By Tom

I teach fourth grade, which means that my students will turn
ten at some point in the next eleven months. There’s something special about
being ten. In a lot of ways, people are more confident and self-assured at age
ten than they’ll be in a long time, if not forever. When you’re ten, you’ve pretty
much mastered childhood. In another year or so, you’ll be in the throes of The
Awkward Years, and then its adolescence, from where there’s no return. Ten year
olds know a lot, but it’s what they don’t know that makes them so fun to be
around.

CSTP is also turning ten. Like my students, CSTP came along
at a time when those of us in education were getting blindsided by the
stupidity that was NCLB, a misguided law that blamed schools for everything
wrong with education. It was the beginning as the great data bath that has consumed
education for a decade. Then came the current administration, which refined the
blame game by targeting individual teachers, touting overbearing evaluation systems
as the silverest bullet.

As this mess has played out in Washington State, CSTP has
played the role of the adult child in the room, reminding the children
adults that you don’t get anywhere by pointing fingers. You get somewhere by
empowering teachers; by helping them help each other become better. You get somewhere
by encouraging teachers to collaborate and by helping them find a voice and
tell their story.

Like my students, CSTP is young; young enough not to have a
vested interest in the battles that consume so many school reform and
anti-school reform stakeholders. And like my students, CSTP has a long,
promising life ahead of it.

Because I honestly believe we’re at the cusp of something
huge. And I truly think that organizations like CSTP are uniquely poised to
take us there. I think that soon we’ll see a great coming-together of all the disparate
fragments in education. Advances in neuroscience and learning theory will
converge with increased private and public funding and the realization that
every cog in the system is important; every parent, every teacher, every
principal, every lawmaker, every venture capitalist, and – most importantly –
every student. We’ll stop blaming schools and teachers for our shortcomings and
instead of blaming someone new, we’ll realize we can actually solve our
problems by working together. And organizations like CSTP, which have always
had that attitude, will become the drivers of this new spirit of cooperation.

Or maybe I’m just being overly optimistic. Which is what you
get from being around ten-year-olds all day.