Winded

The wind has been whistling, gusting, blowing, buffeting, pummeling, and it has come sweeping down the plains for the entire month of March. As a life long Oklahoman, I have learned to accept and adapt to any weather happenings. Will Rogers' "wait a minute and it will change" comment about Oklahoma weather may have filtered into my outlook on educational policy too. I have been hoping for a deeper respect for teachers in our state. Is that minute finally here? We will end this windy month with a rally at the state capital for education.
Wind's steady blustering could be a metaphor for the swirling rhetoric about education and its "reform" in the country and specifically our state.
The wind could be like a politician's words: exhausting when you are facing it in the elements, but quickly forgotten when you step inside and away from it's breadth.
It could be like the multitude of mandates from up high for increasing student outcome: whipping flyers around in frantic circles in empty corners. 
We could easily continue comparing mussed hair, and lost conversations, and grit blown in your face to the education debate.

But I'm hoping for a divergent metaphor. I want the wind to be a force for change. A clearing of the air in the public discourse on education, so that all concerned individuals can listen, speak, and learn.
It takes a minimal amount of time for facts to be twisted to one side or the other. After reading an editorial by a lawmaker today, I was reminded of my meeting with Representative Turner a few weeks ago. Both lawmakers referenced this idea that money is being mismanaged in administration costs in schools. They are not willing to support bills that increase allocations toward school districts and they cite a supposed mismanagement of funds as a reason. They seem to take a shallow look at various facts they may have been handed by assistants, or fellow lawmakers, or ALEC, and combine that into a twisted outcome that no longer resembles the truth.
It is easy to become entrenched in our beliefs. I hope, however, that this rally shows that there is common ground between teachers, principals, parents, and elected officials. I'm hopeful that most if not all of the legislators will have meaningful, insightful conversations with their teacher constituents about education during or after the rally.
I'm not sure how else you convince someone that we need to have enough teachers at our school so that we could have block scheduling, if our district chooses to do that...that we need to have a minimal amount of standardized testing that does not take the place of the professional teacher's word and the parent's choice...that we need to remember what education can accomplish, and what it should not be expected to accomplish.
With the spotlight shining at the rally on funding, high stakes testing, and the third grade reading law (RSA) in particular, I was reminded of my own experiences in third grade. I learned the lyrics to the state song in my third grade class at Quail Creek Elementary. It would not have helped me on a test, but it did teach me about my state and music and how to sing with others. That was not too long after the 1989 rally for education in our state. Perhaps my teacher felt she had the autonomy to make educationally sound decisions to teach us about our state song. At the very least,  learning that song gave me insight, twenty years later, into education's connections to something as mercurial as wind.

I like big binders

Several years ago, I taught in my favorite middle school in Tulsa. The team I worked with was a dedicated group of professionals who still managed to make me enjoy faculty meetings (which can be a remarkable feat one should not underestimate!) One year, our school began a program called AVID, which was aimed at taking students on the proverbial cusp and helping them improve grades, and go to college or vocational school. At the annual talent show, the team decided to perform a song called "I Like Big Binders" to the tune of Sir Mix-A-Lot's more uncouth version. We practiced after school for several days and took the time to learn the lyrics. When the big day arrived, we pulled ourselves on stage and belted out our performance. It brought the house down thanks to our enthusiastic eighth grade audience.
Performing a song at a talent show could have had several effects, but the most important effect for me was building a shared sense of community for our students and teachers. Students who see me as a knowledgeable, caring source of help are more likely to perform well in class and on the test.
It's too bad that our state superintendent of education and some state legislators would not reach out to public educators in the same way we reached out to our students to build a community, rather than tearing down a teacher's professionalism via insincere emails.
They could invite more teachers to share their observations and analyses of their classrooms. They could make meaningful visits to a variety of schools. They could respond to questions educators and parents pose. They could acknowledge that despite a teacher's Herculean efforts to help children, not all of her students may see test scores improve. They could ask "How can we help your students?" and listen to our answers.