TOMMIE SAYLOR: Remember, it is ultimately the students job to learn

“The dream begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called truth.”

-- Dan Rather

By Tommie Saylor

Kennedy High School Principal

You can’t force someone to learn. We can force a student to be in class, to sit in a seat and be quiet, to pay attention, open their book and follow along, and even force a student to complete assignments and take quizzes and tests. 

But we can’t force a student to learn. Learning is a personal choice, a decision made by the individual to internalize newly acquired information and make it part of the individual’s psyche. Simply, regardless of the “song and dance” performed by the teacher, regardless of the class environment, culture and climate, ultimately it is the student’s choice to learn or not to learn.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe highly in creating a learning environment within our classrooms.  I believe in fostering a positive learning environment, in creating systems that entice students, rewards students who learn, creates a sense of accomplishment and personal satisfaction when the student does learn. 

Basically, I believe in marketing learning much in the same way advertisers try to lure shoppers into buying their product; the only difference, is that my product is knowledge.  What is surprisingly similar, is that the final decision lies in the hands of the consumer, the student.

Given the above, one can understand why I become overly agitated this time of the year when the State of Michigan releases the “School Report Card” based on a formula that makes those who have a Doctorates degree in Mathematics “scratch their heads.” This “Top to Bottom list” and color coded scorecard that is based on our student’s performance on a college entrance examination (even though only a third of the adult population is college educated). It is overreaching at best.  At its worst, it is being used to judge and evaluate teachers for their students’ lack of performance. 

Thirty years ago, when a student did not do well in school, a majority of parents “had a talk” with their student.  Today, when a student does not do well in school, parents often “have a talk” with the school.  According to the State, teachers are responsible for their student’s learning, administrators are held accountable for the learning of all the students in the building and districts are liable for the performance of all students within their borders.

Yet, nothing is mentioned about the responsibility of the student to learn. At what point in time does it become the student’s responsibility to learn the material? 

Trust me, I know better than most that there are good and bad teachers. Like any other profession, we have good police officers and bad police officers, good firefighters and bad firefighters and good teachers and bad teachers.  So, I’m not talking about the bad teacher applying their trade poorly and thus students not learning, I’m talking about the good teacher doing their job well with students giving minimum effort yet expecting maximum gain.

As I told my students hundreds of times when I was in the classroom, if you complete everything asked of you by the instructor, read the textbook when instructed, complete and turn in every piece of homework, take notes, study, prepare for quizzes and tests, participate in classroom activities and discussions, seek assistance when you do not understand and you still do poorly, it is the teachers fault. 

Yet, if you do not do absolutely everything asked of you by the instructor and you do poorly in school, then it is your fault. 

Education is a process applied to students by experts in their field, and when you “cut corners” on this process you are harming your ability to learn and the fault lies solely with you.

Ultimately a school is about teachers teaching, and students learning. It is the job of the principal, my job, to make sure that teachers are teaching, a duty that I take most seriously.  Likewise, it is the job of the parents to make sure that their students are doing everything they can to learn by following all the protocols.

Given this, by working together we can defy the State’s ranking process, deny its attempts to set us at odds and together elevate our students to levels restrained only by their own desire to succeed.

What starts here, changes the world. Making Kennedy the school of choice. Excellence by design.