Let’s assume that we currently spend $5,000/year per student in our public schools. And for now (though not for later) let’s ignore the fact that this number is too low, that race and class are key factors in determining how resources are spent, and that students are tracked, again by race and class, into different sectors of our economy, and that our economy is changing such that an ever larger proportion of people will be shat on.
Instead, lets think of a program like Teach for America, or Americorps, where citizens, often recent college graduates, “do good” and make a sacrifice to do it, getting paid shit and, particularly in Teach for America are thrown into awful situations to survive them. In either case both programs are by and large detrimental to making real change in this country because they prevent the analysis necessary to do so and they instill a lasting skepticism about making change in regards to our problems because we fail to be skeptical of the very methods through which we are going about making change. This plan is based on such skepticism.
I am now going to think small scale. What if instead of doing side-jobs paying roughly 12K a year so as to be able to organize I instead had 7 kids who would otherwise go to a school and not be served come to my apartment and have school there. Like many people who are in Teach for America or in Americorps (to which I applied) I have all the skills necessary to ‘succeed’ in our society. What if I was paid 25K a year to teach these seven students with a 5K budget to be divided half and half between me and the students and a 5K budget to support others involved in their education?
We ensure there is internet at the ‘school’. We take field trips to local libraries to get books and local recreation centers to run around…or to schools for that matter. Lets pretend that we get a 1K book and supplies budget? (We might also want say, markers, pens, paper, a digital camera, or a camcorder, etc).
Now, obviously it would be good if I had some common cultural connection to the kids I was teaching. I don’t really. Say the summer before I get a community mentor who will also be my and the kids’ mentor during the school year, and that they get paid say, 1K a year for a one-hour a week commitment year round, arranged as is suited best to teachings needs. What if it is also a requirement that I setup a gathering every week where kids and their parents or whoever best suits that role are invited to come together and say, share a meal, or a snack, or just have a discussion, lets say this costs an additional 2K, maybe we give parents some monetary incentive for coming who knows (1K left plus 5K of teacher/student discretionary spending).
Of course, there is more to the picture than this. What are we going to do? For starters it seems best to have some common rituals that create respect. A program called Students at the Center (SAC) uses story circles to talk about common experiences and as a basis for writing. Perhaps we do that. The Algebra Project has come up with a sweet and peer-education based model for teaching math. Perhaps we setup a chapter and use that. But most of all, how about we use a model where I am a supporter of students projects, I make sure they are exploring something of interest, that it includes key knowledges and skills, and that we go from there?
I suppose it does depend on the ages of the kids, but if we are just choosing kids in my neighborhood, well, perhaps we’ll have a whole gambit of ages! And might that actually help us? The older kids can learn from, teach, and model for the younger kids. We can have common activities, say writing or reading or story telling, or presenting our projects, but also uncommon ones. What if I’m not good at math? How can I legitimately teach these kids something I’m not good at?
Well…let’s expand the concept. Say we have 4 such groups in my neighborhood. And as desired, we can work together, go to the library or gym or bakery down the street, to each others houses, and so on, or to the print-making collective. And wait! We still have 6K left to bring in other folks just for my 7 students! But first let’s get serious. Someone is going to have to coordinate all these little learning groups. There has to be some administrative cost. Ok, lets reduce our 6K to 3K. Moreover, all the schools in place are still going to be requiring maintenance, unless we sell them off or abandon them. So lets imagine all our schools converted into the seeds of new commons, huge community centers and low-rent office spaces for grassroots organizations, meeting halls, local businesses, community theater, etc.
Ok. So we still have 3K left. If none of the pods nearby can teach math maybe we hire a math tutor to use the Algebra Project curriculum to get us all to learn how to teach each other. Or we get a parent volunteer, or a member of the local community council. Or we join up with pods slightly farther away twice a week, or whatever. We figure it out.
And lets think this through a little more. With all their projects, the best resources for students are often going to be…not in my apartment but somewhere else, at local businesses, at the university, at the old folks home, the nonprofits, etc. So maybe we’ll set up twice a week all day internships for students, that can be a shared job between me and them. And maybe we’ll setup once a week times for students to help each other learn the hard stuff or tutor the younger folks. And maybe we’ll take field trips by stuffing into a shared minivan. Or maybe we’ll spend time watching lectures from Berkeley on a whole variety of college subjects or attending protests or teach-ins on police brutality or attempts to change the expungement policy for felons in MN, or organize or join a cop-watch, or make a zine to share our learning with the community or other school groups.
And if we have 4 such groups in the neighborhood we should probably evaluate each other and ourselves every semester, and maybe reshuffle the kids as best suits the collective desires of the kids, their parents, and us, the teachers. And obviously the us need not be fancy pants college folks. All that matters is they have most of the skills necessary to prepare folks for life, a little organization, and the ability to live at 25K a year.
Of course, I believe most schools systems actually receive more than 5K per student so if we want to call this arrangement a public charter then we should have a bit more money to through around a perhaps put in pension funds for teachers.
A logistical nightmare? Not if kids live in my neighborhood or by an easily accessible bus-line. Test scores? An open question but I imagine we’d do quite well. And combine it with a little pre-community mapping and the building of an alumni base, well, it makes school into a full blown community building/social change apparatus instead of the opposite…like it is now.
