Return on Investment in Education

Speaking From Experience

"I learned about me!"

Twenty one years as an educator in the independent sector in BC has taught me many things, one of which is the danger in being insular. Sadly, this seems to be the default standing for independent schools in BC; I speak this from my own experience which might not be shared globally of course, but if this is the standard for a teacher in one school, it is probably the standard for many. However, I know that it can be changed. In fact, for those of us who work in the private sector, I feel it must be if we are to survive.

I was recently reminded of a great truth: Socrates believed that the best thing "for any living thing is life according to the specific excellence that is proper to that thing" (http://www.roangelo.net/logwitt/socratic-ignorance.html); in this sense, then, the wisest teachers are those who help students to learn about themselves.

I recently visited a workplace where a student from our school struggled while he in our school, to the point where he actually quit so that he could go to work. This student was not very book smart and did not do well academically (at least, not in our classic academic curriculum).  He was also a little awkward socially, which made it that much more difficult in our traditional classrooms. We (teachers) had a specific "way" that we "thought" he should "go" to be successful - memorize dates and names in history, write essays, do research in a specific way, etc. However, what we didn't, or could not, do was to figure out the way that the student himself was created to learn and what he himself was good at. Right now, this ex-school dropout is the lead employee in a metalwork shop where they make parts for large forestry machinery. In fact, he worked himself up the ranks to being the top employee in the shop. Here is a classic example of a student that did not fit our classic vision of what "smart" is; however, our vision of "smart" is not what education should be about. Instead, we as educators need to work towards figuring out what smarts our students have an nurturing those. 

To do this, I believe that teachers need various pedagogical strategies and varied assessment types as part of our teaching. I also believe that the biggest roadblock to this is, as I mentioned before, insular thinking. To break out of this, educators need to network, see other classrooms, and become immersed in educational research. A great example of a teacher who learned this lesson is Mr. Joseph T. Stafford, who writes in his article "The Importance of Educational Research In the Teaching of History", that "instead of teaching the same content with the same strategies year after year, teachers need to be challenged, to learn new strategies and new content" (Canadian Social Studies, Vol. 40, No. 1, Summer 2006). 

Administrators play a large role in creating a culture of forward educational thinking and implementation in their schools, by means of nurturing and requiring professional development that is authentic and hands on for their teachers. As well, making sure that they themselves (and I speak for myself here as well) are practicing what they preach and being in the know about what educational research suggests works best to help students learn - in fact, the best administrators will be those who continue to learn about best practices and never think themselves so wise that they need not learn anything else. Let us all truly become lifelong learners. 

If we do that, I believe that, for those parents who chose to pay for education in a private school, we can truly give them the best return for their investment in the education of their children.