Glassers The Quality School, while delicious food for thought, was sadly just an appetizer that left me hungrier than when I began. For the most part, it went down easily but caused some indigestion. Glasser gives practical advice about how to solve the two educational issues that teachers complain about- lack of motivation and lack of quality work. No human being is unmotivated. When we see unmotivated students, we are really seeing students who are not getting their basic needs fulfilled by their educational experience. Survival, love, power, fun or freedom are somehow being blocked. There is no basic need to do schoolwork. The whole premise is very logical and I found myself eagerly gulping it all down. Perhaps the most difficult morsel to swallow for a teacher who sees about 150 students every day is, We often try to control others but actually cant. So much of my energy is spent each day trying to make the curriculum Ive inherited something that my students will do. Most of the advice Ive gotten has been about techniques to control student behavior in the classroom. The attempt to control is very exhausting and unrewarding and now Glasser says, impossible. While Glassers explanations about how to achieve quality in our schools are so palatable, when I look for an avenue of change for my situation and my school, I see many roadblocks. Glasser himself lists the big ones. For real change to occur administration must be knowledgeable, supportive and participating in the change. Current administrators at my school are very much into punitive systems for keeping students under control. Also, Glasser emphasizes that in order to make the change successfully, teachers should participate in a training session of at least two weeks. How in the world do you get teachers, administrators, and school boards to agree to this? However, as I consider the improbability of all this, my basic need for power kicks in and I start looking at the possibilities again, and I realize that Im still undernourished. After I put on a placard that says FEED ME , I head to the library in search of Control Theory in the Classroom, Reality Therapy and something by Deming.

-- Anonymous, December 30, 1998