Learning For Al

Throughout the school we are currently renting space in, there appear these posters - directed towards whom, I’m still not sure. These posters have current education slogans and sayings on them. There is one in particular, posted just outside of the bathroom I ritually haunt, that is entitled "Learning For Al". Either it is a typo, or it is promotional piece outlining the school’s plan to educate Al - lucky him.

Under this (mis)leading title is the 4 critical questions as outlined by the Effective School’s Guru Richard DuFour:
1. What is it we want our students to learn?
2. How will we know when they have learned it?
3. How will we respond when they haven’t?
4. How will we respond when they have?

These questions have huge implications for our teaching, and many a staff meeting at my school was spent exploring how to successfully implement this philosophy. Truly we live this philosophy, it is embedded so deeply within our practice that our teaching pracitcally breathes it. We are entirely committed to student achievement: For God’s sake, our school motto is "Learning for All" - Al needs to look elsewhere for his personal plan of action.
My issue is this: do parents really care? Is this who these posters of self-congratulatory pomp is for? We know it - we live it. So what is with the posters?

I’ve long been thinking how deeply entrenched we are, as teachers, within our own little world. We spend many an hour congratulating ourselves for how hard we work, and how the public truly doesn’t get that. Yet we, as a profession, make little effort to bridge the gap of public perception. I’m thinking of how hard it is for parents to come in an volunteer at the school - they need to fill out a form, get a police criminal record check and participate in a short in service before stepping inside of the school - but not their son/daughter’s classroom. Apparently we fear the gossiping and spying that would occur.

We behave as a profession that have something to hide, yet make it so difficult to show the truly amazing things we do. Why do we post these posters of edu-speak, yet don’t show how we truly live this message?