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teacher as parent, school as norm
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From: Maia Cheli-Colando <maia>
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 14:03:19 -0700
Hollis,
I was very glad to read your insightful post. You raise good questions about the role of teachers and mothers, in literature and outside of it.
I was sad to see that this was a "half-month" topic. I didn't feel comfortable weighing in at the beginning of the time period, with all the wonder-teacher examples, but also feel a bit awkward inserting my comments here at the end. But, your note addressed my feelings, so I will go with this after all! (My thoughts are a bit loosely-tied here, but I hope that they will make some sense.)
As a homeschooler mother, I find the constant applause or ridicule of teachers, the discussion of school, and the neverending analysis of playground-firstdance-homeroom relationships in literature to be deafening at times.
So many books are published for libraries, for librarians, for teachers... and it seems to follow that many currently published books are about schools, teachers, and their world. Magazines are even more frustrating. It is nigh unto impossible to find a children's magazine that doesn't focus on school life, unless it is religious.
My daughter has many teachers, starting with us and ending nowhere. She has music and choir teachers, science teachers, dance teachers, swim teachers -- people who know something that she wants to know and which they are willing to share. But none of these teachers carry the weight of parenthood; hopefully, we don't carry that too heavily either. (!)
I agree with this: "a kindergartner needs a mommy" -- I do think that schooling children essentially replaces the parent with a teacher/system. Except, the teacher is only a one-year parent, in most cases, and then less, a one-period parent as they child grows.
Approximately two million kids in the United States are homeschooled. You could fill San Francisco twice over just with those kids. (And being homeschoolers, you'd have to have the parents too!) I understand that for many children and teens, school becomes their world -- their occupation, their community, and yes, their parent... and so I understand the natural tendency of publishers and writers to focus on those issues. But I would very much like to see more books that don't assume schooling, especially public schooling, as the comprehensive norm.
Here where I live, there is language immersion, Waldorf, part time charter cooperatives, an arts?sed charter, Montessori, many homeschoolers, and "traditional" public school options. And this is a small area! I'd love to see more books breaking outside of the public school norm; the kids I know are hungry for books that reflect their lifestyles, which are not driven by the policies of No Child Left Behind.
We come from a family of teachers: my grandmother taught music, my husband's father high school English, my husband's mother in the middle and elementary schools. I am not criticizing teachers... just feeling wistful, wishing that the available literature better reflected the variety of teachings and teachers that our children have.
Maia
Received on Wed 29 Sep 2004 04:03:19 PM CDT
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 14:03:19 -0700
Hollis,
I was very glad to read your insightful post. You raise good questions about the role of teachers and mothers, in literature and outside of it.
I was sad to see that this was a "half-month" topic. I didn't feel comfortable weighing in at the beginning of the time period, with all the wonder-teacher examples, but also feel a bit awkward inserting my comments here at the end. But, your note addressed my feelings, so I will go with this after all! (My thoughts are a bit loosely-tied here, but I hope that they will make some sense.)
As a homeschooler mother, I find the constant applause or ridicule of teachers, the discussion of school, and the neverending analysis of playground-firstdance-homeroom relationships in literature to be deafening at times.
So many books are published for libraries, for librarians, for teachers... and it seems to follow that many currently published books are about schools, teachers, and their world. Magazines are even more frustrating. It is nigh unto impossible to find a children's magazine that doesn't focus on school life, unless it is religious.
My daughter has many teachers, starting with us and ending nowhere. She has music and choir teachers, science teachers, dance teachers, swim teachers -- people who know something that she wants to know and which they are willing to share. But none of these teachers carry the weight of parenthood; hopefully, we don't carry that too heavily either. (!)
I agree with this: "a kindergartner needs a mommy" -- I do think that schooling children essentially replaces the parent with a teacher/system. Except, the teacher is only a one-year parent, in most cases, and then less, a one-period parent as they child grows.
Approximately two million kids in the United States are homeschooled. You could fill San Francisco twice over just with those kids. (And being homeschoolers, you'd have to have the parents too!) I understand that for many children and teens, school becomes their world -- their occupation, their community, and yes, their parent... and so I understand the natural tendency of publishers and writers to focus on those issues. But I would very much like to see more books that don't assume schooling, especially public schooling, as the comprehensive norm.
Here where I live, there is language immersion, Waldorf, part time charter cooperatives, an arts?sed charter, Montessori, many homeschoolers, and "traditional" public school options. And this is a small area! I'd love to see more books breaking outside of the public school norm; the kids I know are hungry for books that reflect their lifestyles, which are not driven by the policies of No Child Left Behind.
We come from a family of teachers: my grandmother taught music, my husband's father high school English, my husband's mother in the middle and elementary schools. I am not criticizing teachers... just feeling wistful, wishing that the available literature better reflected the variety of teachings and teachers that our children have.
Maia
Received on Wed 29 Sep 2004 04:03:19 PM CDT
