"What High School Can Be" by Theodore Sizer

From the title of this reading you would think that they are going to tell you what a perfect high school would be like. They didn't do this because like Sizer said there is no such thing as a perfect high school. Each school has different students, different community, and in a different environment. There is no way every single high school can be exactly the same and meet the needs of every single one their students. The only similarity they need to have is that they should try their best to help their students be successful. I always see it as educating our future, this is the generation that is going to be taking care of when we can't take care of ourselves anymore.

I absolutely loved the two stories about the different high schools. It showed two very different sides of  how secondary education is perceived. The story of the high school all star is something that I can see definitely happening and probably happened in my high school. People don't bother a good athlete with academics because they already have their ticket into college. As long as they're not a disturbance and get enough work done they can just sit there and look pretty. The girl in the urban school system who is on her fifth year but has realized that she needs to get work done is another scenario that is common in my high school. It talked about blaming the teachers for not getting the students involved and not having that student teacher relationship that's necessary. Its not always the teachers fault, many do what they can with what they are given.

When Sizer said that administration and policy makers have no clue what adolescence are going through, I couldn't help but agree. This is something that I have been learning since I have been learning about education and building my future as a teacher. These people are making are all the rules but keep messing up because they have no clue what the children seriously need, all they know are statistics. Sizer was able to come up with nine common principles of the coalition of essential schools because he went and shadowed students so he know first hand what students need. All nine of these principles are very important and if they could be implemented in a way that fits the school our high schools would be top notch. I especially loved the one where he talks about the tone of the school. People would normally look right over this but environment and how the students feel totally correlates with how well they do. It has been psychologically proven that you have to feel safe before you can do anything else whether its build a relationship, learn something new, or just grow as a person.