Teacher in a Strange Land

Best of Times, Worst of Times, and so on...

I get a real kick out the best-of  lists that pop up at the end of the year. This year, of course there's an extra bit of puffery: the First Decade of the New Millennium has passed into ignominy, so what is the great cosmic takeaway for educators?

Really? While there are transformative events and legislation, most real change in education feels sluggish, rather random and exceedingly difficult to analyze. Education policy thinkers tend to be Covey-esque in the upbeat, step-wise way they approach change: anticipate, arrange, administer and assess. That's the way we got No Child Left Behind, which was supposed to be the Grand Plan to identify inequities, raise and equalize standards (a word meaning different things to different stakeholders), harass teachers into somehow teaching better, and then test diligently to ensure accountability.

But-- no plan on such a scale succeeds unquestionably. NCLB may have changed the tenor of the conversation, but the Decade of No Child has now ended and--aside from Margaret Spellings--who wants to keep arguing about whether the results are marginally data-positive or proof that you can spend billions and not improve the worst troubles in any meaningful way?

I have been a teacher in four distinct decades, each with its own  policy slogans, public perceptions and real problems. We've been "at a turning point" more times than I can count. We have surfed the rising tide of mediocrity and been embarrassed by the soft bigotry of our low expectations.  But what has really changed in classrooms? What's the net impact on actual practice?

My--admittedly ultra-personal and non-scientific--impressions of Four Decades of American Education:

The Seventies: Got my first full-time, regular-paycheck teaching job in 1975--something of a miracle, as there was a teacher glut in Michigan. Was hired because the principal needed someone right away and we were on the same humor wavelength in the interview. Soon learned that there was no district curriculum for music or any other subjects. Chose my own teaching materials from catalogs--wasn't that a curriculum? Taught whatever and however I wanted--no content or instructional oversight and nothing resembling "professional development."

Heard "don't smile until Christmas" about 50 times from other teachers, sum total of any "mentoring" I got.  Saw teachers smack kids (still permitted by law)--and heard lots of lounge talk about chaos that would happen if the right to paddle was taken away. Was pink-slipped in Years Two, Three, Four and Six, and always called back--once because of a lawsuit, after registering for unemployment--all tied to precarious, locally voted school funding.

Gave statewide tests--the MEAPs, then a basic-skills check--but nobody considered them a big deal. Was happy that Jimmy Carter instituted a cabinet position for education--about time! Had a few friends who taught in Detroit--envied their superior facilities, resources and paychecks. Teaching seemed like a fulfilling, creative, autonomous profession. Most days, it was lots of fun.

The Eighties:  Economic downturn in the early 80s meant further pink-slipping and annual changes of building/teaching assignment necessitated by constant personnel shifts. Had daily loads of up to 400 students in two buildings and--since any certified MI teacher could teach any subject in grades 7 and 8-- a year of teaching math. All of this change was oddly invigorating, if exhausting. 

Finished a masters degree--in Gifted Education, one of a couple dozen au courant cafeteria-style ed specialties (Career Ed, Distance Learning, Women's Issues). Got serious about teaching. Read many books, took fake sick days to observe admired teachers. Sought leadership roles in Music Ed organizations. Downright hungry for professional conversations. None of this was required, encouraged or even noticed by the district, which did write its own curriculum benchmarks in the 80s; teachers called these "the black notebooks." Problem: not enough staff or resources to teach all the good things in the curriculum.

Reagan's release of "A Nation at Risk" interpreted by colleagues as rhetorical excess and unionized-teacher bashing, an imperialistic extension of right-wing momentum gained in the air traffic controllers' strike. Hoped it would blow over, but having to listen to Bill Bennett's nostalgic morality lessons most discouraging. Still giving the MEAPs, which got harder in the 80s. Took leadership roles in the union--since they were the only teacher leadership roles available.

