Waiting for Superman
Tonight, the Social Justice League at Bridgewater State University put on a movie viewing and invited any and all members of the university to come and watch and held a brief discussion following it. The number one reaction I saw among the crowd of about 40 students was "You've got to be kidding me," followed closely by "how can WE change this?" Personally, I find the number one problem with documentaries is that after doing such an amazing job articulating what the problem is, they have a hard time showing what the collective "WE" can do about it.
Some of the suggestions made in this movie were:
- Spend more on education
- Hire better teachers
- Get rid of tenure so you can fire bad teachers
- Abolish the teachers' union because they stand in the way of true reform and change.
Sure, these might be ideas that could spark the change we're looking for, but what about the negative aspects of each of these? Ultimately, the conclusion that came in to my mind after seeing this truly heart-breaking documentary was simply this: if you can't change the system immediately, you can at least change the people in the system. So the first step towards a United States educational system that "works" meaning the students are LEARNING, is to better prepare teachers before they even have a thought of stepping foot in that classroom. Teachers need guidance and new teachers are clueless when they walk through those doors. We need a teacher preparation system that involves HANDS-ON learning for teachers well beyond the less than half a year they spend student teaching. (see
Boston Teacher Residency Program- one example of how we can better prepare teachers)
-MB
