I'd Rather Have Nice Students than Smart Students

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=m5yCOSHeYn4

Most people think about education today, and they immediately jump to high stakes testing, Common Core and how we need to speed up, learn faster, learn more or else our students will not be college and career ready.  (taking a hiatus to regain my composure before I type something hostile...)

Pause .... rhythmic breathing ... pause ... in through the nose and out through the mouth breathing ....

Here's my take on education today:

Give me a room full of, oh let's say 30 students.  Go ahead tell me their data; give me their pretest scores, their state scores, their reading levels and all the past successes and failures they have experienced.  Throw their address on for good measure because doesn't living on a certain street dictate your mental capacity?  Put all of that on my desk.  I will do everything I can to bury it under stacks of student writing, stories we will read and other more important info, and I hope to uncover it around June 29th.

Don't get me wrong, my students will learn this year, and with the exception of my immediate family, they are the most important people in my life.  The reality is though, they will learn and as far as the books go, as far as the reading and writing, they will be ready for college and careers.  More important is getting them ready to be good people.

In the end, I want my students to be good, no great, no amazingly-stupendous- incredible-lift-you-on-their-shoulders type of people.  The ones you can depend on to brighten your day.  The ones who bring a smile and a kind word or two into a room with them.  The type of people who stand up for important values that the world appreciates regardless of religion or culture.  Values that transcend our differences and focus on what we have in common.  Yes, I want those students.  I want Honors Human Beings, not Honors English Students.  What's the point of having a big brain if you don't have a big heart?

What's the point of this one life you are blessed with if all you do is join the fast-paced rat race to gain more so you can just take more.  So many go through life blindly chasing that something, and we don't even know what that SOMETHING really is.  We just know it might put more money in our pockets.

In the end, I'd rather have nice students than smart students.  I'd rather have students who forgive, apologize and mean it, say excuse me (and not just when they burp or fart), say please and thank you, and even hold a door for another or find a nice thing to say to someone they don't have to say a thing to.  This is my wish and my hope.