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A Simple Academic Vision

By
Tom Deighan
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Through the years, I have read volumes of academic visions containing indecipherable educational jargon that seems to create more questions than answers.  (Unfortunately, I have also produced my fair share as well!)  Yet, I have rarely seen any succinct academic visions for Pk-12 education through the elementary, middle, and high school levels.  Education is an infinitely complex journey, but the challenge of a long journey has never stopped anyone from starting with a simplistic road map. Likewise, I think we need more clarity in education about progression from elementary to high school.  Like a long road trip across the country, we need to know our destination, and we need to know which way to turn at Albuquerque.  Below is a simple academic vision for PK-12 education:        

At the elementary level, each grade will foster high character, healthy relationships, and strong morals as evidenced through personal accountability.  Mastery of essential academic skills and facts necessary to succeed at the next grade level will be the primary focus for all students, with reading and math literacy always taking precedence.   Mastery of reading and math skills will be further evidenced in their application through writing and speaking about science, history, civics, and other academic subjects. Graphic and performing arts will enrich and support academic growth.  Physical education and unstructured play will be incorporated as essential components of childhood and necessary to learning. 

At the middle level (middle schools and junior highs), mastery of elementary skills will be expected upon entry, and if necessary, students will be rigorously remediated until mastery of essential academic skills necessary for middle level coursework can be evidenced.  High moral character and behavior are expectations as students grow and mature socially. Middle level coursework will provide deeper exploration of distinct academic subjects. Students will support results and conclusions with evidence, facts, and logical discourse through written and oral communication.  Graphic and performing arts will support deeper understanding of history and culture through artistic expression.  Health/physical education, athletic competition, and extra-curricular participation will be promoted for all students.   Pre-college and pre-career diagnostics will provide students and parents with insight regarding possible career paths as they prepare for high school.

Finally, high schools will be structured as college and career preparation centers that foster strong social connections.  All academics, programs, and discipline will prepare students to enter the workforce, to further their education, and to be productive community members.  College and career readiness assessments will guide all academic instruction.  Whenever possible, students will be challenged to address real-world academic, civic, and business issues within a given field and model professional behavior.  Highest evidence of proficiency will be demonstrated through written and oral communication, artistic expression, professional experiences (internships/mentorships), and concurrent enrollment.  Participation in extra-curricular activities is affirmed as an essential component of students’ growth. Every student will graduate, and every student will graduate with college or career experience.

As a career educator, I wonder if we have unnecessarily complicated the educational process.  Oversimplification is certainly not the answer, but in an increasingly complex and divisive world, parents, students, and educators need to identify their common ground and shared expectations regarding education.  In my experience, when they are given that chance, they will agree much more than they disagree, and when they disagree, they will do so with tolerance and dignity. Perhaps my little academic vision is imperfect, but that’s ok if it will begin crucial conversations to rediscover the role and nature of schools.  

Tom Deighan is currently the superintendent of Duncan Public Schools. He may be reached at deighantom@gmail.com  You may read past articles at www.mostlyeducational.com

Easter: The Emptiest Holiday

By
Tom Deighan
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Marshmallow Peeps are the epitome of dietary emptiness – pure sugar, whipped into a fluffy puff, then dipped in more sugar. Confection perfection!  Peeps are my favorite Easter candy, and they cap off The Season of Eating that starts in late September and sweetly saunters on for the next six months. Halloween . . . Thanksgiving . . . Christmas . . . Valentines . . . and finally Easter. And candy is at the heart of it all!   Those empty, barren calories with no nutritional value. The more we eat, the more we want. The Fattening Five offer an uninterrupted stream of dietary nothingness . . . and I love every minute of it, especially Easter, because we save the best candy for last. 

Halloween candy impresses due to sheer volume, but the good stuff is gone too quickly, that is, if the trick-or-treaters even get it. If I am guarding the candy bowl, you can be sure the good stuff goes in my bag, but before Thanksgiving arrives, we are picking through the last of the candy-corn and Dum-Dums. Unfortunately, Thanksgiving is a bit of a bust on the candy front, but thankfully, chocolate Santas start hitting the shelves. And if all else fails, pumpkin pie satisfies in a pinch. 

