I read with interest Gilroy High School student Chris Morsilli’s
column of May 24, wherein he related the saga of this year’s Day on
the Green. The column is well worth reading and may be viewed at
www.gilroydispatch.com.
I read with interest Gilroy High School student Chris Morsilli’s column of May 24, wherein he related the saga of this year’s Day on the Green. The column is well worth reading and may be viewed at www.gilroydispatch.com.
To recapitulate briefly, Day on the Green is a GHS end-of-the-school-year play day, involving activities such as throwing foam footballs and dunking assistant principal Mani Corzo in a dunk tank. I would enjoy the last mentioned activity myself.
This year, the GHS administration threatened to cancel Day on the Green unless 95 percent of the student body attended school during API testing. The goal was not met. After some of their customary dithering, the GHS administration reinstated this year’s Day on the Green.
Mr. Morsilli rightfully points out that the backpedaling demonstrates a certain lack of backbone on the part of GHS administration. I would add that the backpedaling destroys administration’s credibility, but the Day on the Green demonstrates the lack of commitment to academics typical of GUSD.
As I write, half of my math students are taking their finals: heads bent, pencils scratching. The other half took them yesterday, except for my own daughter, Anne, who took hers the day before yesterday because she needed to finish this year’s school work so she could go on a six-day Civil War re-enactment. Let me reiterate: she had to finish her school work before she could go on her field trip.
After this week, we take three glorious months off for summer. We will have some field trips, but the bulk of my kids’ instruction is racked up between Sept. 1 and May 31 every year. We usually accrue more than 200 instructional days, and I do mean instructional.
California public school students have, nominally, 180 days. That number includes teacher in-service days, where no student instruction takes place. It includes some terrific educational field trips, such as GUSD’s fourth grade excursion to Bonfante Gardens, and some educationally worthless “field trips” to Disneyland or Raging Waters.
More days are spent taking standardized tests, which are absolutely necessary to assess the learning and teaching, but which unfortunately further cut into instructional time.
So what, exactly, is the purpose of the Day on the Green? More specifically, does it serve the purpose of the school, to educate students, or is it yet another interruption of the educational process?
I understand the desire to celebrate. I even indulge it, to a limited extent: this year, I put candy out on the tables while my students took their finals. But the real celebration is the dizzying sense of relief when the final is over. The real celebration comes when the grade reports are opened with trembling hands. The real celebration comes when the graduate of algebra I is faced again with the graph of a line, and remembers what the slope and intercept are. Or when the algebra II student completes the square and graphs a parabola with insouciance, or the trig student blithely graphs a quotient of polynomials, showing all zeroes, poles, and holes. Competence – the root cause of self-esteem.
Anne’s English teacher is much better at celebrating that I am. She takes her advanced class out for coffee once a year, hosts a feast with costumes and period food and entertainment once a year, and holds a picnic at the end of the school year.
But the students discuss literature over their mochas and cappuccinos. The feast occurs in the evening, not during school hours, and emphasizes the year’s theme of American, British, or world literature. The picnic is held on the very last day of class, after the eight- to 10-page research papers are turned in. The celebrations punctuate the learning; they do not interrupt it.
The credibility of the GHS administration is an equally important issue. (I would say more important, except that there can be only one most important priority, and the most important priority in a school has to be education.)
If students are promised a treat, the treat must be delivered. It is best if a consequence is not threatened, but if a threat is made, the consequence must be carried out. Otherwise, the students cannot trust the administration.
