Ideas in education

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Are teachers just interchangeable widgets? I just lost my teaching assignment of teaching humanities to seniors for the stated reason that we should all be able to teach in any position. I guess this is better than last year. Last year I was told in the middle of the summer that I would be teaching tenth grade. On the first day of school I was told I was teaching twelfth grade after all. Some teachers found out what they were teaching a class they had never taught before. They found out on the first day of school. The students are the ultimate victims of the widget philosophy.

Being a good teacher requires a tremendous amount of thought and design in preparation for the school year; on average I spend a couple of hundred hours even on the classes I have taught for years. In order for the material to be compelling to your students it has to be fresh and compelling for you.

The beginning of the year has its own significant requirements for preparation. Every day you are getting feedback from your new students. Their individuality combined with the chemistry of each class has an enormous effect on your ideas of what you are going to do the next day and every day.

The Widget Effect by The New Teacher Project takes a critical look at how we view and value our teachers. It is their view that, "a culture of indifference about the quality of instruction in each classroom dominates". I find this to be true.

They postulate that, "If districts could systematically identify which teachers perform at the highest level, they could use this information to inform teaching assignments, target teachers for teacher leader positions, and prioritize the retention of these teachers." I wish it were so easy.

The authors move from "If districts could systematically identify" to "yes districts can systematically identify." This is a huge leap and one that neglects the very real problems that make education such a messy business. In 30 years of running a company I became very dependent on having a systematic approach to product quality and customer satisfaction. Applying good business management practice will certainly reap improvements, but the run-it-as-a-business approach has already become part of the underlying problems.

One example is the mission statement / shared vision / team approach to education promulgated by advisers based in business culture. Being on board is viewed as an indication of being a good teacher. Questioning the 'vision' is seen as detrimental to school culture.

It is thought that teachers can be objectively evaluated using "performance standards based upon student achievement outcomes" and to a certain extent this is probably true. But we have created an industry that produces these standards measures externally from the classroom and another whole industry that creates products to help you meet those standards. It all becomes very self-referential and removed from the classroom and its students.

Additionally we have the political dimension. Opinion leaders identify problems and schools try to address them. A "good" high school, for example is one in which students pass the standardized tests and graduate. A mayor or other official may expand the definition, perhaps instituting a plan in which the number of AP offerings must be increased by some percentage in a district.

While on the face of it all of these ideas have some merit, as they become intertwined with the definition of a good teacher, we move further, not closer, to understanding and recognizing good teaching and good education. A "good" teacher agrees with the vision and happily consumes the products and lingo of the publishers, consultants and Ed. schools. A "good" teacher defines student expectations in line with the what makes the school look good and successful.

Systematic identification of good teaching is far from a foregone conclusion in the real world of education. The very forces who say they would like to see it are often working against its realization. The externally influenced definitions of what good teaching is may have little to do with what it actually is. The Boston Teacher Residency teaches these external measures to its new teachers. Teachers attempt to comply, teaching the the script that they are given at the pace that is approved. They are immunized, cleared of responsibility for their students by their compliance with the strategies and standards. Their superiors are trained in the same vein by the Boston Principal Fellowship Program. The Ed. schools produce these programs in collaboration with Harvard Business School and they are implemented by NGO consultants with an interest of wresting education from the grip of the evil teachers' unions.

The New Teachers Project oversimplifies the issue of why there are bad teachers. "The contours of this debate are well-known. One side claims that teacher tenure and due process protections render dismissal a practical impossibility; shielding ineffective teachers from removal in all but the most egregious instances. The other argues that the process provides only minimal protection against arbitrary or discriminatory dismissal, but that administrators fail to document poor performance adequately and refuse to provide struggling teachers with sufficient support."

The report has collected some interesting data. It states,"47 percent of teachers report not having participated in a single informal conversation with their administrator over the last year about improving aspects of their instructional performance". With all of the external forces acting on the administrators, I am not sure that they are even capable of having that conversation.

A more important conversation needs to happen and it needs to happen as the normal course of business. If the administration wants to support good teaching than it has to know what is going on in the classroom so that they are able to bring their considerable influence to bear in helping to make a case for that specific education to students they see in the halls and to motivate those students and keep them motivated. They cannot rely on platitudes.

My students don't buy platitudes. They have been burned by them before, left high and dry while the rest of the world sails into an optimistic future. Part of being a good teacher is the ability to help students understand and define their own educational challenges, set personal goals and see them as attainable. A good administrator elicits those goals and reinforces them.

When I ran a construction site I made certain to see what 30 or 40 workers on a building site (of say 14 houses) were doing every day. I talked to each of the workers about how the job was going, was there anything in your way, did you see any problems. I did that and I ran a carpentry crew, working with the tools for 6 hour each day. It was a management style that worked, we produced good housing and we all made a good living.

A school like mine (~300 students, 20 teachers) needs a leader who is involved in the education that is going on in the building. That involvement requires commitment, time and effort. It should not be delegated. Ask your teachers individually, every day: What are your current challenges? What are you thinking of doing to address them? Elicit ideas and contribute your own. Spend time in the classrooms to see how the ideas you toss around with your teachers are working out then catch up with them in the hall between classes and compare notes; judge together what works. It will be huge benefit to students. Students respond positively to an adult in the room. They are pleasantly surprised when someone knows what they are working on. It makes their work more important to them. All of this should become the core job definition. Avoid the bureaucracy, do what you have to quick and dirty, ignore what you can.

My school spans parts of 3 floors. I have seen my headmaster on my floor 3 times this year. She was never in my classroom in spite of my open invitation. There are 2 other headmasters and another 4 or 5 people fulfilling administrative functions. Administrators define their job as protecting the students from the teachers. I worked for a city bureaucracy too and it wasn't as big but the Dept of Neighborhood Development was just ineffectual and distracting from the real job of building houses as BPS and its consultants are distracting to the real work of education.

chronically low-performing teachers languish, and the wide majority of teachers performing at moderate levels do not get the differentiated support and development they need to improve as professionals".

I was in the Boston Public Schools schools for 13*3 years as a parent. Involved parents got good at finding out who the good teachers were. We wanted our kids to have those teachers and wanted administrators who would stay out of their way. That was the best we thought we could get. Clearly that isn't enough. Supporting good teaching needs to be reformulated from the top down. You don't bring out the best in people with

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• http://www.aft.org/innovate/index.htm

http://www.tntp.org/newsandpress/060109_TNTP.html

"On education, we will expand exchange programs, and increase scholarships, like the one that brought my father to America, while encouraging more Americans to study in Muslim communities. And we will match promising Muslim students with internships in America; invest in on-line learning for teachers and children around the world; and create a new online network, so a teenager in Kansas can communicate instantly with a teenager in Cairo.

On economic development, we will create a new corps of business volunteers to partner with counterparts in Muslim-majority countries. And I will host a Summit on Entrepreneurship this year to identify how we can deepen ties between business leaders, foundations and social entrepreneurs in the United States and Muslim communities around the world." - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/04/obama-egypt-speech-video_n_211216.html