So one of my favorite things I wanted to share about this week was something that is always on my mind. Alllll-ways.
Food!
And not just any food, I'm talking farm to table food.
A couple years ago, one of my colleague's, who has a family farm, started selling beef and pork by the cut without having to order in bulk. They raise all of their animals and they are fed non-GMO corn grown on their farm, with no added hormones. Intrigued, I decided to give it a try.
And that's all it took. One try. Ever since, I've been a loyal customer and not bought beef or pork from anywhere except Stith Family Farms. The taste is so amazing. It's more flavorful than any meat I've ever had, the beef is way more tender, and the bacon is like sugar cured ham meets what bacon should be. And did I mention the ribs?! I have the best rib recipe that I've used for years but once I paired it with Stith Family Farm's ribs? Oh man, anyone who has had my ribs live's have been changed. Just ask them. Any of them.
And if the taste, quality, and knowing where your meat comes isn't enough reason to give it a try, the fact that you are supporting a local farm and family should do you in. Oh and did I mention they deliver?
You can place your order on their website or follow them on Facebook to see when the Meat Wagon comes to town!
Now that we have a "meat guy/gal", I felt the next step was to find a "vegetable guy". Starting in May, we will get a weekly box of fresh, locally grown veggies and eggs from Cedar Valley Farms. Stay tuned to see if it makes my "Favorite Things" list!
Friends, this has been bothering me for a while now and I’m ready to share my thoughts. I will start by saying this is my personal opinion and no reflection of anyone else's.
I am a new school teacher, a little over a year in, and feel like I have a different perspective than most. For the prior 16 years I have been in the real world, workforce. Starting out in retail at the age 16, working my way up to store manager by the age of 20, to obtaining my loan originator license and working for a mortgage company and a bank, working as the vice president for United Way, to starting my own business with my sister.
I say all this to say I feel like I have a unique perspective about issues in education. As a manager for many years, I’ve seen firsthand issues in our workforce. As the VP at United Way, I heard firsthand from plant managers and CEOs, issues in the workforce. And as a new teacher, I see firsthand issues within education.
And let me tell you, they both come back to the same core problem— our society and how children are being raised.
Yet what I continue to hear is it is the fault of public education. Public schools aren’t failing our children, what’s going on at home and in our society is.
Can there be improvements made within public education? Absolutely. But I have yet to find a reason to believe that charter and private schools are the solution. And let me tell you why.
It’s easy to tout the success of private schools when their demographics are very different than that of public schools. Let’s be honest here, private schools generally get a certain type of student (or better yet, parent). Parents who send their children to private school value education, therefore are going to have very high expectations of their children, especially when they have some skin in the game a.k.a. a financial incentive. I’m not saying parents in public schools don’t, but the percentage who do is not equivalent to those of private schools. And let me reiterate that, I am the product of public schools, my son goes to a public school, and I value education. There are lots of parents like me whose children attend public schools, but as a teacher, I can tell you firsthand, there are a lots of parents who don’t quite see it as a priority. They aren’t ensuring their children are doing their homework, or studying for their tests, or implementing consequences when they’re not doing their part and putting forth zero effort. And in many cases, it’s not because the parents don’t care, it’s because of what’s going on at home.
In public education, it’s very common for students to be raised in a single-family home, for a student's parent to be in jail, for a student to be raised by a grandparent, or for a student to be in foster care. All of that plays a huge role and are huge factors in the success of a child’s education. Statistics show us this. The percentage of students like this in private schools is likely very minimal compared to those in public schools.
In addition, many private schools do not offer services for students with special education needs, which is another big demographic missing. Again, it’s easy to tout test scores and transition to college when most of your students don’t face barriers. About 15% of the students I have in my classroom require special education services, and I’m a regular Ed teacher which means this is just a small percentage of special education students at my school. While many have achieved an A throughout my short tenure, I’ve also had several who have barely passed my class but it was still a huge success from where they started, yet that doesn’t reflect highly in reports.
I say all this to say we have to look at why private schools are so successful. I assure you it’s not because the teachers are better. The teachers are fantastic in private schools, but so are those in public education.
If it’s because of the way they are set up, then why can’t public schools be set up the same? Why bind public schools to rules that seem to be “failing them”? For those who say competition is good, how is that competition when one is private and one is public and they operate on different sets of rules? That goes the same for charter schools, too.
We currently have school choice. I’m an advocate for school choice. Parents should be able to home-school their children, send them to a public school, or send them to a private school. But I feel some of the proposed ideas and constant chatter of creating "more choice" will only take away from public schools, an entity that provides fair and equal access to all. Will private schools be required to provide special education services? Will private schools provide busing to children who want to attend if their parents don’t have transportation to get them there?
Public education teachers and schools aren’t the enemy here, despite what some of our leaders want you to believe. Educators simply know what I know, and that is taking taxpayer dollars away from public schools will only hurt the most vulnerable in our communities. And trust me when I say friends, that will be a much higher financial cost to us as taxpayers and our community than I think any of us would want to pay. I used to work for a nonprofit that did the math, I know this for a fact.
Want to know some of my solutions? I can’t fix what’s going on at home, but I can make the most of what I got in the classroom. Give me smaller schools, smaller class sizes, quit judging students success just on test scores, give me more time to teach real world life skills (the ones not being taught at home now), and for the love of Michael Scott give me a class set of Chromebooks.
