Meet Me Where I Am

 

Before there was art criticism, there was art.

Before there was literary analysis, there was literature.

Before there were rules, there was the game.

Standards come into being long after there is a large body of accumulated knowledge and experience about a field. And they are always subjective! They are as limited as the vision, expertise and knowledge of those who write them. They are as universally applicable as the degree of participation of those who are subjected to them. So basically, standards, benchmarks, and milestones are all man-made. They change and evolve as our collective knowledge about a field grows and deepens. Standards are also written by people and as such reflect the values and biases of those people. Sometimes standards are guided by political ideologies rather than scientific research. 

The more I teach, the more I question the unquestioned use of standards. To insist that every learner master the same concepts at the same time and to the same degree is foolish, and we all know it. When I was ten years old, mathematical concepts were difficult for me to grasp. I went on to get a degree in chemical engineering and not only took quite a few advanced math classes, but I loved and excelled at them. I am grateful for my father who tutored me through those years when the way math was being taught to me was not the way I could learn. Some brains are ready to crack the reading code at four. For others, it may take six or seven years to get there. The love of reading and  learning does not have to be squashed while the brain is growing into its best self.

In the middle of this pandemic, there is fear that children are “falling behind”. Learning is not a race. It’s a journey. There are many paths to mastery. Some take longer than others. We talk a lot about differentiation. We expect teachers to differentiate how they deliver instruction and how learners show their mastery. But given the restrictions of state and district mandated tests, we hardly ever can differentiate by allowing more or less time. Those who come to us having already mastered our grade level standards have to suffer through our instruction, be bored which may cause them to act out or feel superior to their peers. Those who don’t meet the standards set for mastery of a certain skill by a certain age, are quickly labeled as deficient and treated as such. In the assembly line of modern education, there is no room for real differentiation: Meeting every learner where they are. “Kids are who they are. They know what they know. They bring what they bring. Our job is not to wish that students knew more or knew differently. Our job is to turn each student’s knowledge, along with the diversity of knowledge we will encounter in a classroom of learners, into a curricular strength rather than an instructional inconvenience,” said P. David Pearson back in 1997. “ . . the term ‘fall behind’ is a social construct,” argues Cornelius Minor in 2020. “This idea of where a person should be is not a naturally occurring thing. . . . powerful teaching and learning are based on two things: assessment and intervention. When we meet students this fall, how will we most honestly and mindfully assess them and understand where they are?”*

One of the blessings of this Pandemic is that we now know for a fact that due to no fault of their own or their families, children have had vastly different experiences in the last six months and there is nothing more ethical than meeting each and every one of them where they are.

*Educational Leadership Journal, September 2020