Author: Jim Mascolo
MGA has given me the flexibility for the last year to volunteer each Friday in a local second-grade classroom. In that time, I’ve had the privilege of working with one of the kindest, most masterful teachers on the planet. She’s something of a cross between Mother Theresa and Stephen Covey: not tough love, but highly effective love. (Where was she when I was in second grade?) I’ve been impressed by her since she taught my son not so many years ago, and, to my surprise, she had no reservations about me helping out.
I don’t know if I’m really much use in the classroom. I have trouble keeping my parallelograms straight from my trapezoids, but I’m having fun. And the kids? They are still--as always- sweet, lively and precious. Call me a Rousseauian romantic, but I think of them as our national treasure, the untapped reservoir of dreams that will spell our future as a nation.
Over the years kids haven’t changed in terms of the cuteness factor, but I think one thing has changed. I don’t have the statistic, but I sense the kids I’m seeing every Friday are different from the kids of my youth in one important way: more and more of them are coming to the classroom poorly prepared by their society and their parents to sit down, listen and learn.
Whether it’s too many video games or eating too much corn syrup, lots of our kids seem driven by unseen forces that leave them unreceptive to the classroom. The most striking and simplest form this takes is that they just can’t sit still long enough to get through a 10-minute lesson. This isn’t true of all the kids, but I’d say it fits about a third of the class. Of course their teacher works with them on this, and they do mind her, and they’re much better than they were a few months ago or a year or two ago. Still, I sense that too much of her time is being taken up by disciplinary work, and too much of their energy is sacrificed to inner turmoil.
Before I say that this generation is somehow worse than the ones that came before it, I should concede that, of course, life evolves—central heating is a great thing—and probably my golden age of schooling results largely from a faulty memory. For example, due to the Baby Boom, we had 60 kids in my second-grade classroom and only one teacher. (I actually pulled out an old class photo and counted just to know I wasn’t making this up.) No one would want that again.
In my second grade, there was a boy who sat in front of me named, I think, John Brehamy. He had trouble sitting down just like some of the kids in my volunteer classroom. He’d jump up out of his seat every few minutes with a question for the teacher or a request to go to the bathroom or just something that showed he wasn’t quite getting on with his numbers and reading. In exasperation, the teacher finally gave me a ruler with instructions that I should whack John any time he started out of his seat. No kidding. To my credit, I thought her directions a little crazy even back then, and I never did it. Beside the possible child abuse, what strikes me now about this story is that there was only one child out of 60 hyperactive enough to cause the teacher problems. John Brehamy stood out then, but I don’t know if he would now.
There’s been lots of talk about educational reform for quite awhile. The education historian Diane Ravitch* wrote what’s considered a classic on the subject back in 2000 called “Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms.” The title might give it away, but she wasn’t encouraging on the subject.
I’ve decided if the education professors can’t figure out how to get our kids to better compete in the global economy, there’s no sense in me taking a stance. I just enjoy the precious young faces that greet me each Friday. And as I mentioned, I’m having a great time volunteering with a master of the trade—just like the teacher I wish I’d had in second grade. But whether it’s teacher effectiveness, charter schools or a universal curriculum, it’s hard for me to understand what the cure could be when the kids have so much trouble just staying in their seats.
*Diane Ravitch will be speaking in Denver on the recent Colorado teacher assessment bill on Friday, April 30. You can read about it in The Denver Post.
This post is part of a series on volunteering or working with nonprofit organizations. We’d love to hear about your experiences as well.
