Imagine the following scenario, please:

Your child is four years old, and you’ve decided to enroll him in preschool–not just for babysitting purposes. Yes, he plays, rests, and has lunch, but he learns to write his name, his numbers, his letters, and can read a couple of his favorite stories. That hard work came out of a lot of hard work on his teacher’s part, as well as some reinforcement at home.

In kindergarten he learns some mathematics and literacy. Over the course of the year, you see your child begin to love books. He wants you two read with him and isn’t afraid to try it himself. Both you and his teacher encourage him to try and to make mistakes. There’s no pampering. But you, the teacher, and other friends and family continually encourage him that it’ll get better and easier.

Over the next few years, he explores math, science, new genres of stories, and practicing writing his own stories. Both you and his teachers encourage and support his exploration and curiosity. You learn he doesn’t enjoy stories about a boy and his dog, but he loves simple graphic novels or comics about space or dinosaurs. So the teacher brings sends home additional books on that content, even some that are above his reading level, but he devours them.

Occasionally, there are phone calls home detailing disruptive behavior or some hyperactivity that is a distraction. You and your child’s teacher work through some plans and ideas of what he can do in case he gets restless. The topic of testing for ADHD comes up, but you both agree to try some simple changes in the routine or structure and see if that works. Most of the time, it does.

By the time he is in middle school, your child is used to have some say in what he is learning and how he is learning. By including him in these conversations over the years, he has learned that he of course has a voice in his learning experiences. His teachers have shown him different ways to solve math problems and how to show his work, and now, he is comfortable with a few methods. You and his teachers have also worked with him to get him to read about content other than astronomy and superheroes (dinosaurs faded by the wayside–bummer). He even found out that he likes To Kill A Mockingbird and laughed at a few of Mark Twain’s short stories.

During the summer leading into high school, he was required to enroll in a summer program at his school that introduces him to various programs offered as well as seeing some of the work he will be doing over the next four years: choosing an independent research project; learning to conduct independent research; using math, statistics, scientific evidence as well as historiographies to help him understand his and his classmates’ explorations; exploring opinions and research that challenges his own; finding ways to stick to his guns and his research; and how to defend his work before a panel.

He was able to see what he was stepping into because former students presented their four years of ongoing studies and analyses to the group of wide-eyed incoming freshmen. Students’ work ranged from how to make a car more efficient to home design and construction to proposing various policies that could help solve issues facing their town or other parts of the world. They were eager to show off their work because they had just defended their work before a panel of their teachers, teachers from other schools, and local community leaders relevant to the topic of their presentation. They were now ready to go off to college, internships lined up, and have a major selected that they had come across as they did their independent study.

Your child was even paired with one of the high school teachers that would serve as an advisor through this entire process of conducting various independent studies. He understands that this whole process is meant to help him explore his unique interests and skill sets and to discover what he will do next to help contribute to the world of which he is already an integral part. He comes home telling you about the 10-20 things he wants to learn about over the next four years.

Ok, now back to reality. Here are a few articles you can read in preparation for the follow-up post coming up next week:

• A university president calls Obama’s plan on regulating and evaluating Teacher Certification programs as “Orwellian.” Much of the proposal involves gathering data on alumni’s students, to see how well the teachers are performing, to see how well the program trained the teacher.
• This article discusses the plans to evaluation teacher preparation programs in a little more detail.
• What makes a great teacher? (Hint: It’s not quantitative or measurable)
• A principal opines about standardized testing. There are some great comments by some politicians, and by great, I mean not that great.
• Some comments Governor Andrew Cuomo has made to detail some of his plans for education reform. Pure, unfiltered comments.
• Some of Governor Cuomo’s plans for teacher and education reform.