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Our Last Best Shot
An Excerpt
By Laura Sessions Stepp
Character is learned when children feel safe telling the truth and confident that their observations will be acted upon or at least listened to. Character is fashioned when students are engaged in challenging assignments that involve other pupils and when they are taught not only how to answer questions but also how to reflect on their answers.
This is a tall order for teachers, who, as we will see, have been given numerous tasks to perform by a society that expects schools to cure virtually every ill. But as parents we have a right to expect our kids' teachers to be decent moral guides. Most Americans now place teaching values to kids at or near the top of their list of things they want schools to do. We are coming to understand that positive values improve our children's mental health, boost their performance in school, and increase the odds that they will contribute to the community.
All instructors teach and model values, of course, even in the middle of a geography lesson or math drill. The questions is, which values? As I learned watching Jessica, a teacher's instructional style, the ideas she is trying to get across, even the remarks she casually tosses out, convey a lot. Parents can pick up significant clues simply by observing their kids' teachers in the classroom. The parent who does this will be better able to understand what her child is facing each day, better able to help her think through any puzzling or unpleasant encounters. Teresa, Jessica's mom, never found the time to observe Jessica's teachers in middle school, a fact she regretted later.