Another day, another gloom and doom headline about MPS. Visceral comments on the various local message boards deriding the union, the administration and the parents of the students are sure to follow.
As I write this, the playground of the MPS elementary school across the street from my house is full of kids, parents and even a few dogs enjoying the unseasonably warm weather. On the rare day when I’m home and MPS is in session, I love seeing the little guys out there for recess.
From the outside, it’s not a pretty building, and unlike the lush setting of Wauwatosa’s nearby Eisenhower Elementary School, it boasts barely a hint of green space. The colorful new playground equipment that was installed a few years ago provides the only break in the monochromatic vista.
Well, of course it’s a dismal and depressing place, right? After all, it’s an MPS school.
Step inside.
The school is also my polling place, so I get to see its inner workings several times a year when I vote. As soon as I go in, the stark appearance of the school from the outside gives way to bright hallways, adorable little kids and that distinctly elementary school smell best described as an odd blend of tempera paint, peanut butter and old socks. Student work adorns the hallways, and the fresh faces of the kids and parents selling cookies to raise money for the PTA always bring a smile to my face.
I’ll admit that my experience with MPS is limited. I did my preliminary fieldwork at South Division and part of my student teaching at what is now the Milwaukee School of Languages. And yet, nearly 20 years later, the root challenges that the students and teachers faced then – poverty, apathy, the decline of the family unit – are almost the same as they are today, even if how the challenges manifest themselves has changed. And the words of one of my cooperating teachers still ring true: “MPS is very top heavy in administration.”
MPS has more than its share of real problems that demand real solutions. What gets me, though, is that a lot of people, many of whom have limited experience with public education, think they know exactly what will fix education in general and MPS in particular and are quick to point their fingers in blame.
This isn’t to suggest that outsider perspectives aren’t welcome; on the contrary, there’s definitely room for some completely different thinking. But these new ideas and suggestions need to be instituted with the guidance of those who have some experience in public education. I believe that this is necessary, not because I’m interested in maintaining the status quo, as some critics of teachers and their union might suggest, but because implementing new ideas successfully also requires some knowledge of how education works.
Would you trust your car to a mechanic whose only experience was riding in a car? Would you want your neighborhood protected by a police officer who had learned all he knew from “Law and Order”?
The children of MPS deserve more than to be treated as a political hot point. They deserve real solutions devoid of rhetoric. They deserve the kind of elementary school experience that I enjoyed.
And they deserve our attention now.
