City School Stories

Reflections of an Author
Submitted by Frank Murphy, Dec. 23, 2010

Go to any school today and you will feel the excitement pulsing from the classrooms throughout the building. The children are ready to make a magical trip from school land to toyland to joyland. Their energy level is high. It feels electric. The winter break is about to begin and schools across the region are abuzz with anticipation. Today I miss being a principal.

What would I be up to on this day if I were still on the job? I would be attired in my holiday finery presiding over the festive assemblies of my school community. First the younger children in grades pre-k to grade 4 would participate in our holiday celebration. Then after they returned to their classrooms, the children in grades 5 to 8 would take their place.

During my tenure as principal of Meade school, assemblies were regular events in the weekly schedule. Professional musicians and dancers would perform for the children at various times throughout the year. We would host groups who presented mini-plays on healthy eating habits, fire safety, and character education. But by far my favorite gatherings were our bi-weekly literacy assemblies. This community meeting was a Meade School institution. It was a structured ritual that was part of the mortar that held our community together.

The Meade School literacy assembly was broken up into three distinct parts. First off a pre-selected classroom would give a performance. During the course of the year, every classroom was scheduled to perform at this event. There were a variety of formats that the teachers and children would use to make their presentations. The children might act out a favorite story. This was an audience favorite. The younger children would most typically recite a collection of familiar poems. Singing a special song was also a popular act.

After the classroom performance, our student musicians would perform a musical selection that they had been practicing in their music classes. We had a number of different ensembles that were part of our music program. They would all use this venue in order to acquire performance experience.

Finally I would close the show by reading aloud a story to the assembled group.

The literacy assembly that took place just before the winter break would include holiday music and themes. For my read aloud to the younger children, I used the book, The Night Before Christmas. At the second assembly, I would read The Grinch Who Stole Christmas to the children in grades 5 to 8. This was my favorite reading day of the whole school year.

When we first initiated these literacy assemblies, some of my staff expressed concern that the seventh and eighth grade students would be insulted by my reading a childish book to them. This turned out to be an inaccurate prediction. The older students were my best audience. The annual reading of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas was one of the more frequently sited memories in the eighth grade graduation class book. Children of all ages need regular meaningful enrichment activities in their school lives to develop their full potential and to feel a vital part of their learning community.

In my years as an educator, I have often noticed that the children of low resourced communities are frequently viewed as being so “in-deficit” educationally that they aren’t permitted the time for these kinds of activities that children of more affluent communities routinely experience in their school lives.

This mindset can currently best be seen in the test prep factories that some school reform leaders advocate. In Philadelphia, the Empowerment Schools are being turned into this type of mindless organization. In these institutions, the work of students and teachers are centered on activities that our current school leaders purport will raise student test scores. Teachers are expected to read scripts to their students for most of the day. The students are required to either listen to their teachers read aloud to them or to complete drill and skill instructional worksheets. In this school world, everyone is expected to hurry up and not waste time. Children are empty vessels that must be quickly filled with knowledge. In the race to increase test scores, only reading and math lessons are considered important. Assemblies, field trips, social studies and science lessons or any learning activities that will take the children “off the script” are deemed unnecessary and frivolous in these schools.

It is as though the Grinch himself is crawling his way through every room of Empowerment Schools as he steals away anything and everything that makes learning an enriching and joyful experience. This is a sad thing to do to school communities where the children are most in need of access to a wide variety of resource and experiences that will help them to develop not only academic proficiency but also social and emotional well being.

When I read The Grinch to my students, we all took joy in the ending of the story. We cheered when the Grinch’s heart grew six times larger and he saw the error of his plan to steal Christmas. I wish some day I can cheer with joy when the error of the instructional program being forced on Empowerment Schools is finally recognized and corrected. That will be the day I will really wish to be a principal once again.