after the bell

Mike Rose’s commentary in ED Week, “Grand Visions and Possible Lives,” reminded me of the importance of the day-to-day interactions teachers of all types have with students in public schools.  Rose visited public schools across the nation to find out what was actually happening, and characterized the essential learning moments as follows:

This sense of the possible came to me when a child learned to take another child seriously, to think something through with other children, to learn about perspective and the range of human experience and talent. It came when, over time, a child arrived at an understanding of number, or acquired skill in rendering an idea in written language. It came when a group of students crowded around a lab table trying to figure out why a predicted reaction fizzled. When a local event or regional dialect or familiar tall tale became a creative resource for visual art or spoken word. When a developing athlete planted the pole squarely in the box and vaulted skyward. When a student said that his teacher “coaxes our thinking along.” When a teacher, thinking back on it all, mused on the power of “watching your students at such an important time in their lives encounter the world.”

As pressure mounts to measure one small part of what is supposed to happen in school, i.e. discipline-specific learning, I think it is important to also see the other parts of teaching and learning, since these are often the parts that teach us to thrive in a diverse society and are actually remembered by young people into adulthood.  What do you think should be the focus of public schooling?  If you are new to teaching or are observing in a  classroom, what moments similar to the ones described by Rose are you seeing?  How do teachers navigate these parts of teaching?