Listen to Your Children…

     In most K-12 public schools, what do the following have in common: absenteeism, bullying, vaping, disruptive classroom behavior, boredom, stress, and mental health problems, including teen suicide?  Answer:  They are all actions and emotions that growing numbers of students experience or witness and that are chronically present in middle and high schools. They have been on the rise for a long time – even prior to COVID.  This is not an inflection point.  It is a crisis.

     In most K-12 public schools, which of the following is true:

a) Standardized tests dictate curriculum?

b) Physical activity – such as gym and recess – is at a minimum, often replaced by some sort of test prep?  c) Grade inflation is rampant?  

d) Some believe that the learning gap, developed during COVID, can be closed with aggressive tutoring?  e) Parents are deeply concerned?

f) Teachers and administrators are also concerned? 

g) In addition, teachers and administrators fear that their jobs depend on appeasing the political factions in their districts?  

h) Teacher shortage is at an all-time high?

i) There is also a dire shortage - totaling about 100,000 - of trained and certified wellness professionals, including guidance counselors, social workers, and psychologists?

j) School shootings doubled in 2021-2022 over the preceding year?    

k) The student dropout rate is again on the rise? 

l) College enrollment is on the decline?  

      All of the above are true.

      None of these issues is new, and our response to them is always the same: Improve the academic score.  Not depth of learning, thinking, and understanding.  Not the joy of learning through discovery, which may take up more time than a given scope and sequence allows.  Not gun reform laws that would better protect our children and help them to be less fearful.  Just fix the score.  

     The learning gap is not the crisis.  Our children’s mental health is the crisis and must be our priority.  Their anguish, distress, and cries to be heard, to be seen, to be helped are detailed in the opening paragraph. Their mental health is inextricably entwined with their behavior, attitudes toward school, mistrust of adults, plans for the future, and the quality of their academic performance.  If mental health continues to take second place to skill and drill, there will be a failure of both, which is what we are witnessing.

      Nothing can change for our children until we change.  If we acknowledge that students’ mental health and well-being are paramount, we will have to change the educational paradigm we have followed for so long.  If not nationally, then state-by-state. If not state-by-state, then district by district, one school at a time.  Hundreds and hundreds of schools are already doing so with student buy-in and accountability. *

     It is easier than you think and does not require any school or school district to disregard their state’s laws.  It starts by looking at education through a different lens and re-setting priorities.  Most of all, it means listening to our children and our students with our ears, our eyes, our hearts.  And trusting what they tell us. 

*Some of these schools are cited elsewhere in this blog.  Others and their teachers are highlighted in my newsletter, Unpacking Education Archives, at www.merleschell.com