My Very First Post

Greetings!

I have so many friends blogging these days, I guess I have jumped on the bandwagon.

I have several thoughts through my days on the road as an educational representative for a music store that I think I need to share with as many people as possible. Some things are funny, some are sad and some don't make much sense at all, but here they all are. The formatting may not be pretty, the punctuation may not be correct but I hope those of you reading won't give up on me.

First, I would like to introduce my self...I'm a married 30 something woman with no kids and a dog who is so adorable he might as well be my son. I went to college to become a band director/music teacher and taught a few years in the Iowa Public School system, but ended up working at a music store as an educational representative. What is that, you ask? Well, I travel around the backroads of Iowa and Northwestern Missouri, visiting schools and selling things to band directors, schools and eager new band students. I have known my lovely husband since we were in middle school and I can safely say we are best friends.

Enough about me for now...

Today I had several thoughts about the state of education in this country. Heavy topic for the first post, I know, but this has been weighing pretty heavily on my mind for a few days.

I'll start this portion with an abbreviated story I heard while on the road. A teacher has resigned his post at a very prominent high school in the last week and the band director world is all a twitter. Most of what I know is hearsay, but I did hear it from a very good source. The news is that the director resigned because some parents were threatening to sue him and force his resignation from the board of education...yes, I said SUE HIM! Now, what do you think he has done to get this sort of treatment from a couple of parents? Apparently, he got tough with a female student when she refused to put her uniform coat on before a competition. I must interject here with the information that I was not present at this alleged confrontation, nor have I been privy to any previous confrontations between said teacher and student. With that in mind...what is going on with our schools????

What ever happened to the days when a child came home after getting a punishment at school, only to get it worse at home? I for one hardly ever got into trouble at school because I KNEW I would get it worse at home. For example, my brother once had detention for tardies, after he served the detention my parents made him walk home from school. We lived 5 miles away from the school. He lucked out though, a teacher found him on the side of the highway and took pity on him and drove him home. I never even THOUGHT to talk back to a teacher, let alone not do something they he/she me to do. I see this as issue number 1, students not respecting the authouity of teachers. Issue number 2 is...maybe you shouldn't ALWAYS take your child's word as gospel when describing a confrontation with a teacher. A student will always try to make it not their fault, but someone else's. Maybe these parents should have talked reasonably and rationally to the teacher before getting all hyped up and sue happy. By the way, I think that society has allowed this to happen.

When talking with another director about the state of schools, he informed me that 38% of the freshmen in that school were performing at a 9th grade level. WTF??? That means 62% of the 9th graders were not reading, comprehending and had math skills that ALL THE OTHER 9th GRADERS IN THE COUNTRY HAVE. This is what "No Child Left Behind" looks like. If a student doesn't know how to read, it must be the teacher's fault, so promote them and make the next teacher worry about it. Never mind that the parents don't read to the child at home and they probably don't demonstrate reading abilities at home, or that the parent never talked to the teacher at parent/teacher conferences to find out what is happening at school. It has become the school's responsibility to not only teach children, but to parent as well.

I know it is easy for me to say some of the things about parent responsibility when I'm not a parent, but I was a teacher and I was a student. I would like to say that I would be a model parent when my time comes, but maybe I need to consider home schooling if we ever have a child.