02/19/2023
Cooper : You're ruling my son out for college now? The kid's fifteen.
Principal : Tom's score simply isn't high enough.
Cooper : What's your waistline? 32? With, what, a 33 inseam?
Principal : I'm not sure I see what you're getting at.
Cooper : You're telling me it takes two numbers to measure your own ass but only one to measure my son's future?
I've never seen interstellar before today, but I saw this quote on a tik tok, and I immediately was like, ok, let's watch it. It's such an amazing movie. It's incredibly beautiful, to the point it's brought me to tears.
As a person who works in education, this one quote messed me up. I remember when I started in education I noticed, because literally no one helps in education, that there were little indicators next to student's names. I decided to press one, and it tells you if the student has any health alerts, or allergy alerts. There is also a red button that says "At risk of not graduating." The first time I read that, I asked aloud, "according to whom?"
It was a very dark time for me, this moment when I realized someone was making up their minds about us without really knowing us. I mean, how much time do students really spend in a counselors office? Yet, they get to decide according to some test results or a few chance interactions who has the potential to be successful and who doesn't? I started going through all alerts. It's worth noting that my first access to this was not as a teacher, but a case manager, so I was kept out of the loop from things like 504s or IEPs. I do believe things have changed, but for my position, I was given very little direct access to student information. Basically, grades, name and address, and these little alerts.
I have since become a teacher, and through trainings and a lot of hallway conversations, I've learned so much more than I knew when I started, but the one thing I can't grasp, no matter how many people try to justify their explanations to me, is where someone gets off deciding what a person is capable of. 2 numbers to determine how much is needed to cover a butt, but only one to determine a kids future? We need reform. We need it now. I can only hope we get it soon.
