A while back I had a conversation with my dad about the state of education. With two daughters and a son-in-law in the field I’m sure he felt somewhat obligated to try to understand the nature of our work. “When did educating our children become so difficult?” he asked, perplexed that teachers were up against such a challenging task.

You see he remembers the days that when teachers spoke, students listened…or woe to them. Straight to the principal’s office it was to get the paddle, then face double the consequences at home.

In his day, students performed up to the standards, or were booted out, or dropped out. They either fit in or were shuffled off to “special” classes and were never heard from again.

A lot has changed since my dad’s day. Most of it is for the better. No longer do students bear the wrath of the principal’s paddle. Instead they get counseling, in-school suspension, or detention. No longer are students who have special needs lumped into some desert island of a class of misfits. They are integrated among those students who can model appropriate behavior. No longer are those who refuse to perform just dropped from the rolls. They are placed in special programs and given encouragement and the support they need to succeed.

Teachers receive special training on how to deal with students who have special needs. They modify lessons, apply special techniques, and offer tutorials. They develop reward programs, hand out stickers, praise, and words of encouragement. Often times individualized for each student in a classroom. Teachers have a difficult job today. No child can be left behind. It is each teacher’s sole responsibility to see to it that every child in her class is successful. The buck stops with her. No matter what baggage a child brings with him to the classroom.

In my 18 years of teaching I have had children who were abandoned by both parents, watched as a father was shot and murdered, experienced a police raid on their drug infested home, experienced first- hand the cruelty of physical or sexual abuse, left to raise themselves, responsible for raising younger siblings, born addicted to drugs, homeless, and sick. Still most of them managed to come to school. Many succeeded, some did not. But I often marveled at the child who somehow managed to come to school carrying a heavier load than most adults. I also marvel at the teachers who somehow, in a classroom of many, manage to have a positive impact on the students in their charge.

The schools of my father’s day do not exist because the children of his day no longer exist. Educating our children became more difficult when they came to school equipped with larger than life sized troubles. If you haven’t been in school in the last five years, you haven’t been to school.