I usually write from the teacher’s perspective. Today is the parent’s. I am the mother of 4. Maybe because I am also a teacher I am very aware of the education my children are getting. I care about their education. A LOT. I worry about it. I stress about it. I wonder about it. I moved away from my husband because of it. I think about it all the time. Are my kids getting what they need in school to grow into productive adults?
I learned a lot when my oldest was in school. I learned what mattered…better yet I learned what didn’t matter. I learned the hard way. I made a lot of mistakes. 7 years later I had 3 more kids and I have applied what I have learned. Here’s what I got for you:
Rewards and Awards do not matter. Not unless they are attached to real life achievements.
Example: My daughter had to participate in a science fair project in her 4th-grade class. I am glad she had to do the project. I am glad because of the experience she gained. Not the science so much, but the process. She moaned about it. She hated doing it. She didn’t want to do it. She was not invested in the science of it. She chose to do something relatively easy for her. Her project was time-sensitive and she ran into some issues and had to start over. Now, keep in mind, I did not help her other than help change the size of the font on her writing. I did not proof read. I did not give suggestions…ok wait I lie. I did suggest she put the smaller phrases on the smaller side of the presentation board when she got upset that she did not have room for everything in the middle and things were overlapping. So, I guess I did help. But, she did it all herself. She wrote the words, she typed it up. She printed it out. She glued and cut. She took her own pictures of the process. She did a crappy job. Her presentation was sloppy. She didn’t delve very deep into thought, but answered the questions and only briefly. She had a sense that it was not great, but passable. But she wasn’t sure. At the end of putting it all together, I asked her what she thought of her work. “It’s good enough!” was her response.
She presented along with her classmates. She told me she was embarrassed because her project was not as well done as the other kids. Now, I know my community pretty well. My guess is many of those kids had a lot of parent help. I live in a town of scientists. How can they not want to help? I refused to help on the grounds that this was Her work and needed to be done by HER. That oldest kid I mentioned earlier? He had to do this too. I helped then. That was a mistake. I helped him too much back then. Backfire! This girl of mine, number 4, had no help. But she learned. Isn’t’ that the point? She learned. Why do we give assignments? I give assignments to show learning. To prove learning. Or to aid in the act of learning. She learned her hypothesis was wrong. She learned that it was ok for her to be wrong and that she wasn’t going to get a bad grade if she was wrong. She showed she knew how to answer questions. She learned that spray glue shows through the paper and doesn’t go away. (I had suggested using different glue, but she declined) She learned that some kids do better work than others. She learned that she is not the best. She learned that it is embarrassing to turn in a product that has shoddy craftsmanship. She learned that getting a ribbon for participation means absolutely nothing.
She got a ribbon. She got a certificate. She should have gotten a D. She got an A. She said everyone got an A. What does that A mean? If everyone got an A, what does it mean? What is its true value? I have this conversation with my own students. What is an A? Does an A reflect what you have actually learned? There was a rubric that went with her project. If she scored 100% on all areas of achievement I could see the A having value…or at least the value that was expected. I think she learned something that was not on the rubric. I think what she learned was far more valuable. She learned the difference between good work and poor work. She learned that her own efforts do not match the efforts of all students. I do not know how many students had help and to what degree they had help. But I have seen science fair in her school and I have always had a hard time believing that the projects presented were 100% the work of a 4th grade student. My daughter also learned that she is capable of doing a project, in its entirety, all by herself. She learned a sense of accomplishment. She even sensed that her classmates’ work was not their own. And if it was, kudos to those kids! And if it wasn’t, those parents need to ask themselves- what matters most. The A or the learning experience? Because isn’t that what it should be about? Shouldn’t the act of the project be about learning? Should everything be about learning? Because in real life you have to be able to learn from the experience. You have to be able to have the experience, good or bad, to learn. In real life, you are not going to get an A on anything.
Educational Rant 
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