The Nineties: Decade opens with some optimism. Goals 2000 goals are kind of inane--first in the world in math and science?--but there's the sense that policymakers are paying attention, and belief things can and should improve. Visit Detroit, shocked to see decayed and racially polarized schools--what happened in the last 15 years? Outstate Michigan residents--tired of seeing wealthy suburban schools funded at four times the rate of rural and urban-rust schools--pass a funding bill to get rid of property taxes as source, using sales tax instead. Outstate schools ecstatic as times are flush--auto industry will last forever! Got into an argument in the staff lunchroom defending teacher proficiency tests in Arkansas.

Real and substantive school improvement begins to impact daily practice. Standards everywhere. Benchmarks--and teacher committees to update, align, discuss. Required mentoring for new colleagues. Performance assessments, and portfolios of student work. Required professional learning (not blow-off in-service days). Further upgrades in the MEAPs, including hands-on tasks for kids, new constructivist tests for science, social studies and writing. Better assessments begin to drive instruction. New teacher hiring done by colleagues. Plus--fab new instructional toy arrives in classrooms: the computer, full of infinite possibilities for teaching and learning. Some teachers begin experimenting immediately; others are intimidated. 

Best Secretary of Education ever--Dick Riley--provides eight years of continuity of purpose and coherent policy. Education is still a local-control thing; Feds just there to ensure equity, promote innovation. National certification identifying accomplished teaching becomes reality. Next stop: real leadership roles for exemplary teachers, whose expertise will help policymakers solve problems. Nagging worry: all of this still takes money--and a growing number of poor kids are still completely underserved.

The Naughts: A slow U-turn in policy and conventional wisdom. We're not gradually improving, after all--in fact, we're an international educational joke--and all public schools (not just poor/urban schools) are bad. Decidedly awful--and the people who work and believe in them are intellectual dimbulbs who care only about their inflated salaries. How would they handle this in Singapore? China? India? We must compete!

Buzzword of the decade: data. Every person with a computer sees data analysis as the solution. In the lunchroom, colleagues express skepticism about the Texas Miracle even before it's exposed as just another Data Hustle. Some of the best teachers in the building discover they are not Highly Qualified. Meanwhile, the worst teachers in the building--genuine stinkers--look good under NCLB regs. We begin administering tests to third graders--and relinquish development of performance assessments that tell us real things about kids' writing, number sense, comprehension, familiarity with the scientific method. No time for that now--the data-driven race to the top has begun even before it's formally named.

Saw well-regarded suburban districts become defensive. Urban and rural districts, shamed. Teacher preparation institutions--even the good ones-- scorned. Paradox of the decade: We must have the smartest teachers! But should they bother studying the science of teaching? Or stay in the classroom for more than a couple of years? No. With data, we can replace teachers as often and as efficiently as we replace technologies.

Lately, it occurs to me: what a long strange trip it's been.

Happy New Year, teacher readers. Look for  the Teacher in a Strange Land to be truckin', come 2010.

Image: Hagerstern@Flickr Creative Commons

The Rusty Gate

My friend and fellow Michigan teacher, Cossondra George, recently asked:

Do teachers have a responsibility to be the gatekeepers of their profession? Can we settle for allowing our colleagues to give students less than they deserve?

Teachers ought to serve as gatekeepers for admission into the profession--and until that happens, we can't lay claim to being fully professional. I'm all for raising the bar for entrance to teaching (using better tools than SAT or Praxis scores), and investing more time, resources and research on effective teacher development.

In the meantime, however, we have teachers who are not doing the job well enough. Some of them should be gone--tomorrow; others have plenty of untapped potential but are floundering. No point in repairing the rusty gate granting access to teach unless we pay attention to supporting teachers once they're in the field.

Struggling teachers come in two basic flavors: #1) teachers who haven't had sufficient experience or training to do the job well and #2) teachers who once had the disposition and tools to be good teachers, but have checked out due to cynicism, fatigue, bitterness and unforgiving working conditions.

The first group is not necessarily easier to deal with. In some environments, "professional development" is seen as an administrative duty, and early-career teachers are threatened by the idea that their performance might be evaluated and found wanting. Their daily practice is marked by the overriding desire to keep a low profile. All teachers--from rank newbies to award-winning veterans--must consider themselves collaborative learners and practitioners.  All of us are responsible for lending plans, tips, materials and support to new teachers.

