What Have You Enjoyed Learning This Week

Saturday and I am about to start to work on the 2nd bimester exam after 2 hours of girls' basketball coaching. I was thinking this morning that there are only about 22 weeks of school left. I'm feeling a little sad about the approaching end. My wife and I were talking this morning about volunteering at a bi-lingual school in Ecuador when this school year and part 1 of retirement (Part 1 = Making Sure the Budget Works) are over
The internet news is full of the Republican victories in the elections and Center for Ed Reform is sending out messages of delight at the election of pro-charter and choice governors. My British wife asked what does it mean that the House is now one party and the Senate another. I answered, "It means that nothing really positive will be accomplished, but each party can now blame the other.Which is pretty much the way it was before"
On the school choice matter - as far as I can tell the choices still remain limited to academically-oriented, standardized-test-measured-for-meeting-standards" based education options. It becomes in many cases a matter of which school has finagled its admissions processes or testing procedures to create the illusion that the students are "achieving". When I say finagled, I also include private schools that have tuitions that ensure a student base from families that are academically and financially successful. As  a teacher myself I certainly don't want to dismiss the value of a good teacher, but there are a lot of us in all kinds of schools. We only have the students for something like 14% of the their waking hours and they retain at best 20% of what we imparted in a school year. That % dimimishes quickly as time passes.
I wonder when true choice will arrive. When I was director of a school in Togo, Africa, we had one day a week where for half the day all the students in grades K-9  were split into teams. The teams then went to different activities together. One time I was walking through the school as one team was making batiks with the art teacher, the French teacher was making crepes, local musicians were working with a team to make a band (drums, bass, guitar, singers), the PE teacher had a team working on a jump rope routine, the computer teacher had a team working on a website, and a teacher was working on drama skills and a play. I know there are magnet schools of choice out there, but when I read about how schools are given "stars" (like in Louisiana) for performance on standardized tests and if they don't measure up they lose their charter, I question the concept of school choice. When I was at the school in Africa, I longed for my own children to be participating in a school like I was running. (I was divorced and their mother had them in school in Florida.) That was always one of my goals when I was the administrator of a school. Make it a school I would want my own children to attend, and one of the most important things I would want for my own children is that they discover a delight in the learning process. Sadly the standardized testing emphasis doesn't measure how much a child has developed an enjoyment of learning.
Someday perhaps we'll evolve to a real situation of choice where a school can say this is our mission, " The child will develop a love of learning." The powers at the Department of Education powers will come to the school not with a box full of tests and answer sheets, but a question or two like the following: What have you enjoyed learning this week and why?  What are you looking forward to learning next week and why?
I am not so naive to believe that we can ignore basic skills, but a child who can write an articulate, thoughtful answer to the above questions possesses basic literacy and reasoning skills that indicate an sound education that was interested in developing a child who would find a productive place in society.