What do we think about students who are struggling with one or more subjects?
Are there assumptions we make as to the reasons some students are not achieving at the same levels as others?
When a student is failing, do we look to our own practice and our relationship with the student?
Do we ask if we have done everything possible to set each student up for success?
What do we understand to be our responsibility for every student’s success as we reflect upon our own practice?
Do students come to us with a hierarchy of needs? Are some things more important to them than others?
Do we understand what those needs might be, and do we act upon that understanding?
How must we be organized as a system to support each classroom teacher in the quest to ensure all students meet or exceed standards? How must we be organized to make sure that reflective practice and coaching are staples and hallmarks of public education in Federal Way? How may we ensure that every child is in front of outstanding teachers every day, every hour?
Lots of questions, I guess. Many of those questions have no right to go away, and none of them have simple answers.
One of my favorite quotes from H.L. Mencken, and I paraphrase: “For every complex problem there is a simple, clear solution…that is wrong.”
Complex problems require that we try to discover the right questions to ask, and not to try to focus on discovering the one right answer…as it more than likely does not exist, except in the area of religious beliefs.
All learning and the relationships between adults and students and the impact of those relationships on learning is certainly a very complex problem.
There are some things we know, though, and we know them through experience. I attended the morning session of RTI training last Thursday.
Participants were asked to recall a time in their lives when a decision or an experience changed their lives. One of our colleagues related the following story that I will try to replicate here.
When she was in middle school, eighth grade I believe, she was terrible in mathematics. She did so poorly during the school year, she had to go to summer school. She related that she felt like the “bad” kid. In summer school, they studied the same mathematics in which she so struggled during the year.
However, there was a difference. She knew the summer school teacher believed in her and that belief made her believe in herself. She soared in mathematics in the summer program and is now good with mathematics even up to this day. She said “that belief made all the difference.”
That belief made all the difference — wow! Do we believe in all of our students? Do our students know we believe in them?
Is belief enough?
Tom Murphy is superintendent of the Federal Way School District. Contact him via e-mail: tmurphy@fwps.org.
