In her essay, Ms. Yearwood argues that she chooses to teach in a district school because it lacks
So here's my question: why doesn't her school have those attributes of successful schooling? The easy answer is entropy. The universe, as we all know, tends towards disorder. This is the concept of entropy. So how does this relate to schools? Well, it's a lot harder to keep a school orderly than to keep it in disorder. But there are schools that establish order. So, how come it isn't possible at English High?
I am going to argue that the issue isn't teachers, administrators, kids or parents, in isolation. The problem is a lack of will to enforce order upon the school by the group working in collaboration.
Here's an imperfect metaphor - building an orderly school is like building a building with the following parts:
Administrators - architects
Teachers - contractors
Parents - suppliers
Students - building materials
Just as building materials will never assemble themselves without a contractor and architect, so too will students fail to learn without their teachers and administrators. This is the core tragedy of the battles between administrators and teachers in district schools. If architects and contractors aren't on the same page, there are bound to be a lot of wasted materials and a lot of structurally unsound buildings. The same is true if you swap administrators for architects, teachers for contractors and students for materials. I don't buy the fact that issue is the kids; rather the adults need to get their issues figured out if a school will be orderly. When the battles are over money, it's awfully hard to get the adults in the same room to figure out how to make the house get built even if the end goal is the same.