Christmas and Valentine’s Day candy are much better than Halloween candy, but they fall short of perfection for one simple reason: gotcha candies from those fancy gift boxes. When I bite into a chocolate, I should not be surprised, much less with raspberry crème. All the leftover candies with small exploratory dents or bites are an annual public health hazard. There should be a Surgeon General’s warning on any so-called chocolate with crème filling. We might as well fill them with ribbon candy.

But Easter candy, simply the best!  Almost all of it has chocolate, peanut butter, caramel, or marshmallow in it. Amazing Peeps, giant Reese’s Eggs, chocolate covered marshmallow bunnies, and the mysterious Cadbury fluid, and who knew that MM’s taste better in pastels?  The only way it could get any better is with it all combined into some sort of chocolate bunny dipped in sugar. As a matter of fact, the worst candy Easter has to offer is the colorful jelly bean. Not too shabby, Mr. Easter Bunny. 

Next week, after I eat the last jellybeans and marshmallow chicks, I will be sad to see The Season of Eating end. I will not only miss the sweets, but I will also need to shed five pounds and to recuperate from six months of shameful, regretful calories. But that is not the only emptiness Easter has to offer, for it is the emptiest holiday of all!  

The most amazing emptiness in history occurs on Easter: the empty tomb, from which broken and ashamed people have emerged forgiven and repurposed for two-thousand years. In its emptiness, we discover fullness of joy and redemption. For just like Easter candy, Christ also saves the best for last, sometimes following our darkest despair. On that spring morn so long ago, He conquered death and the grave, forever exchanging our heavy sorrow for the joyful emptiness of His tomb. So, no matter where you are or what you are dealing with, let Easter remind you that He always saves the best for last, and transforms sorrow to joy. Unlike the empty Easter candy we love so much, however, the emptiness of Easter fills us with joy unspeakable and full of glory. 

Tom Deighan is superintendent of Duncan Public Schools. You may email him at  deighantom@gmail.com and read past articles at www.mostlyeducational.com

The Myth of an Epic Snow Day

By
Tom Deighan
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Remember when we only knew if school was cancelled by tuning into the local television or radio stations? The list would stream across the bottom of the screen in alphabetical order in an excruciatingly slow loop. If yours wasn’t listed on the evening news, it might appear on the ten o’clock news, or we tuned in before school. Oh, the suspense! In retrospect, this was all incredibly inconvenient but terribly exciting, and to this generation, it all sounds like a mythical Norman Rockwell scene on a magazine cover.

Sometimes, we did not know school was cancelled until the bus simply failed to show up.  On one such occasion, I remember a group of us dutifully waiting on the corner in a snowstorm for a such a bus that never arrived. While we waited, someone playfully tossed a loosely packed snowball, then another. Within seconds, a friendly melee erupted as we pelted each other with handfuls of soft powdery snow.  Kids nowadays cannot imagine standing on a corner in a snowstorm, wondering if their bus will arrive or if school would even open, but that bus never did arrive, and we did not make it home until dark.

Our joy quickly spread through the neighborhood, and we never wondered once about school. We disappeared into clouds of powdery snow, and as the temperatures quickly rose and the snow grew stickier, we headed for the park to make snowmen.  What naïve and inexperienced elementary kids we were!  Just as the sun peeked through the clouds, I remember a distinct Thwap! Then another and another. 

The middle-schoolers ambushed us. Older and wiser, they reserved their energy early in the morning, patiently waiting for the consistency of the snow to change from corn starch to sticky cotton candy.  And while we dreamed of silly snowmen, they forged an armory of snowballs.  Barely inside the park gates, panic ensued as my friends fell to the left and right. Our attackers moved like a trained militia, aiming snowballs at our stinging faces. When we fell, they pelted us mercilessly while a soldier gleefully pulled out our collars or waistbands, filling them with icy snow.  

