Carey Dillinger, January, 1995
The Daily Commercial
Time spent teaching in the ultimate classroom was the best of times. In almost every respect, it was the most rewarding experience of 19 plus years teaching in the Lake County school system. The room set aside for this class was wonderfully appointed. Imagine this, a self contained classroom, with water fountains and its own restroom facilities; and the main teaching area had dimensions of over 100 feet by 50 feet.
The students for this class were hand picked by administering a teacher made diagnostic test. No student was forced to take the course and could drop out at any time during the term if they or their parents decided the class was not for them. The teacher also had the prerogative to dismiss students from the class with little or no interference from the administration.
The class was untraditional in many other respects.
The school district provided transportation for ten field trips per term, many out of the county. For certain special trips, the school even picked up the tab for meals.
In Lake County, some of the high schools are trying block scheduling. This means the traditional six or seven period day is scrapped for a three period day with longer classes meeting on alternate days. It's really nothing new, the ultimate classroom has always had block scheduling. In the teaching situation being described, the number of class meetings per week was left to the discretion of the instructor. Sometimes the class met for as long as three hours, other times for as little as 30 minutes. Some weeks the class met six times (yes, even on Saturdays and holidays), other weeks, usually near the end of the term, only three times. Speaking of the "term", it ran approximately 16 weeks, usually from mid-November to late February.
Have you read that many of the inner city schools are beginning to experiment with having the students wear uniforms to class? We've had them for years. Other schools are examining the efficacy of the single-sex classroom, that is, a class with boys only or girls only. Based on my eight years in the ultimate classroom, I can tell you that this can be a great idea. I never had a class during that time that was not of the single-sex variety.
Grading in this situation was not done on the traditional A,B,C,D,F system, but was based on teacher observation of practice in the classroom and a series of statistics kept on each student during weekly contests against classes from other schools. At the end of each term, students were awarded medals, ribbons, letters, certificates or trophies celebrating their achievement. On the other hand, punishment for rule infractions was swift and to the point. Physical punishment, such as running or calisthenics, was used extensively and permitted by the administration and parents as a viable alternative to dismissal from the class.
Schools today spend quite a bit of time and energy trying to get parents involved. In the ultimate classroom this was not a problem. The problem was trying to keep the parents from becoming too involved, even to the point of telling the teacher how to do his job or even calling for the teacher"s dismissal. Some parents became so involved that they had to be asked to be quiet during the student contests. Some were even banned from visiting the classroom, and were required to remain outside until class was over.
Doesn't this sound too good to be true? If you were a teacher, wouldn't you love to find yourself in a situation comparable to this one? There are a few drawbacks. In addition to teaching in the ultimate classroom you will be required to teach five classes in the traditional setting. Your building administrator will expect you to devote most of your time and energy to your traditional classes and make time before or after school for the ultimate one. During my last year in the ultimate classroom the school system saw fit to pay me $1,200. When I added up my hours spent preparing for the term, teaching the term, and working with the students between terms, it came out to about $1.75 per hour. I was paid this awesome amount because I had seven years experience.
Does the ultimate classroom sound like a place you parents would want your students to be? It obviously is, because the parent organizations formed to support the ultimate classroom have more card carrying members (including folks that aren't even parents), raise tons more money, and provide more state of the art facilities for it, than organizations formed to support the traditional classroom.
In my case, the ultimate classroom was the Ray M. Hayes Memorial Gymnasium located on the Leesburg High School campus. The class I taught was J.V. Boy's Basketball.
The old cliche says, "Those that can - do, those that can't - teach!" I heard this addendum in a teacher's meeting one afternoon: "those that can't teach - coach." While this entire saying is a glib generalization, the addendum stings a little deeper because a fellow teacher said it. A good coach must be an excellent teacher and an excellent coach is a superlative teacher. Believe it! However, it is a sad fact that some of my coaching brethren (and "sistern") do not bring their teaching expertise into the traditional classroom, but instead waste the student's time showing game films, arranging schedules and drawing up plays. Others find themselves frustrated in the traditional classroom due to its inherent limitations. That is, once you've taught in the ultimate classroom, it's hard to stomach the drawbacks imposed during the regular school day.
It is imperative that school systems and communities work together to provide the traditional classroom teachers with some of the "goodies" that make coaching athletics the ultimate teaching and learning experience.
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