Schools face balancing act with students
Mom hurries food to the family dinner table on a usual school night. Her three children — ages 9 (third grade), 12 (sixth) and 15 (ninth) — fill their plates.
And the conversation begins. Mom entices her third grader to have another roll.
“It makes me nervous,” says the 9-year-old. “They are checking my body mass index at school tomorrow. I’m worried about how that will go.”
Without response, the mother turns to her 12-year-old and asks how learning to measure surface volume in math is going?
“I have a calculator on my phone that does the multiplication for me, mom. But I’m glad you said that. It reminds me that we have a lesson tomorrow on texting and social media etiquette,” he says.
Mom looks puzzled but not stymied. She turns her attention to the 15-year-old. “And how is school going for you?” she asks.
“It’s great mom, I just need you to sign off on the form saying I understand the dangers of steroid use. And, please don’t forget next week is your turn in carpooling my friends and me to CCP classes at the community college.”
I can go on. Talk at the dinner table could include school days full of intruder lockdown training, financial literacy, internet safety, organ donor awareness, dating violence, CPR, conflict resolution and more.
This is not to make an argument that any of these topics or life skills are not valuable. However, what we do know is that the school day and calendar year have not gotten any longer. As a matter of fact, many students aren’t in the traditional school as long each day because of programs such as College Credit Plus.
Much of what used to be taught in the home, or possibly didn’t even exist as a necessary life skill, is now embedded into the school’s responsibility. As a result, we are trying to find time in schools for reading, writing, arithmetic, science and social studies — those areas legislation demands to be tested.
At the same time, there is a magnitude of social and health related skills legislated into classrooms. After all, kids gather at school each day .... let’s require it be taught there.
School personnel have become the teachers of life, not just academics. Generally speaking we are OK with that responsibility. We want children to understand nutrition, bullying prevention and gun safety.
However, as the saying goes, “there are only so many hours in a day.” Today, teachers are charged with finding time to teach those life skills while being evaluated against a student’s growth in the core academic areas.
It is a balancing act that becomes more challenging each year. In the end, neither academic nor life skills should be shorted. But time is of the essence, and that piece has not changed.