This made me think long and hard. Where are our priorities? Now, do NOT misunderstand me here, I am not attacking our Teachers, in Neosho. I support them 100 %. So, don't misunderstand my criticism..... I feel Neosho can do much better at educating our youth and I ran for the School Board to chase Excellence.
Vince Lombardi, the famous Football Coach, was never satisfied with his teams "staying" where they were, in performance, he was driven to make them even better. That is my Goal. I want to see Neosho be the greatest School and provide the best education anywhere AND I want to see constant improvement over time. Never ending improvement.
So, this brings me back to the question asked today. Why aren't YOU, as a parent, or Teacher, or District Patron calling me to demand improvement in academics across our District? Our kids deserve it! The questions must be asked.... "What can we do to improve?" .... Answers need to be obtained, to that question, and then a plan must be implemented to get us there. That is what I am working toward.
We have our priorities messed up, as a Nation and as a Society. While it maybe important to know why a Teacher was mean, or a Bus never runs on time, or a specific team always loses; the bigger MORE important question is this; "What are WE doing to prepare our most valuable resource, our children, for life?"
How about we ALL get "angry" (in a positive way) and tackle academics? Isn't that why we have schools in the first place???????
If we can't agree.........let's at least be civil!!!!!
Unfortunately school systems aren't what they used to be. Who is to blame though? We need to take a long hard look at ourselves as parents. If parents are not involved, they can't expect much from the schools, in my opinion. Parental involvement is KEY to any child's education. However, I see a lot of parents sending their children off to school to be taught about everything from the three "R's" to basic manners and how to act civilly. It is not the teachers/staff responsibility at the school to teach our children how to act like human beings! Isn't that a parent's job? It saddens me to see new teachers struggle in a classroom because of disrespectful students. I am not saying this is the root of every education problem by any means. I just think that if more parents got involved like my generation's parents did, we might have a better education system all around. Just my penny and a half.
ReplyDeleteI was one of those who did call and complain to the Principle at Benton Elementary, but you didn't hear about that one. After receiving an absolutely ludicrous letter from my daughters third grade teacher about the way they were teaching the very simple concept of counting up, (and by the way, the letter contained more than 5 errors and the final answer was wrong) I call the school. I received excuse after excuse and defence after defence:
ReplyDelete"It was a mistake",
"The program is very popular with our Latino families,"
"They use it in East Newton."
After another week of this nonsense, and the fact that my daughter was coming to HATE math when it had always been her favourite subject, I made the hard decision to pull my kids out of the Neosho Public Schools, with the exception of my eldest who is gifted and poor methods did not affect her ability to excel.
So I hope you'll understand, there are people in Neosho who have our priorities straight. You just may not see us at Board meetings because we've already walked away.
Rachel, I attempted to send you a message on FB, but it appears you have that feature blocked. I hope you see this! I appreciate your thoughts and I would like to communicate with you about what we can improve upon. Please contact me at steve105@swbell.net ..... Have a good day and thanks again, for giving us feedback!
ReplyDelete