Compliance or Learning?

What do we want from our students? 

It's obvious that we want them to learn. That we want them to WANT to learn. For themselves and not just for a grade. But we also want them to do more. We want them to be on time and be in uniform and be prepared and do homework and study and on and on and on. When does this list of demands get too long and start to take away from the most important part?

There has to be a time where we sit back and start asking the same question that the students are always asking us: Why?

And follow it up with this question: How will that affect learning?

My school's uniform policy prompted me to start thinking about this issue. The uniform is pretty simple: black pants and gray school polo shirt. Seems easy enough but there are students who don't wear it everyday. There could be a good reason for the wardrobe malfunction, but most of the time, they are choosing to be non-compliant.

Once that happens, the administrators and teachers have to make a decision about how to handle it. Call home? Suspend? Let it slide for a day? What happens the next time the student is out of uniform?

All of these questions will just keep coming up. Handing the situation takes time. Time that could be used on more important issues. In Philadelphia, we are already short on resources and will be in a worse situation next year. Is this something that needs to be at the forefront of what we are trying to do?  Do we want our students to learn compliance or just learn?

I know that people will say that uniforms serve a purpose and that there have to be rules for students to follow and blah, blah, blah. For me it still goes back to what I want from my students. I want them to learn and achieve and be curious and take chances. If they need to wear their pajamas and slippers to school every now and then for that to happen, where is the problem? One of the things we have to do as teachers is to remove the barriers to learning that are sometimes in our students' ways. What if the uniform is one of those barriers? What if we decided that our efforts and time are more valuable in helping a student understand the concept being taught instead of making sure they wore the right outfit?

There are times when compliance is necessary. Unfortunately, it appears that public education is going in the direction of that being more important than true learning. Schools are graded on daily attendance, number of students who take a standardized test, number of students who pass a standardized test, number of students who don't pass a standardized test, and so on. All we have to do to pass is get the students to school, sit them in the chair, teach them how to take a test and make sure they do it. Is that teaching? Is that learning?

Uniforms are just one aspect of all of this. You can make arguments for and against anything that is important to one teacher and not to another. In the end, you have to ask how it affects learning. Does it improve the environment? Will it make that student more or less likely to WANT to learn? Will it be more trouble than it's worth?

I'm always thinking about what happens in my classroom and school. I debate with myself about what should be done and who should lead the charge. Sometimes I want my students to be those leaders. I want them to stand up and say, "This is what will help me WANT to learn." At other times, I want to find the confidence to be the one to tell tradition-based people ("It's the way we've always done it.") that their reasoning is horrible. That change has to come. That what we've been doing is not working. That there MUST be a better way.

I'm constantly writing about what I want to do next year. Where will I be, what will I be teaching, what do I want my classroom to become? From a professional standpoint, I know that standards-based grading will be making an appearance because it just makes sense. I want to be able to bring 20% time or Genius Hour to my part of the world.

On a personal level, I want to get my students to realize they have a say in what goes on. That they should be able to make some decisions on their learning and that compliance isn't the only thing that matters.