One thing that can be done by accomplished veterans: asking newer teachers for their ideas, and approaching them as full colleagues, rather than those who need help. I work with many first- and second-year teachers who are pretty vocal about observed shortcomings in their assigned mentors. Most faculties adopt a kind of pecking order. Flattening that hierarchy--opening doors and sharing uncertainties--can help. Novice teachers ought to be considered for leadership roles, such as curriculum writing or the school improvement team, rather than dumping unwanted, time-sucking class advisories or club sponsor roles on them.

The second group of ineffective teachers is a different problem. I worked for decades in a strongly veteran culture, which equated years of service with accrued power and influence. I eventually discovered that many of the teachers I saw as jaded burn-outs were once enthusiastic and creative, but had had their mojo squashed by a culture of anger and perceived betrayal.

For a teacher trained in the 70s, teaching to a mandated and scripted  reading program feels like being told that the best lessons in their tool bags are useless, and their judgment flawed. For a teacher who's spent 20 years in Detroit, bringing in used clothing and peanut butter sandwiches for neglected students, blaming teachers for the system's failures now is callous.

Some of those favorite lessons and teaching methods are useless junk. But--a significant group of teachers who retain the potential to be very effective in the classroom have found the only "leadership" role open to them is fighting back against systemic change through their unions. They need to have their professional experience validated and acknowledged; they're not going accept either praise or criticism from someone they don't respect, but they have not stopped caring about their students' learning.

So there is an opportunity to salvage good teaching--and valuable contextual experience-- by acknowledging that veteran teachers have something to contribute: been there, tried that, learned from it.  We might start by asking dried-up veteran teachers "Why did you choose to be a teacher?" The ones who say "June, July and August" can be dismissed. But the ones who say "I wanted to make a difference in kids' lives" deserve to have their ideas heard, at least.

An old friend inadvertently gave me the title for this blog when he let me know that a true Michigan conservationist and sportsman-Rusty Gates--passed over to the great fly fishing stream in the sky last week.  Rusty Gates understood that in order to learn to fish, you had to stand in the river for a time. And so it is with teaching.

Image: Neil Whiteside@Flickr Creative Commons

Do You Hear What I Hear?

For several years running, my middle school hosted the Solo and Ensemble Festival for our southeastern Michigan region, always held on the first Saturday in December. That meant that thousands of middle school musicians, plus their parents, piano accompanists and indulgent grandmothers descended on my middle school for a day of nervous renditions of "Little Fugue."

There are more than 40 middle schools in the region, so that also meant hanging with a volunteer workforce of a few dozen orchestra and band teachers, pulling 12-hour shifts on a Saturday. Every year, at least one of them would express surprise at the wreath hanging on the counselor's door, the (ugly, scrawny) Christmas tree in the office--and the marching lineups and drum assignments for the annual Fantasy of Lights parade posted in the band room. 

"How do you get away with that?" I was often asked. At many schools in nearby Oakland County, the student population is much more ethnically and spiritually diverse. Many of my counterparts were doing winter concerts where the musical literature was tightly scrutinized for religious imbalance and stealth piety. Ironically, many of them were selecting literature based on mildly schizophrenic policies that allowed them to play masterworks--such as For Unto Us a Child is Born--on the theory that they were "educational," but forbade secular tunes like Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas because--duh!--the word "Christmas" was in the title.

Most school policy on Christmas music--and performance of other traditional and ethnic holiday compositions--falls somewhere between muddled and nonexistent; a fair number of directives get added when someone complains at a school board meeting. And a large segment of school personnel and the general population profoundly misunderstand the elasticity, purpose and intent of the First Amendment. It's not about boldly defying the separation of church and state (although some people want to fight that specious battle endlessly). Charles Haynes, First Amendment scholar, expresses this beautifully in a must-read article:

The First Amendment solution is stunningly simple: Schools should plan holiday programs that are educational in purpose and balanced in content. Nothing in the First Amendment prohibits public schools from educating students about music, religious and secular, as part of a comprehensive music program that exposes students to a variety of traditions and cultures.

