The first step to a second chance. That’s the name of the conference I attended in my district today. Hundreds of staff participated in this conference—an event specifically for those of us who work in alternative educational settings. What is alternative education? It’s all the education offered for the students who don’t learn the “normal” way, usually for students who behave so badly that they get expelled or sent out of their home base schools. The keynote speaker, an expert on relationships who has appeared on several nationally syndicated talk shows, described alternative education as “where it’s at” in education today. After listening to him in the first session, I wondered if he was right.
Let’s go back a day. Yesterday I met with an incredibly thoughtful colleague in my district who asked me about the Fulbright experience. Her opening question, after not having seen each other all summer was, “In light of the Fulbright, how have you changed?” I couldn’t thank her enough for the insight of the question, the invitation. But, back to alternative education and “where it’s at,” to borrow our speaker’s phrase. My colleague and I are co-chairs of the metropolitan ESOL teachers’ chapter, and we’re figuring out who will be presenting at the next conference we’re organizing. We were tossing around ideas and names of people we knew:
“How about Sally Smith [not her real name]; she’s so energetic?” she asked.
“Nah—she’s only doing sessions on how to make shadow boxes [not exactly, but something similar],” I replied, feeling guilty. “Why are so many people giving sessions on all this busy work stuff?”
“Gosh, do you think teachers get compassion fatigue?”
Ah ha. She had nailed one of the issues. In the land of standards, test-based learning, mandated curricula, bells, hall passes, inane discreet pieces of data that kids have to memorize, we’re just too damn tired to feel compassion. Who wants to hear a session on how to care for kids? Who wants to think critically about the metamessages behind what we’re teaching? Can’t we just drill them with the American Revolution, ionic bonds, and cumulus clouds?
Back to our conference today. The majority of the folks in alternative education know they can’t afford to have compassion fatigue if they genuinely want to help the students we’re working with—the ones who are getting a second chance, and, oftentimes, their last. So our keynote explained that we really need to be educating kids how to have healthy relationships, that we seldom discuss it, and when we do, it’s under the rubric of sexual education, which he claims (and I agree) is more about plumbing than learning how to love. He argued that most kids today don’t see healthy relationships, and there are rich questions we should be asking and discussing to help guide them along.
My next session was one on a concept called Restorative Justice. American Indians had long ago established traditions of restorative justice, and we’re now, in a few places, beginning to use it. The idea is that when a person wrongs someone else, instead of focusing on punitive action, we need to look at how the victim, the aggressor, and the community are harmed (primarily the psychic damage) and how all parties can heal. The focus is then on the engagement in resolving the problems. Some schools are beginning to use this model in working with students, instead of a discipline and punish approach. It seems to make a lot of sense. I wondered if restorative justice could be used for Israel and Palestine and other world conflicts. I also wondered if we had listened more to the American Indians how our country would be radically different. But I digress.
A first step at a second chance. In some ways that’s what I’m starting with my new job. I wrote about this in a lost in cyberspace post last night. My new position is as an itinerant ESOL teacher, working with immigrant students one-on-one, once a week for an hour, pulling them from their alternative education sites as well as working in my enormous district’s central office. I also get a peak at new initiatives before everyone else, help out with other initiatives, and get some advanced training. So far I’m delighted to work with a talented team of strong women who know their jobs well. I sat in on a presentation that two of them gave today about gang awareness, and I was impressed at their extensive knowledge and the big hearts they have for working with kids who so badly need it. We all deserve these second chances, if we could only get them.
Entries (RSS)