For a short time, all joy of a snow day vanished as the middle-schoolers unleashed wintery carnage on us, but high-schoolers soon emerged, seizing their stockpiles of snowballs and raining fire and ice on that poor group of tweens.  As we sniffled and snotted, we watched snowball justice on a Medieval scale, and our former foes soon lay buried under mounds of snowballs in the city park. The high-schoolers disappeared as quickly as they arrived, and it was all over. 

The joyful spirit of a snow day returned, however, and those same middle schoolers helped us with our snowmen, and we promised not to tell our parents.  Before long, we lost ourselves in snow angels and forts and sliding down hills with cardboard we pulled from dumpsters.  Not an adult in sight, and we never went home.  Our parents never wondered where we were or worried. They knew we would come home when we got hungry or when the streetlights came on, whichever came first.

Modern children still know the joy of a snow day, but in our overconnected, overprotected, and overscheduled world, few of them will ever experience an epic snow day.  The stinging of fingers and toes near the fire. The pure happiness of a carefree, adult-free day with no certainty and no worry. Children wandering and battling faux wars that led to truces marked with snow angels and cardboard sleds. 

Like old Saturday Evening Post magazine covers, it’s all a myth to modern families.  Nevertheless, maybe some things we have lost are worth rediscovering, like the suspense and joy of a surprise snow day. Unfortunately, our childhoods are now the Norman Rockwell images for this generation, but maybe some parts should once again be real, for I can think of nothing this generation needs more than a truly epic snow day.

Tom Deighan is superintendent of Duncan Public Schools. You may email him at  deighantom@gmail.com and read past articles at www.mostlyeducational.com

Adult-Ready Graduates

By
Tom Deighan
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This is second in a series of ten summertime articles mapping the common ground upon which parents, educators, and communities can unite regarding one of the most divisive topics in America: public education. 

Over my career, I have shared the stage with thousands of graduates, and I invariably run into a few after graduation. One encounter at the local athletic store stands out because it was the very next morning. He introduced himself, and we made some small talk about the ceremony, but finally, he just blurted it out, “I don’t know what to do!”  Such is the AHA! moment of graduation. 

Many students graduate with a plan of some sort, but many others live so passionately in adolescence that adulting sneak attacks them as they step onto the stage for their diploma, and they can barely walk. All graduates feel the weight of “What are you going to do after graduation?”  It’s already a ton of bricks, so they really don’t need the constant reminder. (As if we all had a plan when we were eighteen!)

Parents feel the same way, so it is a moment of truth for them both. Parents invariably wonder if they prepared their children, and the newly minted graduates invariably wish they had paid more attention. Despite all our talk of generation gaps, none exists at this moment when both parents and graduates see the entire PK-12 educational assembly line with crystal clarity, and they realize that public schools are the most ambitious of factories: adult factories. 

Of course, we extol the virtue of learning, the passion of the arts, and the thrill of competitions. We love the fun stuff, endure the hard stuff, and cuss the crazy stuff. Ultimately, however, graduates are our final product, and every parent and every child want the same outcome from that factory: functioning adulthood. Over the years, I have described this many ways, from college and career ready to career-bound citizens, but whatever we call it, we need adult-ready graduates. 

Definitions of adult-ready vary greatly from child to child and from family to family, but parents and educators agree on the essentials more than they disagree. I suppose the 80/80/80 rule – 80% of parents and 80% educators agree on 80% of educational issues – applies to kids as well. No one has better clarity on this topic than a recent graduate or their parent because when we backward design school from graduation, education is a much simpler process. Remarkably, we can generally agree on a few core essentials.

Every child needs to graduate ready to enter the adult world to the best of their abilities. They may further their education, get a job, enter the military, or start a business, but they need to be ready for those next steps. They also need to be good neighbors who can fulfill their civic duties. They often kick and scream during the manufacturing process, but upon graduation, these things suddenly matter. More are ready than not because all that nagging from teachers and parents bubbles up just when they need it. If previous generations could pull it together, this generation can, too. (We were a hot mess back in the day, and we know it.)

