What does it mean for someone to go to school? Imagine an extraterrestrial landed on Earth and tasked you with explaining our customs to them. When they asked you what the word ”school” meant, how would you describe it? At first thought, it seems like explaining school should be simple. You can just look it up in the dictionary, right? Well, let’s take a look. School is defined as “an educational institution where people go to learn.” By this definition, school is only a building where people learn, but the problem with this simplistic, one-layered definition is that it doesn’t capture the energy of what school does. If we were to follow just Webster’s definition, we could arguably say that a library is a school as well. Even though it is a place where people learn, we can all agree that a library is not a school.
School is more than a building, although that is one aspect of a school. If you were to take a random poll of what school was, most people would say something along the lines of a place where people go to get an education by studying different academic subjects from knowledge experts. For myself and our purposes, let’s define school as a combination of the definitions for school, education, and academics; school is an educational institution (school) that provides instructional activities that impart knowledge or skills (education) that lead people to the pursuit of book knowledge (academics).
As educators, we provide instructional activities that impart knowledge or skills that hopefully lead our students to pursue more knowledge as they become life long learners. This tells us that our job isn’t just to teach students how to read, write, or count. Our job is to provide activities that will help students gain the knowledge or the skills they need to continue learning. We are meant to be guides on a continuous journey of exploration and discovery, not just check-points along the way.
However, there is a serious problem facing educators. We are shifting our focus away from being a guide. We have forgotten the very essence of school and replaced it with the desire to push learners through academic achievement. I’ve often pondered this problem during staff meetings. Why are we so focused on academics without considering how we move students along to becoming self-motivated learners?
Imagine that the components of being a self-motivated learner as a pyramid with steps each person must climb. The bottom, or foundation, of the pyramid, is school. This foundation is made up of all the components that make up a learner’s environment, which, in our case, is developing a sense of belonging in the classroom. Once the learner feels like they belong within the classroom and overall school community, they can move to the next level, education. During this level, students aren’t just learning how to read, write, and count. They are also learning how to think critically, ask questions, and get help when needed. After they have established a sense of belonging, gained the basic skills needed to learn how they learn, students can move to the top layer of the pyramid, academics. Once students reach this level, they can learn more complex material and become self-motivated, life-long learners.
Unfortunately, instead of encouraging students to move up the pyramid, many teachers are pressured to find a teleportation method to skip straight to academics. We must recognize that before our students can climb to academics, we must focus on the place they’re going to learn and how they will receive the knowledge or skills they are sent to school to receive. We have all been in professional developments where we discuss data and how to “move” kids without considering the pyramid’s foundation. What type of experience are students having in the classroom? Do they feel like they belong? How are teachers delivering instruction, and is the instruction skill based? Is the instruction delivered in a way that is developmentally appropriate for the students’ minds and bodies?
I believe that it is time to slow things down and truly examine how school, education, and academics work together to help students succeed in the world beyond our doors. I think it is best to start with the experience for kids in the classroom since it honestly takes the most effort to establish. Establishing a strong classroom culture is not easy, but if it is not built correctly, the entire pyramid will come crumbling down.
Share your experience with managing school, education, and academics in the comments below. Is there a perfect combination? Is it even worth trying to balance them all? Does it vary school to school?
