People like to talk about how there’s a Starbucks on every corner. Whether true or not, the Starbucks brand is impressive. In fact, there are about 16,000 Starbucks locations in the U.S. That’s really incredible!
Yet it’s totally junior varsity compared to America’s Public School System. While we’re all impressed by Starbucks, our School System has around 100,000 locations. One hundred thousand! That means we’re running six schools for every Starbucks. Now think about how much more challenging it is to run a school than a coffee franchise—let alone six schools—or how much more challenging it is to be a teacher than a barista.
McDonald’s raves about how many burgers it’s served: “Billion and Billions” it says on its signs. Well, on average, McD’s serves 6 1/2 million burgers per day. That’s an impressive number—unless you compare it to America’s Public School System. We teach 74 million students per day. Seventy-four million! That’s 11 kids for every burger sold. No matter how you pickle it, there’s no comparing frying up a burger to teaching eleven kids how to read, write, and calculate the surface area of a hamburger wafer.
Yes, I know all these school districts and schools are “independent” entities, but so too is a Starbucks franchise. The fact is, given the enormous task of teaching, feeding, nurturing, and babysitting America’s kids, there is no corporation in the world that can compare with the American Public School System. None. Not even Amazon.
And yet, when surveyed, only 19% of Americans says our school system is doing a good job. Wait. Stop the press. When those same people are asked about the school system in their own state, suddenly 44% say the schools in their own state are doing well. But hang on yet again! When those people are then asked about their local schools, 79% give them favorable grades. How can this be?
Setting aside media bias and political propaganda (there’s enough of that to cover every Big Mac ever made with a double portion of special sauce), it suggests that the closer one is to the action, the more they appreciate what’s going on. You see, we have a distant view of the school system as a whole, yet because own kids and grandkids go to the local school, we tend to be more aware and appreciative of all the hard work being done there. At the local level, too, people tend to see the students and their families as accountable, not just the school itself, which leads us to the gist of this post. You see, there’s also research that shows the more involved one is as a parent, the better one’s child will do in school.
Well of course!
When parents read with their kids, check their homework, communicate regularly with the teachers, hold their children accountable, and validate report cards, kids do better.
When parents attend assemblies, chaperone trips, encourage their kids to participate, and insist that vacations be taken during actual vacation periods, kids do better.
Hands-on parenting benefits kids. Having done this gig for more than 30 years, I can attest to the validity of such research.
Our schools are not without their problems, weaknesses, and failures. But our system of Public Education really is miraculous. Now, allow me to make a small connection to my specialty, reader’s theater.
One way to encourage parent involvement is to use plays. When given a play script to learn, your kids will be more likely to read at home, and their parents will be more likely to read with them. When you use plays, parents will want to be more involved, such as with set building and costuming. And finally, when kids are going to be on stage, their parents are more likely to show up.
Encourage the parents of your students to be actively involved in the miracle of public school by producing a play. October is a great time to try one of my Gothic classics: The Monkey’s Paw, The Birth-mark, the Mad Scientist’s Daughter, and Tell-Tale Heart.
Happy directing!
ReadAloudPlays.com 