And as for that terrified young man?  Our discussion occurred at the athletic store where he had worked through high school, and I knew that any kid who shows up to work the morning after graduation would be fine. I eventually lost track of him, but he stepped into adulthood as we all did, with a little fear and trembling, and he figured it out. I have no doubt he is successful, perhaps even preparing to place his own children on the educational assembly line, wondering who they will be when they grow up. The simplest answer, from whatever perspective, is simple: an adult. Just imagine what our public schools could accomplish if we could start where we agree and work backwards to ensure graduates are truly adult-ready. If you doubt it is that simple, just ask a recent graduate.  

Tom Deighan is a public educator and currently serves as Superintendent of Duncan Public Schools. He may be reached at deighantom@gmail.com

COVID Groundhog Day for Schools

By
Tom Deighan
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0

Groundhog Day is this Wednesday, February 2, 2022, and just like Bill Murray in the movie Groundhog Day, our world will drag out of bed expecting the COVID loop to continue. But this isn’t just any Groundhog Day. Next Wednesday is 2-2-22, so something exciting is bound to happen, possibly at 2:22 PM. (Yes, 2.2.22.2.22 – just as Nostradamus likely predicted!) I am skeptical, but if Punxsutawney Phil doesn’t crawl out of his burrow before noon on Wednesday, I’m buying extra toilet paper.

In recent weeks, schools have experienced their own Groundhog Day of sorts as preemptive and indefinite closures again rolled across our nation due to COVID. In Duncan, we closed for the first time due to COVID (two days), and students reportedly broke down in tears at the news. Thankfully, we have avoided preemptive and indefinite closures, but this is their third school year saturated in such fear and anxiety. If it terrified our students who have attended open schools, just imagine the nationwide mental condition of students living through the Groundhog Day loop of constant closures.     

After three years of subjecting children to such trauma, my concern is that we will forever be stuck in the same Groundhog Day pattern. Schools face intense pressure to close preemptively and indefinitely at the slightest sniffle. When they do close, they are endlessly shamed. Meanwhile, our nation seems unaware of the thousands and thousands of schools in our nation that have managed to safely avoid preemptive and indefinite closures. Where are the models and data from those schools to help guide other struggling districts?

The 2022-23 school year will be our fourth COVID school year, and parents and educators need examples and strategies to stay open, not endless pressure to close and bitter shame when they do. Unfortunately, I suspect that most parents and educators still assume that preemptive, indefinite closures are the norm rather than the exception. Our national obsession about closures has ignored thousands of lonely schools that defied the odds to stay open. What about the states and communities that never closed?  Where are the models and strategies gleaned from their journeys?

This is our third COVID school year, and we know the patterns by now, and we know what works. If we are ever going to escape this COVID Groundhog Day, we must offer schools real strategies to avoid indefinite and preemptive closures. If we do not equip schools now, we can expect this pattern to repeat itself again in the future, whether or not Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow on 2-2-22 at 2:22.

As hard as it has been for districts like Duncan to stay open and avoid preemptive closures, it has been infinitely more difficult for those schools pressured to preemptively and indefinitely closed. Whichever path communities have chosen, doubt and anxiety dominate every aspect of our lives. And if it has been hard on us adults, we can barely comprehend the despair of children living through this endless COVID Groundhog Day.

When I spent Christmas Break compiling a book about Duncan’s journey to keep schools open, I did it in hopes that some attention could be drawn to schools across our nation that have managed to stay open. Surely, our nation can learn something from the thousands of other schools like ours that have defied the odds. Parents, educators and students all deserve the confidence and assurance that they can return to normalcy. They need hope for ending preemptive and indefinite closures due to COVID.

Before we ever approach Groundhog Day 2023, schools need strategies and models to safely stay open – instead of shame and impossible choices. If Bill Murray could escape his endless loop, we can, too. And who knows, maybe something cool will happen on 2-2-22 at 2:22? I will be watching that little critter closely, this Wednesday. I don’t have any predictions, but if Punxsutawney Phil is wearing an N-95 mask, I am stocking up on Charmin.

Tom Deighan is superintendent of Duncan Public Schools. You may email him at  deighantom@gmail.com and read past articles at www.mostlyeducational.com

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