Will Pritchard: School visits reveal talented teachers, creative students

Since joining the Indianapolis Public Schools board of commissioners, I’ve visited 56 IPS-managed, innovation and charter schools within the district’s boundaries. Over about two hours, principals and teachers share their pathways into education, challenges and successes.

The challenges are prodigious, and most come from outside school. Children living in shelters and hotels, transitioning between multiple homes—and often multiple schools—in a single school year. Building a classroom culture when many of the students revolve midyear. Kids of all ages witnessing violence. Families living in poverty.

Society’s dysfunction takes a toll on children. A second grader who woke up a parent to take her to school. A student who had never crossed White River. Kids who arrive mid-school year without knowing a word of English. High school kids missing school so they can work. Children caring for other children.

Many kids are still struggling from COVID. Teachers tell me student stamina has declined. Kids have a hard time self-regulating and de-escalating tense moments. COVID changed the attendance perception: Kids are more likely to stay home or not return to school after a morning doctor appointment, or families even schedule vacations on school days. Some parents prefer the safety of home.

Like most of our urban infrastructure, schools haven’t kept pace with improvements. Many of our schools are in old facilities or in buildings that were not designed to be schools. Children are squeezed into buildings that are too small. Principals give up their office so a social worker can meet with a student. Classes are temporarily held in the school gym. Interventionists work with students in the hallway.

Principals and teachers have challenges, too: limited time for professional development, low wages for interventionists and assistants, lengthy processes to remove ineffective teachers, inflexible pacing guides, lack of autonomy and pressure to perform.

Despite the challenges and our tendency to criticize public education and even teachers, I share with you a few observations from my dozens of school visits that will never make the headlines but that paint a more complete picture of classrooms in our city.

Amazing progress and incredible experiences happen every day in public schools across Indianapolis. Children are learning. They are building relationships. They are improving their reading skills, solving math problems, exercising, playing music, creating art, writing poetry and challenging themselves every day.

Our successes owe much to our abundance of outstandingly talented teachers. They are devoted! They love their students. They’re spending their own money on class supplies. They are keen listeners. They’re experienced. One school on the near southside had four teachers who have been there for more than 30 years; they are committed to the community and have educated two generations of students. Over the past three years I have observed several teachers with complete command of overcrowded classrooms. It’s a special kind of magic to watch a kindergarten teacher quickly connect with a child who only knows a few words of English.

Yet despite their expertise, training and experience, is there a profession more second-guessed than teaching?

But the secret sauce is our kids. To paraphrase a high school principal, our students are creative, intelligent, honest and tolerant. They are artists, spelling geniuses, amazing athletes, language learners, mathematicians and imaginative writers. The short stories and poems they write at school reveal a depth of awareness and thoughtfulness that many of us IPS parents seldom glimpse at home.

It’s not a surprise, then, that 88% of parents are satisfied with the quality of their school, according to a 2022 IDOE survey. Yet the negative news about schools—ours and those around the country—abounds and vastly outweighs the positive.

We surely have a lot of work to do. But I have concluded that the headlines are missing the story. They overlook the small, quiet triumphs that happen every day in our schools, where talented kids blossom daily thanks to great teachers.•

__________

Pritchard is a member of the Indianapolis Public Schools board.