"The function of a school is to work with our heart and soul and hands and brain" to deliver academically rigorous programs that help all children succeed, declared Lorraine Monroe. As she addressed the Opening General Session audience at ASCD's 53rd Annual Conference, she emphasized, "We are here to change lives."
Monroe, who directs the School Leadership Academy at the Center for Educational Leadership in New York City, believes that vision and service are at the heart of good teaching. "You will always move toward what you most believe. The vision you glorify in your mind, the ideal that you enthrone in your heart, this you will build your work by and become."
Making sure that all children benefit from this vision has been central to Monroe's work as a teacher, principal, and administrator. "I see the work as removing shadows, getting rid of the shadows of deficiencies and despair that children come to our schools with—particularly the shadows of academic deficiencies."
Monroe warned her audience that maintaining this vision requires educators to choose their friends wisely. As a middle school teacher in Harlem, she began to avoid the teachers' lounge because her colleagues' conversations consisted of complaints and excuses for why children were not learning.
"Understanding without giving academic understanding is some sort of incredible condescension. Sometimes it's racism and sometimes its laziness. But it demolishes children's chances of being successful."
Monroe said that children can tell what a teacher's vision is, and they also know whether they are considered poor or excellent students and "who sits in the golden circle and who sits in Siberia row" of the classroom. She asked the audience to consider how their work affects the least privileged in society and to ask themselves if their work helps these children move forward or pushes them further behind.
Instead of listening to colleagues who make excuses for why children don't learn, Monroe challenged the session attendees to "teach them. Use every single methodology that you ever heard of and then aquire new ones. Do whatever it takes. Our work is to keep asking ourselves, 'Why not?'"
If educators make their school a positive "alternative culture" to the destructive home environment some children come from—a culture that says, "We will teach you whether or not your folks love you, regardless of where you live, regardless of what language you speak at home"—then they will create a sterling school and turn out sterling children, Monroe said. Educators must tell their students, "When you are with us, you belong to us, and we will do everything and anything for you."
Monroe exhorted the audience to take advantage of the Conference to regain the passion that led them into teaching in the first place: to make a difference in children's lives. Once educators regain this, she said, they will find "passion and courage and will leave here dedicated to removing the shadows and to bringing light into the dark corners of children's lives."