How I Feel About The Current State Of Education (As A Teacher And Mom)
Last week, I waited for my 13-year-old daughter Lila outside her middle school, holding the half-eaten cranberry granola bar I’d grabbed from my own 4th grade classroom snack bin that morning. A group of 7th graders raced past me, yelling about the upcoming state standardized test, one boy complaining his teacher had canceled art and recess prep for three straight weeks to run practice drills. When Lila finally reached the car, she slouched into the passenger seat and dropped her backpack at my feet. “Ms. Henderson canceled the native plant garden project we’ve been planning since September,” she said. “Said we need all that class time for reading practice tests instead.”
I didn’t say anything at first, just turned the key and pulled onto the main road. That same week, my own admin had pulled me aside after class to remind me I was 20 minutes behind on my scheduled phonics block for the quarter. That 20 minutes had been spent letting Javi, a student of mine who reads three grade levels below benchmark, show the class the mason bee hotel he built with his grandpa over spring break. Javi can name every species of native bee found in our state, can tell you which flowers they prefer and how to tell a mason bee from a bumblebee just by looking at their backs. If I’d turned him away and stuck to my script, I would have hit my timeline, but I also would have missed the moment he realized his classmates actually cared about what he had to say.
A lot of people ask me how I feel about the state of education these days, usually right after they tell me it’s falling apart, or kids these days don’t learn anything the way they used to. I don’t think it’s falling apart, exactly. I think we’ve stacked it so full of checkboxes, metrics, and required benchmarks that we’ve squeezed out most of the small, unplanned moments that actually make kids want to learn. I’m not against standards or testing—we do need to know when a kid is struggling with reading or math, and we need to be able to give them extra help. But when the test becomes the entire point of going to school, we lose something that can’t be measured on a bubble sheet.
Last month, I asked my 4th graders to write down one thing they wish they got to do more of at school. Half of them wrote “projects that aren’t for a grade.” One girl wrote “talking about my dog.” Another boy wrote “looking for bugs in the playground instead of doing extra math worksheets.” It’s not that kids don’t want to learn—it’s that they don’t want to only learn things that are going to be graded on a test.
This sounds like a big problem that only policy makers can fix, and honestly, big change is slow. But there are small, low-effort things any parent or teacher can do right now to carve out space for that curiosity again, even when the system is pushing hard for test scores. For teachers, I started keeping a 15-minute “sharing slot” every Friday afternoon, right before we pack up to go home. It’s ungraded, no lesson plan required—kids can bring something they made, something they found, or talk about a hobby they love. It doesn’t eat into my required instructional time enough to throw off my whole quarter, and I’ve seen kids who never speak up in class get up and talk for 10 minutes straight about their Lego collections or their pet hamsters. For parents, the change is even smaller: When your kid walks out of school or sits down for dinner, don’t ask “what did you get on your latest test?” first. Ask “what was the most interesting thing you talked about today?” It shifts the whole focus of the conversation from grades to learning, and it only takes one extra sentence.
After Lila told me her garden project was canceled, we didn’t organize a protest or email the principal demanding they bring it back (though I did send a polite note noting that the project tied into state reading and science standards anyway). We just stopped at the dollar store on the way home, bought a $2 pack of native wildflower seeds and a small trowel, and cleared a 2×3 foot patch of weeds in the corner of our backyard. She drew a little map of where she was planting each type of seed, taped it to the fridge, and now she goes out to check for sprouts every morning before breakfast. It’s not a big school garden with a plaque and a student team, but it’s hers. It’s still hers, even after the school cut the project to make time for tests.
I’ve had people tell me that letting kids pursue their own interests this way means they’ll fall behind on the skills they need for college or work. But what I see is that curiosity builds skills, even when it doesn’t feel like it. Javi, my bee kid, started checking out every bee identification book he can get his hands on from the library this year. He wants to read them, so he practices, even when the words are hard. His reading score went up 16 percentile points this semester—more than any of the kids who just do the extra phonics worksheets I send home for extra practice. The skills came from the curiosity, not the other way around.
I won’t lie, some weeks are hard. I still have to cut short interesting conversations to get through my required lessons. I still worry that Lila is missing out on hands-on projects she loves because of test prep. Big changes to how we run schools feel far out of reach for most of us. But the small stuff adds up. This morning, I found Javi’s latest bee photo taped to my classroom desk, a picture of a blueberry bee he took in his grandma’s yard over the weekend. When I walked out to get the mail after school, Lila was kneeling by our tiny patch, pointing out the first tiny green sprout to our neighbor. It’s not a perfect system. There’s a lot that still needs to change. But for now, these small moments are where the real learning happens, anyway.
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