Education Nation -WHO & WHAT

There are more than 350 people meeting in New York this week to talk about the education of American children. Our nation's children are falling behind in many areas. Why is that occurring?

I have had the great pleasure of working with many incredibly dedicated teachers, but I also have parents who have actually said, "my child will not have or do homework at night." Sadly, the parents prefer not to have homework because they do not have an education and they do not want their child asking for help. When the child asks for help, it makes the parent feel inadequate. Alternatively, the child does not want to do the work because partying is far more important in their lives than studying.

I have known, unfortunately, teachers who put books in front of the kids and basically told them to just learn themselves. They have told me point blank, they are not going to learn anymore and are waiting for retirement.

I have had and have great parents that despite what is going on at school, make sure their child does their work, helps them when needed and gets them into activities to help them be well rounded.

I have also seen parents who have their children into everything and the child is overwhelmed and burned out, but will not tell the parents because they do not want to disappoint them.

I see kids putting far more importance into how they look, what they wear, and who is famous instead of thinking about the ideals of what education can do for them.

I see kids that prefer to stay up late, watch TV, and not want to come to school the next day because they are tired and the parents say okay.

I have seen children achieve despite all the other horrific things going on in their lives.

I have seen parents and schools working together to the greatest achievement of their children. A fine-tuned, well-oiled system, which involves the parents active participation with the school and their child and the parent and teacher have communication often about goals reached and new goals created.

I have seen such a wide range of reasons why or why not. I am a big believer in stopping the finger pointing and blaming everyone else and instead looking inside ourselves. As long as you point fingers and blame, that is where your energy will be going and it won't be in helping your child make the right decisions in their lives, enabling them to go on and do even better than you did.

Yes, if there are egregious errors, they must be corrected, but are you doing your part within the errors being made?

I tell my students, parents, teachers and Para educators that they do not have to know everything, just keep growing and when you do not know, ASK. Our goal is to make the next generation better than ours. That takes all of us to keep learning. Only together, helping each other and everyone doing their part, will we be able to rise above the ashes.

Are you doing your part?