Are We Organizing The Energy Right Out of Education?

               Are We Organizing the Energy Right Out of Education? By Mira Pence

     When I started thinking about a principle worth discussing, I realized there was a recurring theme that disturbed me when I was teaching second grade. The only way for me to put this frustrating experience into words was in the form of a question, “Are we organizing the energy right out of education?”

      After I had articulated this almost intangible concern, which I had experienced as a new teacher, I asked myself, “Now, who is going to understand that?” I had dreamed of the positive influence I could have in the lives of children as soon as I earned a teaching degree. However, I found that my value as an educator was equated with how well I fell into a robotic march behind my fellow-faculty members, to the beat of the administrator’s drum. To my dismay, I found that this robotic march through the daily routine of classwork left little, if no time, for students to “stop and smell the roses”, let alone initiate an inquiry about them.

      During one such exploration when I decided to integrate science, literature, and art, my students and I were reading the story of Farfallina and Marcell. This story is about a caterpillar (Farfallina) and a young goose (Marcell), who became friends, but later each creature goes through natural developmental changes: Farfallina crawls up a tree trunk where she hangs from a branch in a chrysalis; Marcell’s feathers change color. When they chance to meet again, they do not recognize each other. I told my students that we would locate a diagram of the developmental stages of the butterfly, and get out the art supplies (which I had purchased), so that everyone could draw illustrations of Farfallina’s metamorphosis. I started looking through the second-grade Science text for a diagram, when a boy excitedly blurted out, “Mrs. Pence, I found it. Right here on page…,!”

     I said, “Oh thank you, good work Leon!” This child’s name would never be on a list of academically gifted candidates; yet, he was enthusiastically motivated by this project and exhibited independent thinking; an important characteristic for academic achievement. By the time we were ready to begin our illustrations, the class had found diagrams of the developmental stages of the butterfly in three different sources; (remember, these are second- graders). We set our reference sources out on the back table, and each student chose the color of construction paper they wanted to draw their diagram on. Many of them drew the tree that Farfallina spun her chrysalis from. Each student had a different way of illustrating and labeling the developmental stages of the butterfly, but they were all actively engaged in a science/literacy project while using an art medium. I had gotten the idea of literacy/science integration from independent reading I found in RED 4350, an undergrad course. The title was, The Science and Literacy Framework

SOURCE: Science Child 46 no3 N 2008, by Charlotte Rappe Zales and Connie S. Unger. Adding the art medium was my idea.

   

      The school Principal or the Reading Coach could have walked into my room at that time and inevitably thought, “That’s no good. These kids are supposed to be doing ‘Reading Block’, but they’re doing art.” Let me remind you that I started my discussion theme with the question, “Are we organizing the energy right out of education?” Simultaneously, I had the nagging thought that, this is simply one of my subjective opinions that cannot be put into concrete, objective, professional language; probably rendering it nonviable.

      With my mind clouded in doubt, I began to study the concrete, objective opinions of published professional educators. My first source was, Comprehension Going Forward, a collection of writings by various professional educators. I began reading Chapter Eight by Anne Goudvis and Brad Buhrow, entitled History Lessons. My jaw actually dropped as I read. The authors’ frustration was palpable: “Social Studies and history have been squeezed into an ever smaller corner of the school day or abandoned altogether (Harvey and Goudvis 2007). We stand with the history buffs and many teachers who refuse to narrow the curriculum, despite the stranglehold that high-stakes tests in “basic” subjects like math and reading have on it. In a democracy, what’s more basic than teaching history and social studies? (Goudvis, A., Buhrow, B., 2011,  Comprehension Going Forward, Portsmouth, NH, Heinemann.  

     The authors presented their side of a heated debate against a micro-organized, test-driven, public school curriculum, while providing feasible solutions as well as vivid descriptions of what an invigorating classroom should look like: “Time could be carved out of the ‘reading block’ and combined with the time allocated to social studies each week; after all, this was literacy, just historical literacy for a change. Our goal was straightforward—if kids were going to acquire knowledge about this topic, they had to read, write, draw, talk, question, view, debate, and discuss engaging historical texts and materials. We wanted kids to get excited about the topic.” (Goudvis, Buhrow 2011, p.131-132)

     There, at last, I saw my own feelings and frustrations in concrete print. I saw my own concerns as a new teacher paralleled by the objective debate of seasoned educators, and my question, “Are we organizing the energy right out of education?” was professionally validated. These professional educators/authors were concerned too, and bound and determined to do something about it.