I was a very good student. As long as nobody was pushing me to answer questions immediately I was always able to compose myself, reach into my store of knowledge and find the correct response. I was not good at contests in which I had to be the first to come up with an answer. My mind works wonderfully but its pace is slow and steady. If a clock is ticking I freeze. I won academic contests that allowed me to ponder over essays or prepare speeches in advance. I morph from being intelligent to stuttering as though I don’t have a brain when people put pressure on me to answer immediately. I was generally the last person to turn in a test, a fact that often annoyed my more quick witted classmates. I generally got high grades because I took the time to review and refine my responses. I suspect that many learners are like I am. There are those among us who can win Jeopardy. I am not among them. I will come up with the answer but not in the blazing timeframe needed to win a contest. 

I mention this because something is happening in the Houston Independent School District that troubles me greatly. After a state takeover of one of the largest districts in the United States a new superintendent is requiring some schools to use a pedagogic methodology that I believe will make learning more difficult for many students, especially those like me. From what I hear teachers are given scripted lessons with no time allowed for addressing individual learning needs. There is also a component that requires some segments of the lessons to be timed including moments when students are providing answers. From the standpoint of a long time educator I have a mountain of issues with what is happening.

First of all a script is far too impersonal for teaching much of anything. It ignores the reality that each group of students may require differing versions of the lesson depending upon their learning styles and how well they are comprehending the subject matter. It does not allow for reteaching with is critical to any good mathematics class. It also assumes that all students will respond positively to the exact same teaching method. Finally it forces students to race with a clock, an unfortunate situation for learners who need time to compile their thoughts before responding. 

I continue to teach mathematics even after officially retiring. Only the other day I had to backtrack with a group of students when I realized in grading their homework that most of them had struggled with a particular concept that I had presented in the previous class. It was important to clear up all of the misconceptions that I found before moving forward with the next topic. I new from experience that simply ignoring their trouble would only lead to bigger and bigger gaps in their understanding. Timed and scripted lessons would not have allowed me to have the luxury of reteaching and pointing out the common errors that I was seeing. The students were more attentive than ever because they had been stressed when they themselves realized that they had not quite mastered the concept. They were smiling by the time I had helped them to clear up their confusion.

A few years ago I was enjoying a wonderful opportunity to tutor underserved high school students after school. I had a working relationship with their mathematics teachers who sent samples of their work and alerted me to what kind of help they needed. It was gratifying to see the confidence grow among young people who were literally frightened by math. They beamed when their grades improved and their efforts made everyone happy. It was a truly gratifying time for me and then something terrible happened. 

The company that hired me to tutor in the school began issuing commands that I knew would not work with my high school students. They insisted that I never use the student textbooks or the teacher created work for the tutoring sessions. Instead they wanted me to give the kids a standardized test to determine what skills were weak. Then I was told to simply set them up with a computer program and monitor them as they worked independently. I did this one time and found that both students and teachers were upset because nothing matched what they were actually doing in class. When I told the company that I preferred to continue tutoring in the manner that had been so successful they threatened to make surprise visits and fire me if I was not using their pre-planned lessons on the computer. I beat them to the punch by resigning. 

It saddened me to abandon the students and teachers with whom I had built a strong and trusted relationship. I tried to explain how my hands were tied by people who seemed to have little idea how to work with high schoolers in mathematics. The ignorance of it all angered me. There were so many silly rules many of which were being made by individuals who had never taught mathematics or worked inside a high school. I was unable to reason with them because they were not really peddling a true tutoring service, but rather a computer package that had little or nothing to do with the realities of the situation. 

I find myself wondering of the prepackaged and strictly timed standardized lessons that are being echoed across classrooms are draining the joy and common sense out of the HISD schools required to use them. Students are first and foremost humans and by definition have different needs and ways of learning. I cannot help but believe that this system will fail and in the process put thousands of students behind in their knowledge and skills. Perhaps it will also have a very negative psychological impact on them. Somehow it does not seem as though true professional educators would design such a system. The system appears to be more of a product created by a business intent on selling its wares and using children to prove its worth. 

I hope that not too much damage is done to the young minds having to endure this experiment. I hope that the teachers do not become too discouraged. Mostly I hope that everyone will come to their senses sooner rather than later. What is happening is an educational travesty and needs to end as quickly as possible. There are many experts among teachers who know what to do. Someone needs to listen to them and to the students and their parents as well.