THE MISSING HEART IN EDUCATION by Teri Pinney

Many things take place behind closed school doors...more than the public can imagine. As a high school assistant principal who aspired to be a principal, I unabashedly went along with policies and procedures that were put in place with one goal in mind---to push students' performance scores up on the state standardized tests.

I'm all for testing, when it's used to design learning strategies to help individual students. I'm definitely all for accountability, when we can capture areas that need instructional improvements. But when the ultimate goal is to simply boost test scores so that the school can look good, I have to draw the line.

Something is wrong when our gauge of success in education is based solely on test scores. And I think there's been too much focus on it. As a school administrator, I became more interested in a student's potential to do well on our standardized tests and a teacher's capability to bring that objective to fruition. It didn't matter if the student had talents in the non-tested areas (music, history, vocational studies, sports, etc.). It didn't matter if the teacher was making a valuable connection with a student who needed counseling.

It took me four years as a school administrator (I've been an educator over twenty years) to stop in my tracks and question what we were doing. We were penalizing students and teachers. We had created an oppressive environment demanding improvements, admonishing those who could not reach our goals, and worse---we were "leaving children behind".

When I came to my senses and realized that all of this was just not right, I made a public stand at a school board meeting and resigned. I could no longer condone what I had been required to do as a school administrator. We had lost the HEART in education---the caring and nurturing of each child to develop their individual potentials. The education moguls had become more interested in our world educational ranking, ignoring the fact that our country's population is more diverse than those countries who rank so high in reading and math. In my school alone, eleven languages were spoken by students. We were also located in a high poverty, high risk area with an inordinate amount of special needs students with emotional problems.

I wrote a book called "THE MISSING HEART: CHRONICLES OF AN EDUCATOR" (Amazon.com, XLibris.com, google, etc). It's a controversial story, but I think an inspiring one. From a young girl's dream of being a teacher to a 58 year old women who runs a high school as an assistant principal, I candidly reveal the challenges and victories along the way. I also reveal the unscrupulous practices which eventually led to my skepticism of the system.

I've decided to run for the school board. Perhaps I can bring about changes in this role, perhaps not. But I'd like to try. All proceeds from the sales of my book will go into my campaign treasury. I'll need it; I'm running against a strong incumbent who's been in office for over fifteen years.

My platform is full of ideas which I believe will bring about a much needed change. However, it primarily centers on bringing the joy of learning and the passion of teaching back to our schools. Let's stop the incessant categorizations of our children, our teachers, our schools, and our school districts. Let's bring the heart back into education.