What if Teachers had the money to do anything they wanted?

Over the past two weeks, This American Life has been airing one of the most moving stories I've ever heard on that show. And that's saying something. I strongly encourage you to listen to Harper High School, Part 1 and Harper High School, Part 2 if you haven't already.

The stories from Harper High School are about gangs, guns, and being a teenager, but what moved me to write today is a piece at the end of the second hour in which the Principal of Harper High talks about what she would do if she won the lottery. She talks for four and a half minutes about things she would buy for the kids at the school--little things, like coats for kids who don't have them, and bigger things, like support staff for the school or houses where homeless kids could stay and be safe.

And this got me thinking: what if, instead of putting all our effort into getting rid of bad Teachers and bribing them with merit pay, we just give the money to the good Teachers? What if we said to the best Teacher in each school, "Here's $10,000. Do whatever you want with it." What would happen then?

Of course, people would get all touchy about unregulated government funds, but couldn't we make a Teacher Committee out of, say, five of the best Teachers in a school, and give the money that would have been used for Merit Pay to them to spend in the school? Or have Teachers write grant applications for things they want to do in the school?

When I think about a school like Harper, where some kids don't get home to shower, change and eat before coming to school, I wonder what would happen to test scores if every Teacher had a fridge with milk and a box of cereal in her classroom. What if kids could get a shower and a clean uniform if they got to school 30 minutes early? Or just if they needed it?

And most painfully, next year Harper High will only be able to afford a part-time Social Worker next year. That's what Chicago Teachers were striking about, if you recall. Most of the kids in the school have witnessed at least one shooting, and the city thinks they can get by with ONE PART-TIME Social Worker? That's insane. How can anyone expect learning to go on in any productive way in a school where hundreds of traumatized kids are trying to co-exist and there's nobody with the professional expertise to help them? What does a kid do if his best friend is killed on a day when the Social Worker isn't there?

Those are just the things someone who hasn't taught in a city school would think of. I taught in a New York City school for a year and a half. If someone had given me $10k back then, the first things I would have bought were paper and a working copier. The school provided me with two reams of paper for the year. After that, I had to buy my own or rely on donations from parents. No paper, no copies. And everyone was always making copies with only 25 sheets in the copier, so it was always jammed. After that, I would have bought pre-sharpened pencils by the gross because the kids were always losing theirs. And then I would have bought a bed for the student who told me that he wanted a bed for Christmas because he was still sleeping in a toddler bed, even though he was in fourth grade and about 5 feet tall.

I know the hot thing now is the idea that Merit Pay will make all Teachers work harder. But if we've got the money, how about first making sure all the kids are eating, then making sure there are support staff in every school, then getting Teachers the supplies they need. The money that's left over can go to Merit Pay.

Ode to maps

I heard this interview with Simon Garfield on NPR this morning and it got me thinking about maps. Sure, I use Google Maps for directions most of the time, and have borrowed a GPS from time to time, but I actually prefer maps. When I use Google Maps for directions, I almost always study the map before I print the directions.

But I don't like maps primarily for any of the reasons Garfield mentioned. It's not because they're beautiful, although many are, and it's not because it connects me to the past or romance or anything like that. I just like to understand where I am in space, and maps help me to do that.

The few times I've used a GPS, I didn't like it much because although I got where I needed to be, I had no idea how I got there. I just did whatever the voice on the machine told me to. I found that really unsettling and almost unsafe. I like to be able to navigate so much that I actually appreciate when I get lost because then I'll find a new way to get around. I have spent time riding around my neighborhood on my bike, and that came in handy after Hurricane Sandy when roads were closed due to fallen trees and power lines, and I had to find detours to get home.

I just find maps useful. And I worry, a little, that the skill of reading maps is going to fall by the wayside. On the one hand, plotting a route on a map takes time, and it makes sense to use computers to take care of that task. Computers can also be updated regularly with traffic information, road closures, and other factors that determine which is the best route: information that you can't get from a print map. But I always worry just a little when a paper-based skill gets lost, because then we become reliant on computers, which is fine, until the power goes down.

There is real value in maps, and I was a little bit shocked to hear someone who wrote a book about the beauty of maps saying that what will be lost in our computer age is the beauty and romance of maps. Because I'm all for beauty and romance, but sometimes I just need to figure out whether it makes sense to get off the subway one stop early and walk.