Schooling in the UK

Interview with Caroline Kuntz, Education Professional

What was your education like growing up?

I really loved being a student. I really love the classroom and I think the brain is a social organ. When I look back at my education as a kid, I had a really great social environment; I really trusted my teachers, I trusted my friends and thus I really enjoyed learning and being in school. But I also think a lot about the learning I did at home. My dad was an engineer - he was nuts about airplanes. And so I spent a lot of time building model airplanes with him. He worked with me on my science projects and I learned a lot through that - learning by doing. I think a lot of my learning experiences, that really stayed with me, were with him and kind of the small environment, hands-on and, again, that social component that we were kind of learning and creating together.

I moved to England when I was 14 for my freshman year of high school. And what I loved about the system is, they go for quality versus quantity.

It was very hands-on and very small classrooms and I loved it. I grew to love the sciences and especially I think, as a girl coming into high school, that curriculum can sometimes feel foreign.

I think that's why those teacher-student relationships need to be strong because I think once you get to know someone well you can see their strengths, I don’t think there’s a way that you couldn't. I think it’s really important for teachers to get to know their students as well.

There was no creative writing whatsoever. I definitely missed taking English but I didn't want to take English in England because I just didn't like the way I felt when I was in that class; it was very constraining.

I will say though, in the defense of the British system, that I don't necessarily know how important it is to formulate essays that they really emphasize in America, like this paragraph essay. We spent so many years having kids knowing how to analyze literature and analyze it in essays and I don't know that, as America, we need citizens who can do that.

And so, you know I aimed high and I got into Stanford and I was so excited to go back to the States where I could write again and maybe do some theatre and check out some literature and stuff. And I also missed kind of the diversity of the U.S.

And yeah, Stanford was a lot - just people believing in you and happy people, happy people and then also happy to be around you, and that is great, not just for learning, but just for living. Right, just being in an environment of positivity and respect and happiness and fun, and at the same time also being ready to put in the work and the work for the sake of the work. Not necessarily for rewards per se but, yeah I think that at Stanford there's a lot of people who just really loved, who valued, working hard and lots of different talents and skills and experiences and that was really fantastic.

What drew you to education?

I went to a talk given by one of the deans at the School of Ed and she talked about education and all those other things that I’m really passionate about like, the history of education in America and issues of equity - racial equity, gender equity and class equity and I was just like "this is so important" and I'm really interested in this and I think I have a lot maybe to bring to this field. And I remember she also said that the field of education was a good career field because you can do a lot of things in the field of education and there's a lot of room for growth. It was something that clicked for me, especially at the time when I had no idea what I wanted to do for a career.

I think men and women imagine their careers differently, and maybe it was just me that I thought that maybe someday I was going to have kids and I would wanna be a mom. I want to be available to my kids and so I thought that teaching would fit well with being a parent.

I think, a side of me also considered how can we allow our workforce to also be good parents and so, I thought this field is great and this School of Ed at Stanford sounds wonderful and is really in line with what I value. I felt like I had this talent and skill set that would really do well in the classroom. I like people and I feel like I can talk to people and it's easy to develop empathy. I could walk into a classroom and command the room and have confidence standing up in front of students and getting them excited about something, but also being ready to work one-on-one with students and doing that well too.

I just felt like I had more to offer this world as an educator. I wanted to give students what I had when I was young, you know those moments with my dad learning about electromagnetic motors, or even later in high school when my teachers really complimented me or validated me or had me work hard and then recognized that hard work.

Right now I continue to work one-on-one with students, and I really, really enjoy it, especially as someone who really loved the sciences for a long time, and now I get to support students not only as an English teacher but also as someone who really enjoyed the sciences.

Also I think it's great that I help students who don't necessarily feel confident in science and I had that experience myself. I think if you stay present, your path will end up where it needs to be.

What do you think the purpose of education is?

Well, I think as an adult, especially right now, with politics being in the news a lot, I think the country is really divided. I think Trump's administration is making us really think about our democracy and also think about our economy, think about our role in the world, and our national security.  Whether you agree or disagree with him he's prompting us to think. It makes me really think about this whole experiment of democracy and that we need an educated public - an educated public to make decisions and also an educated public to sustain our economy and we have to think about the skills that we want, not only our workforce to have, but also our citizens to have, that those are the same people.

Recently I've been thinking about education in terms of that, as having citizens and as having a skilled workforce. And I don’t know to what extent our school system is really doing that. I haven't studied it extensively but I have suspicion that it's still pretty much the Victorian model and we don't need Victorian workers anymore, and I don't know that it's changed much, so I think we need citizens, we need skilled people.

If you could change one thing about our education system, what would that be?

I think smaller classrooms and highly picked teachers. For example the Teach for America program, and it’s kind of successful because you have young people coming out of college who have been teaching a couple years, and you wouldn't say that about many other professions. People don't say about being a doctor, or being a police officer, "Oh I'm gonna come out of school and just be a police officer for a couple years, I'm gonna be a doctor for a couple years, and then go do my real job".

I think that's because people don't see teaching, I think a significant percentage of the population don't see teaching as a real career, right? It might be for financial reasons that they have some financial goals and they want to provide for their family, they want to be able to live in a certain place and realistically that’s savvy. They realize that they won't be able to do that on a teacher salary.

I don't think necessarily people should go into teaching for the money but I do think you're ruling out a lot of people by not paying them enough. I work with students one-on-one, I hear them sometimes talk about their teacher, and I hear parents talk about their teachers, and I don't think there's just a lot of respect in general in our society for teachers and I think that it has an impact, I couldn't see how that couldn't have an impact.

So I think, with the pay, things would change. And it's a bit of a chicken and the egg thing but I think we need to invest more, whether it's dollars or something else. I think we really, really need to invest more in the teachers, in the people who are in those classrooms. And then, I think the social aspect of learning is so important and I think it gets really really lost and undervalued and I think those smaller learning communities would really really help.

What projects are you working on?

My husband has a video production company and we really wanna make education videos and have them available online, and to try to do it in such a way that it is fun and engaging. My husband was not the student that I was, he barely graduated high school. In fact, I think he had to convince someone to change a pass-fail class into a graded class so that he could actually meet the graduation requirements for his diploma. He just felt like school wasn't, engaging. He had a lot of skills, he loved learning, he still loves learning, but, just high school didn't do it for him.

So I think that between the two of us, we're really excited about trying to use videos as a medium to not just really only present the concepts, because I think a lot of people are doing that online - they're just presenting the information, you can google anything right now - but to present it in such a way that learning is really happening. That's the challenge because if you're presenting content online it isn't really that social component I was talking about so how do we overcome that? So he's very talented and we're both really passionate about that and I hope we'll be able to do that.

Our company is called "Grand Productions" and our website is www.grandproductions.com.

Caroline Kuntz

Graham Productions

Music: www.bensound.com