Writing an open letter to his daughters, Malia and Sasha, President-Elect Obama expresses a hope for what schools can be: “I want all our children to go to schools worthy of their potential – schools that challenge them, inspire them, and instill in them a sense of wonder about the world around them.” (Parade Magazine, January 18, 2009). No one can dispute the intent of this hope in its aspirations for students, but the statement is more than a platitude. It can be seen as a platform for developing education policies that actualize the statement’s intent.
Educational policies are developed to address perceived needs of the national, state, and local constituents, economies, and circumstances. Whether or not any policy in the era of modern American education has been developed and actualized with the intent of creating schools worthy of student potential is one we all should examine and debate. What we have seen in recent decades are policies to address the range of perceived shortcomings of our public schools, the most recent, of course, being NCLB. Sufficient, mounting evidence indicates that the policy and its sanctions have done much to shrink the ability of schools to inspire and to actualize student potential.
The moment of teaching is, perhaps, the single most powerful means for inspiring students and their learning, happening not just in the classroom but wherever students and teacher interact in the school. Students are fortunate when they have teachers who see and nurture the potential within, and there are many teachers who do so. Unfortunately, some policies of late have worked to counter learning cultures and circumstances that encourage inspired teaching.
Likewise, inspired, informed leadership within the school and district can make or break the circumstances for the magic of teaching and learning. Leaders who know and cultivate their own potential as leaders and learners can be inspirational role models for staff, students, and policy makers. We need informed policies to support them, as well.
Can educational policies embrace inspired teaching, leading, and learning? The answer is “yes.” Unfortunately, we have not seen policies that support such. All of us as the body politic need to work with our policy makers to create and implement policies that do, indeed, generate schools worthy of student potential.
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