for good (or ill) on my children than any other element in this equation.
