A Teacher’s View

By Mary Thomas

I would like to focus on the trends that hopefully will be carried forward and will yield favorable outcomes. These trends include students as active participants in the learning process, parents’ close involvement in their child’s education, and schools as caring communities.

Students today are expected to do more than take notes and sit quietly while the teacher talks. The chalkboard and the rigid seating of the old days are gone, and students are challenged to augment their class work by using modern reference tools. Recently, some students are accompanying their parents to conferences, fully expecting to review their work and participate in the exchange. I welcome this as a refreshing change from the old teacher-parent conferences, when the student was talked about, almost as a disinterested third party! Holding students accountable for their work puts the focus on the student as an active learner, and gives momentum to the drive for students to improve their efforts in the classroom.

Districts are putting more emphasis on involving parents in the day-to-day operations of their local schools, and inviting parents to work on curriculum committees and other policy-making teams. This also is a good sign for the next century, as schools abandon their closed-door policies and anticipate parents’ involvement in their schools. School districts can benefit from community input, since increasing demands brought on by technological change are requiring shifts in how monetary, personnel, and staff training resources are allocated.

Another change that I have observed is the increased use of teamwork in school districts. Social workers, paraprofessionals, resource teachers, teacher mentors and others are part of the growing network of educators working together to help students and teachers fine-tune the learning process. This team approach reduces isolation and provides assistance in ways undreamed of twenty years ago. Many students are subject to cultural influences that directly impede their ability to learn, and enlightened districts are taking a proactive stand to address these issues early on, before they permanently derail students’ progress.

While schools grapple with profound cultural changes and increased expectations, I look forward to the growth of a caring community which supports all students, school personnel and families in their pursuit of learning.

(Mary Thomas is a home economics teacher at NHS. She has been teaching in the NHS school system for 33 years.)