Class of 1980 -- Let’s Make Los Alamos a Healthier Place to Learn

My 35^th high school reunion approaches, and I have been thinking a lot about it. This seems strange to me, thinking so much about this reunion. Those classmates who are organizing it are posting great links and memories of our growing up in Los Alamos. I believe that is what has sparked all this thinking on my part but who needs to be thinking so much on a lazy Sunday morning?

Even way back then, I knew the Los Alamos High School Class of 1980 was a special one. When I look back as an educator, I truly think that we were a class that represented the Golden Age of Education at LAHS. We left for college, jobs, whatever, with a good education under our belts. We were shaped deeply by our experiences at LAHS, not all in a good way, however.

Even in our awesome graduating class, even back then, there were disenfranchised students, those who struggled. They, too, were shaped by LAHS, but in bad ways that the community of Los Alamos never recognizes because as a community, it only recognizes the positive – all the students who do well on standardized tests, basically – and ignores the negative – all the students who bring the test scores down.

I never once thought that other students from LAHS had serious self-esteem issues because they felt they were not smart enough for LAPS and the community. Thirty years after graduation, I met with an old classmate and found out that she is one of those disenfranchised students and that to this day, the message she got from that school negatively affects her life.

For the first ten years after high school, I proudly announced that I was a child of Los Alamos and that I got an incredible education growing up there. But now, after years of working with struggling students and their parents in that town, I do not announce that fact.

There is so much the Los Alamos school district could do as part of the state to combat the disenfranchisement of struggling students but I have approached them before to partner to help these kids. One of my GED classes even met with the school board and they felt like they were heard but turns out, they weren’t. I was told later that the schools would in no way support my program -- just the opposite of other communities we served, like Bernalillo, where the principal of the high school allowed us to use their computer labs and classrooms for our evening classes, free of charge. Their district newsletter promoted our classes. They were very much about helping the disenfranchised student learn and get on with their lives. LAPS needs to realize that they are here to help our kids move forward in life and that it’s about learning, not education.  

Back to the point – the class of 1980 was education-minded back then. We understood the importance of learning and most of us “survived” LAHS and even the disenfranchised admit they learned. We knew that we had an edge in the world.

I think we still have that spirit but I hope that, like me, everyone has come to realize that the educational system has changed, that the way we learned was successful for most of us because we were brought up to learn that way but it isn’t the same today.

We have to look at the struggling students, especially in Los Alamos, where the struggling students are stigmatized rather than supported. They have to deal with the shame of not being “smart” enough, and their parents often feel they are to blame in some way. They never once think that maybe the Los Alamos schools could do a better job reaching out to those struggling students.

We have to teach differently in a world where we really don’t know what to expect as far as jobs go. We have to admit that college may not be a good way to get a job anymore. Technology and the Internet have changed it all. We have to focus on learning, not political education systems. We need to understand and act on the fact that learning is not a competition.

So LAHS Class of 1980, let’s celebrate the awesomeness that we were back then but let’s harness that positive energy and good thoughts and apply them toward making Los Alamos a good place for every kid to grow up, not just the ones who know how to do school the outdated Los Alamos way.

                    

Let’s pull Los Alamos off its self-imposed hilltop castle and include it in the efforts of other NM school districts that are doing great things to address the needs of struggling learners. Let’s make it about learning toward a better life, not toward a better test score.