C H A T T E R
Jan 23 2023
  Many years ago, I went through the educational system in Clay County.  I attended Valley Fork Elementary starting in the 1980's, Clay Middle in the mid 90's, and graduated Clay High, in 2001.  I wanted to reach out to you as someone who witnessed first hand - from the perspective of a student at the time - the change in how education  and learning was presented to us back then.

  I remember education and achievement being pushed hard most of the way through, though it was changing fast by the time I graduated.  The teachers at Valley Fork Elementary put in a lot of effort to help us succeed.  I remember Randy White going the extra mile to help kids learn to read by spending hours recording himself reading books, so we could listen and follow along when we read those same books.  Mike Schoonover helped us learn to write and his English lessons, by having us write articles for the clay newspapers, which we looked forward to getting weekly to see if we got published. Garland Tenney found several ways to help us learn math when we struggled, by using everything from board games, to computer games, to in class competitions to see who could do our times tables the fastest. Linda Graham went above and beyond to help us learn basic science, even getting guest speakers in to show us cool science experiments to help us learn to apply what we read in the books.  All of them believed that every student was capable of anything we tried to do. I was graduating 5th grade and getting ready to go into 6th grade at CMS when the Principal told us this on our final day of school at the school assembly:  "We are not here to teach you what to think. We are not here to give you your opinions.  We are here to teach you how to think, so you can learn anything you put your mind to and make your own opinions. We believe you are capable of anything if you just try.  You are amazing, and I can't wait to see who and what you become in the future as you change the world."

  Once I hit middle school, the emphasis on 'learn how to think' started slowly shifting to 'learn what to think'.  Instead of teachers challenging us to figure out the answers, we started being pushed to memorize facts/data so we could regurgitate it on standardized tests. The shift was subtle at first. It wasn't emphasized super hard when I was in middle school, but I remember more emphasis was put on it every year.  Unfortunately, being an ornery teenage boy, my memories of middle school are not the greatest, though I did have teachers that saw excellence in me that I struggled to see myself at the time.  They encouraged me every day to work hard and improve, and they knew how to draw out every ounce of ability I had. Sandra King, Eva Hinkle, and Steve Ware knew the right ways to get me to try harder, even when I was frustrated by my lack of natural ability, and had to spend many hours practicing, to have proficiency at the same things that others had natural gifts for.

  Then highschool came around. Just like everyone else at the time, there was one teacher in particular who was probably the toughest teacher I ever had, but he also bucked the trend of making us memorize raw facts.  While many students at the time dreaded taking Bruce Cunningham's classes, I enjoyed them, I enjoyed the challenges he gave me, and took every class he taught, because I craved proving to him I could do whatever task he layed in front of me.  When I asked him later (after I graduated) why he was so tough on all of the students, he told me "Because I knew and believed you all were far more capable than what you thought you were, and that you could show it when challenged properly." I admit I never again had a teacher as tough (or as fair) as him ever since, but he was right.  He had a special ability to see potential in others that they never knew they had, and he tried his hardest to reach and pull it out of every one of us before we graduated.  It is thanks to him that I was prepared for college 

  However, he was an anomaly.  Most teachers by then had just gone the route of having us memorize what would be on the standardized tests used every year.  Even the principal at the time - Kenneth Tanner - emphasized it heavily.  I remember assemblies in the gym in the days and weeks before the tests, and he was giving us pep talks, doing pep rallies for the tests, and even offering prizes to students who improved the most from the prior year to the current year.  As the administration goes, so goes the teachers.  They all fed off of him and pushed the standardized tests hard.  They pushed hard our ability to memorize facts, and shifted focus away from teaching us how to use/apply information.  Even though I didn't fully understand it at the time, I was witnessing first hand the 'death' of education as it used to be, and it being twisted into rote memorization, with 0 emphasis on application.  Children were being turned into fleshy books - full of facts and information, but unable to apply it as it practice and application were being heavily de-emphasized to try and make those standardized scores look better.

For a while, it appears it worked. I remember the student rallies where the administration would celebrate with us when we were once again in the top 5 in the state (even a couple times our class was top in the state!).  I can still remember the early years of the Communicator, when you (Andy) would happily post test scores and brag about how good we were doing as a system compared to elsewhere. Then things started slipping.  As the kids who had received 'how to think' education filtered out of the system, and only the 'what to think' kids were left.  Suddenly, they could no longer apply the knowledge they were given, and I do not find it surprising that scores and ability tumbled.  I believe that is what is missing now.  The ability to know how to think critically and apply information you have been given is gone.  The students today are missing the wonderful teachers that not only believed in us, but who went out of their way to prove that belief and draw out the best in us while they taught us how to think, how to learn, and how to apply the knowledge given to us so we could grow.

  Maybe I am off base.  Maybe I am completely wrong, but I don't think it would hurt to once again start teaching the kids how to think and how to apply, instead of what to think and what bubbles to fill on the scantron sheet.

Thanks for your time,

Frank Bennett