Hi. My name's Jay. Welcome to freedom.
I've worked with hundreds of teachers and students. Somewhere along the way, I began to ask myself why it was acceptable for students to hate school and teachers to be frustrated all the time. It seemed everyone just assumed that friction was the baseline expectation for what we did each day. Teachers (who felt trapped by the machinery of school) taught students (who hated going to school) who complained to parents (who reassured their kids that they, too, hated school when they were young).
It was simply assumed that nothing could be done about it. Like gravity or weather, "I hate school" was simply an immutable fact of the universe.
One day, it hit me: there is no other industry in the world in which we accept this level of customer dissatisfaction. It was worse than mere acceptance, though: education seemed to be full of people who assumed that the problem was the fault of the customer.
We blamed students for hating what school did to them.
This wouldn't have worked anywhere else. Consider: around time time Apple released the iPod, Microsoft released their own media player, the Zune. It tanked horribly. People didn't want it, so they didn't buy it. And here's what didn't happen next:
People weren't forced to buy the Zune against their will.
People weren't told it was their fault that they didn't want the Zune.
People weren't told that the Zune was a necessary burden, and one day they would actually be glad they had been forced to buy one.
Microsoft didn't keep churning out the same product, even though no one wanted it.
Here's what Microsoft did: they changed what they offered, and they kept changing it, until it matched what their customers actually needed.
That all happened right around the time I began asking questions about school. Why was it assumed that teachers and students must have adversarial relationships? What if more teachers thought about their classrooms from the perspective of the students? Who is the customer in a school? What is the product being offered?
Since then, I've been obsessed with the topic. (Seriously. My friends have to force me to discuss other things when we get together.)
I've found answers in all sorts of places, from Trappist monks to Pixar executives. And I want to share some of the things I've learned with you.
What's the most important thing?
The most important thing should be the most obvious, but we forget it all the time: as the title says, students are human beings. Human beings have certain rights, and certain expectations. If you learn to honor the rights of your students, and you learn to think in terms of their expectations, the classroom becomes a much happier place. If you want to know how well it works, you might want to read what my actual students think about my classroom.
Who should care?
Teachers who are tired of being their students' adversary, and want to become their colleague.
Parents who have questions about how schools should work (versus how they actually work, in many places).
Students who want to think more deeply about what, exactly, their school is supposed to be doing for them.
Administrators who want to know what sort of teacher they should be looking for to make their school function well.
What happens next?
You should start by clicking the giant blue button right below this text. There, you can sign up to receive new posts via email. You’ll also get the Sunday Spark each week: 3-5 items curated to inspire your upcoming week in class.
Back at the home page, there are also some brightly-colored buttons to permanent content; if you want to know more about how I think about school, those are great starting points.
If you’re in for a longer read, you can click here to buy my book from Dave Burgess Consulting.
If you want a more customized approach, click here to contact me with a question or speaking inquiry, or use the "Connect" button up top.