Haynes also notes that one Merry Hyatt of California is now collecting signatures to put a referendum on the November 2010 ballot requiring all public schools in California to include Christmas music in classroom activities, every December. Haynes thinks that even if the referendum passed (and I get a little queasy thinking about the mileage Bill O' Reilly could get out of that one), it would be overturned on constitutional grounds.

Really--does this need to be a fight? We're a diverse country. Teaching children to appreciate the range and beauty of cultural traditions is something we ought to be endorsing in every public school, no matter which holidays a majority of students celebrate. Most people who hail each other in this season, whether they say "Happy Holidays" or "Merry Christmas"--or any other greeting--are not proclaiming religious fervor. They're trying to be friendly and social. Good cheer in dark times.

There is not and never has never been a "War on Christmas." Everyone in America gets Christmas, for weeks, whether they want it or not. The First Amendment lets us sort this out, school by school, keeping educational integrity uppermost. School leaders can serve as models of inclusive and respectful citizenship--a more admirable goal than majority domination.

For those who insist that all middle school bands play Christmas music, I propose a mandatory winter holiday parade. A few years marching in sleet ought to make any "War on Christmas" zealot think twice.

Gimme a "C!"

I generally keep the fact that I used to be a cheerleader to myself. It's not something I'm particularly proud of, as cheerleading in the 1960s was mostly about little pleated skirts and personality. I am of the generation of women who prefer to be known for their intellect and professional accomplishments rather than their pom-poms.

Cheerleading, however, has evolved, as a concept--it's become more athletic and competitive, involving a range of gymnastic skills and strength. It's less about popularity and more about coordination and discipline, at least theoretically--with Texas as possible exception to the rule, of course.

I was surprised to see Frank Deford, on NPR, equivocate on the subject of whether cheerleading is a true sport. I thought that battle had been won decades ago, when high schools and colleges began implementing Title IX, and all female sports (and wannabe sports) took a major upward leap in proficiency and aggressive athleticism. Deford's point was a good one, though: Colleges that declare cheerleading a sport can then justify eliminating other female sports--and spending more on expensive male-only programs, like football. 

While discussions on gender equity in sports will likely go on forever, there's no denying that cheerleading has developed  into a team activity requiring significant physical ability--a sport.

I am always amused by the passion with which people--OK, men--will squabble about whether a particular activity is a "sport" or not. I fail to see how 22 outsized, fully padded bruisers in $200 helmets, moving a pigskin bladder two feet while knocking each other down (and sometimes out) is undeniably a sport --but things like archery, hunting, synchronized swimming and rhythmic gymnastics are questionable. 

A lot of the arguing has to do with money--who will pay to see what--and the necessity of winners and losers, which means that dog racing is a sport, but marching bands are entertainment, even though every band member on the field is engaged in a complex, physically strenuous activity requiring stamina, precision, coordination, memory, the ability to read music and skin thick enough that tuba jokes bounce right off.

I once had an acrimonious dispute with the Athletic Director in my high school over whether band members should be eligible for varsity letters. The block H, he explained, was reserved for true athletes (as were the varsity jackets with the leather sleeves). He suggested that the band get  nylon windbreakers to show their spirit--and eventually admitted that he was worried that the football team might not be proud to don varsity jackets if bassoonists could wear them, too. He found no irony in the fact that the 100 members of the marching band spent two months trailing the football team around for the purpose of playing the fight song with frozen fingers every time Biff kicked a field goal.

In K-12 World, any competitive activity that involves skills, strength or teamwork ought to qualify as a sport. Why not? American schools spend much more on sports than schools in other countries. If we insist that sports engage kids whose strengths are kinesthetic rather than academic--and believe that sports build confidence, teamwork and discipline--then we ought to offer as many "sports" as we possibly can, so their benefits are broadly available.

It took about five years, but the music department eventually won the campaign to wear the same varsity letter as the football team. Our block H had a small pair of eighth notes to distinguish it from the others: letters with golf balls, the winged feet and--  eventually-- the little mortarboards of the Quiz Bowl kids. I'd call that S-U-C-C-E-S-S.