The gym at Chief Kanim Middle School echoed with as much applause and cheering as a good game would have, but on Monday morning, Sept. 10, the crowd was cheering for a different kind of competition.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Randy Dorn, was explaining what makes education so powerful, and he was talking to a school full of kids and staff who already knew.
Chief Kanim Middle School was the top-scoring middle school in the state in many of the state Measurement of Student Progress (MSP) tests conducted last spring, and number one in seventh-grade reading, math and writing, and eighth-grade math and science. The school celebrated these milestones, along with scoring highest in eighth-grade science for the second year in a row, at Monday’s event.
“I hope you’re proud of yourselves,” said Superintendent Joel Aune, “because you should be.”
Dorn congratulated the school on its accomplishment, and for “getting focused on education,” because “The more education you have, the more choices you have.”
He described how education has changed dramatically, too. “Teachers today are here to coach you, not to school you,” he said.
American education, especially, offers students opportunities to grow. Dorn talked briefly about a trip he made to South Korea to talk about American education, which, he was told, “is creative education.”
South Korean schools are like the game show “Jeopardy” Dorn said, because “Jeopardy is getting one answer, and getting it correct.” American education is more like “Survivor,” he said, “because you have to work with other people, you have to look what’s going on, you have to take in the whole environment, and you have to creatively compete.”
