A letter to the editor in today’s Toronto Star struck a chord with me—as an educator, as a parent, and as a member of a diverse society. It may seem like a truism, but I’m convinced that the further away from the day-to-day of schools that we get, the easier it is to lose sight of just how important relationships are in this place we call school.
The very thing that letter writer Deanna Churcher points to as making the difference for her are the very things that we seem to want to sideline, undermine or, at the very least, gloss over, when it comes to talking about school quality.
I hope that I’m not breaking any copyright laws by sharing the letter in its entirety:
I grew up at Black Creek and Trethewey. I ran with a tough crowd. I have been in more stolen vehicles than I can count. I hid a gun in my locker in high school for a friend. I was popular — everyone knew who I was. I had parents who seemed to not care what I was doing or where I was. I was playing basketball outside three blocks away on the night police officer Todd Bayliss was shot.
So how did I get out? How am I not in jail? How did I go to university, graduate, get a job, get married, move to Milton and have two kids? Why didn’t I get pregnant in junior high like three of my classmates?
I’m not sure I have the definitive answers. I got involved in sports teams and music. I had teachers who cared if I showed up. One teacher asked me what I was going to do with my life. I didn’t have an answer. When he asked me about my university applications, I laughed. We didn’t have any money, my parents were uneducated and not concerned with school. My situation was not uncommon. After that conversation I was approached by many of my teachers with offers to help with applications, loans and scholarships and a higher paying summer job. Something clicked from there. I was important to people, they didn’t want me to fail.
Community and school programs work — maybe not for everyone but they work. We need to show kids that there is hope, that people care what we become, that we can have pride in ourselves and our achievements. Pointing out “immigrants” and trying to deport gang members doesn’t work. They come back.
What is the solution? Start young, give kids options, and put money into keeping them off the streets and out of gangs.
It’s not a short-term solution, it’s a long-term one. There is no quick fix, this takes time and investment. Aren’t the kids worth it?
Deanna Churcher, Milton, ON
” It may seem like a truism, but I’m convinced that the further away from the day-to-day of schools that we get, the easier it is to lose sight of just how important relationships are in this place we call school.”
As define: “tru·ism
noun /ˈtro͞oˌizəm/
truisms, plural
A statement that is obviously true and says nothing new or interesting
- the truism that you get what you pay for
A proposition that states nothing beyond what is implied by any of its terms”
https://www.google.ca/webhp?source=search_app#hl=en&q=truism&tbs=dfn:1&tbo=u&sa=X&ei=JCIMUMLoKsrgqAHkgtnNCg&sqi=2&ved=0CG8QkQ4&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=b73aac1983e9555&biw=1280&bih=843
A truism? Not in my eyes, but is part of the knowledge of truths. Caring teachers that actually provides the solutions and hope from their own personal knowledge banks, of what cannot be determined by the social institution – education. Why? The education institute has compartmentalized, separate and define what is caring within narrow parameters. It results in the narrowing of knowledge and information with the attached filters and labels, defining who, what criteria and how caring is defined by the social institutes in society, including education.
Deanna is correct as well as Stephen in asserting how important relationships are in places like school. However, people like Deanna are often dismissed by the experts of the social institutes and more so in education. Their knowledge and experiences, who they are, and what has shaped them are seen as the exception and often in the abstract. The success of Deanna,or for that matter the success of anyone coming from difficult circumstances are seen through the filters of abstractness, and by doing so, obscures the real realities of the students that the education system proclaims they are the best ones to be in charge and of the highest authoritative level to claim the title experts.
Experts? Not when the education experts sees students in the abstract, as numbers, through the data streams, using the data streams to predict without paying attention to all potential outcomes of the students. Students are categorized, departmentalized, labeled in the abstract and never in the real realities. In the process, knowledge and information of the education system has built in controls to limit knowledge and information in parameters of disconnected knowledge to the realities of the students.
Teachers see it most often, and have choices to work with students in the real realities or work with students in the abstract. The latter being, the easier route where no teacher would ever be hulled up to the mat, being reprimanded by the principal or some other expert at the board. Unlike a teacher who might take the time, to do their research, learned new knowledge beyond the gatekeepers of the education system, such as the availability of scholarships for their students.Than take the extra step, by providing the knowledge, the know-how on applications, loans and scholarships. Knowledge like that, is quickly passed down but within a year or two, the education system has managed to restrict and limit the information on post-secondary, and another teacher or the very same one, must reintroduce the information to students who do not have the knowledge on the options of post-secondary. .
“Community and school programs work — maybe not for everyone but they work. We need to show kids that there is hope, that people care what we become, that we can have pride in ourselves and our achievements. Pointing out “immigrants” and trying to deport gang members doesn’t work. They come back.
What is the solution? Start young, give kids options, and put money into keeping them off the streets and out of gangs.”