EmailAbout Heidi
When I, Heidi Olson, graduated from college in 1972, I was certified to teach at both the secondary and elementary levels. I got a job teaching 6th grade in a small mountain town in Utah where they had just discovered oil. We started school in August and by December many of our normal class sizes had doubled, filling up with kids from the deep south whose Daddies had come to work on the oil rigs. In my class there was a huge range of educational backgrounds. My students' reading abilities, for example, ranged from non-readers through above 12th grade ability. Creating lessons in 6 or 7 subjects that answered the needs of each of my students was challenging. In fact, individualization was becoming the challenge for educators all over the country. We recognized that students have different learning styles, backgrounds, native abilities, and goals. This is a basic understanding for educators and students in the United States.Fast forward 10 years to 1982. My husband and I have six children and have moved our family to Spokane, Washington. Two more children are born in Spokane, and all eight of them attend Spokane Public Schools, the last one graduating in 2003. My children who want to attend college are well prepared in a variety of fields; the ones who want to graduate and get a job have a little harder time. I go back to school and get a Master's in Teaching degree with emphasis in teaching English as a Second Language. I teach immigrants at the Institute for Extended Learning, and I teach at the English Language Institute at EWU where my students are mostly Asians and Arabs whose goal is to attend college in the U.S. Here I see the results of educational systems that are NOT individualized, but rather have collective values, standards and goals. My students can memorize massive amounts of material, but they do not know how to form opinions, how to argue, or even SEE both sides of issues, or how to think critically. I come to appreciate the strengths of education in our individualistic culture: we learn to think critically and creatively. And I see some weaknesses: compared to my international students, we do not value or know how to achieve consensus, harmony, or agreement.
Presently, I am no longer teaching, but am serving the community in two capacities: as an operator on the First Call for Help crisis response line, and on a Neighborhood Accountability Board for the Juvenile Court. I work with kids who have been arrested for relatively minor offenses and who are often at high risk to drop out of school. Every one of them wants to get a job. I see a great need to connect the schools more closely to the business community and to better prepare those students who want to graduate high school and get a job. The schools are being pressured to adopt collective standards for all students. As we do this, we must not lose the strengths of our individualized approach which fosters creativity and critical thinking. We have to find ways to set collective standards, still maintain our individualistic strengths, and connect the schools more effectively to the business community. I would like to help us do this.