Your Kids Deserve Better

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An open letter to parents: 

Your kids are our kids. 

Your kids –our kids – are not “stakeholders,” “clients,” or “customers.” They are our kids, our charges, our collaborators. They are not “raw material” or “human capitol.” 

Our kids are not barcodes. They are not cogs. They are not slides on a Powerpoint or points on a graph – though we both might end up there. 

They have names. They have hopes and fears and dreams. They have crushes and heartache and disappointment and jubilation. (Sometimes they have all of these in a single class period.)

They have stories. They came from somewhere, and they are going somewhere. We want our classrooms to be an important part of that story, not just an obstacle or a detour.   

They are people. They are young people, people who, in certain moments and in the right light, are at their very best. They are people who make mistakes because they are still learning, and because we all do. 

And they are watching. They see when we say one thing and do another. They deserve better than NCLB, AYP, and DOE.

They deserve to have to have a reason to feel good about coming to school. They deserve know there are adults who believe in them and want the best for them. They deserve to know that their parents, their teachers, their communities want them to do ……………….

I want my students to think about the world around them. I want them to question what they hear on tv, from their friends, and from me. 

I want them to be able to name both of our senators, read a ballot proposition, and locate Afghanistan on a map. 

I want them to have opinions, to express those opinions clearly; I want them to listen to other opinions, to hear them fairly and critically.  

I want them to be funny. I want them to laugh. 

I want them to be able to calculate a sales price, leave a decent tip, and recognize the reality of credit card interest rates. 

I want them to care. I want them to be curious. 

I want them to come up with the answer on their own. 

They will be counted. They will be measured. They will be tested; all of us, in one way or another, will be tested. Powerpoints will be made and graphs will be presented. According to some formulations, value will be added. 

But we want our kids to know they already have value, they already count, and the most important tests are the ones we all face every day: Think it through. Play fair. Choose wisely. Do your best.

This is what we want for our kids, your kids. We won’t surrender our expectations, our integrity or our belief in the best free education in the world.  We give up on them,  

They are who my colleagues and I fight for every single day. We won’t give up, parents. Neither should you.