The Lottery

The other night I was working on my December Daily album, and I decided to check out our Netflix queue for something different to watch.  Once I started looking, I was reminded that I had added a bunch of documentaries and decided to pass up some of the other choices and watch The Lottery.  It was a rather short film and the topic was centered around 4 families living in New York City that were all trying to get their kids into a charter school.

There was an obvious bias, which I think is the case in many documentaries, and I will admit that there were times that I wanted to just hit the stop button and switch to an already watched episode of Law and Order...but I didn't.  

I don't have a lot of experience with charter schools.  I know that there have been some widely successful ones across the country but most that I personally know about are riddled with their own problems.  The one in this film has been one of those successful ones.  The teaching day is extended, the school year is extended, the principal gets rid of "ineffective" teachers with no trouble from a union, teachers happily work together.  It is so successful that there is a lottery every spring to fill the available spaces for the upcoming school year.  

Throughout the film, we followed 4 children.  They were all going to be kindergartens in the fall.  Their cute little faces were supposed to pull at the heart strings of the viewer.  In a lot of ways, it worked.  They were great little kids. And then there were the parents.  The parents of these four kids were clearly dedicated to wanting the best for their child.  Every single one of them had a little section in their house that was reserved for learning.  There were alphabet posters, books, pocket charts, word cards, puzzles, flash cards, etc.  It was incredible.  And irritating all at the same time.  

My problem with this film was not that these parents clearly wanted what was best for their child.  The problem I had with this film was the implication that all parents were like this and then when these little darlings entered kindergarten, the big, mean, unionized public school teacher was going to fail them miserably year after year.  And yes, that would be a little bias showing through.  

I am not saying that there aren't ineffective teachers out there.  A huge purpose of my job is to help make teachers more effective early in their career.  There are always things we can do as teachers to be better.  I don't deny for a second that there are teachers that should not be with children in a classroom. I could even name a few.  

The problem that I had with this documentary is how simple they saw the solution was.  

I taught kindergarten for one year here in Salem.  When I started the year, I had 21 students, a number unheard of these days in public school.  Of those 21 kids, I had two that could recognize all of their letters, most knew 5-10. Of those 21 kids, 10 of them could not write their own name....5 of them couldn't even recognize it.  Most of them could count to 10.  Half of them could write to 10.  Three of them didn't know how to hold a book.  There weren't many alphabet posters, books, pocket charts, word cards, puzzles, flash cards in these kids home.  There is plenty of responsibility to go around for kids succeeding in school.  

Now I want to say that I worked hard that year.  All of my kids made a lot of progress but not all were "ready" for first grade.  I am not using the excuse that "they didn't come ready".  But I am saying it is a reality.  Kids (and in some schools most of the kids) walk into school the first day of the new year not prepared.  And when they walk into school when they are kindergartens, there is no prior public school teacher to blame.  And to be honest, it doesn't really serve us to throw blame around and it certainly doesn't serve the kids.  

I agree with the film maker that we need to do better by the kids going to our schools and I know a lot of educators that give of themselves (probably more than is personally healthy) to try and do that every single day.  I just wish those people would have gotten a little screen time too.

(And, probably not surprising, I didn't really end up getting a lot done on my December Daily album.)