For the Day #4 prompt, Nelle Lytle encourages you to keep going with your NaPoWriMo poems by writing inside-out or outside-in. She says:
I watch too much HGTV, so I have learned (very well) about bringing the outdoors inside and also turning outside spaces into rooms (which is, apparently, more than putting the old sofa out on the front porch).
In our case, writing inside out (or outside in) means setting your physical or metaphorical inner bits out of doors, to be walked around and looked at from odd angles, as if they were monuments or mailboxes (as an example). Or it could be transforming your internal organs into flowers or letting a pack of four-year-old’s (human or otherwise) loose in your attic. Write a poem today that illustrates your idea of what is inside-out.
I decided to tackle the inside-out thinking of the American public school system, of which I am currently a part. [sighs deeply] I probably should have chosen a different topic, as this isn't much of a poem after all.
(All ritual apologies apply -- just sneezed it out, didn't edit it much, it's a first draft, etc., ad nauseam)
School Logic
(or, Your Seam and Tag Are Showing)
My fellow educators,
we must leave no child behind;
we must close the achievement gap;
we must work smarter, not harder;
we must turn out young citizens who possess the skills
that citizenship requires of them;
we must work leaner and meaner in light of budget cuts;
we must deliver a quality education despite worsening conditions.
We must do these things,
because everyone knows
it’s about the kids.
Let us, therefore, train our children to take tests better,
for it is in testing that our success is measured,
as it is in weighing the cow repeatedly that fattens the cow.
Let us, therefore, decry flexibility and creativity,
for it is in uniformity and pacing guides that our
children’s salvation may be found.
Let us, therefore, insist upon purchasing a new textbook package
for every child. Protests
of “but we do not use the textbook so we do not need a new one”
or “we prefer to design our own curriculum because it better meets our students’ needs”
or “it will be a waste of money – let us spend it on something truly useful”
will neither be encouraged nor tolerated,
for it is the data experts, only, who understand what true learning is,
and it is only through programs and off-the-shelf products
that we can protect our students from their bad teachers;
for it is in one-size-fits-all that differentiated instruction is best delivered.
Let us, therefore, write up good teachers
for the number of students who fail their classes,
and place said write-up in their personnel file
with the admonition that “it is not your instruction but your assessment,”
for it is in these open and frank conversations that morale is built
and good teachers become further inspired to try again
the incentives they have tried in the past and abandoned
and are discouraged from lowering standards and cooking the gradebook
in the name of accountability and student success.
Let us, therefore, require that teachers meet incessantly,
either on their own time or during instructional minutes
(we will provide the subs),
in order to analyze and discuss what teachers can do
to improve student failure rates,
for it is in focusing on teachers that we can best attack the problem,
as focusing on the individual needs of each individual child
would surely stretch our resources too thin
and certainly miss the point of education altogether.
Let us ensure that bad teachers are fired
(except for the one who slept with a student,
or the one who grades nothing,
or the one who gives enough extra credit to turn F’s into A’s),
that superintendents say no to every request made for crazy timewasters like campus gardens,
that school board members vote their own pay raises
(because everyone knows “riffing” sixty teachers and twenty custodians
is damned hard work),
and let us increase our class size average to a number that would
shock the rest of the nation if they knew about it,
and the name we shall give it is tightening-the-belt and research-based strategy.
Let us publicly lament the loss of a majority of new teachers in their first five years
and stanch the flow by requiring new teachers to attend hours of meetings
and complete hours’ worth of additional reflective paperwork,
for everyone knows teachers need to learn from trained administrators
who left the classroom after two years of teaching kickball and typing,
rather than from collaboration with colleagues in the trenches
or regular conversation with teachers with whom they share students,
which would only lead to gripe sessions and forming of bad habits.
Let us give students packet work and call it credit recovery,
for asking students actually to learn to write an effective persuasive essay
is just unrealistic for some of these kids and in light of times we’re in,
especially since we had to close the majority of our alternative education sites,
and since our vocational programs are still only whimpering back to life
after decades of dormancy,
and since we only allot four years for high school,
and since we group students based on age rather than ability or achievement,
and since we pass students on to the next grade level
even though they passed none of their classes the previous year;
we’re just going to have to make some tough choices.
Let us unite and make those tough choices together,
because we are in this for the kids.
