State of the [teacher's] Union

Obama addressed the nation on Tuesday night in his annual State of the Union remarks to both houses of Congress.  


Of course, when education is referenced in these speeches, (as it always is-without fail) I perk up and listen.  In general the remarks are hollow rah-rahs for the need for stronger schools. Often, the pablum is packaged in red, white, and blue and little of substance is offered.


So far, I have yet to hear a politician say anything but supportive statements about the need for a strong education system.  The devil is in the details. 


For those who may have missed it, here is the portion of the State of the Union address where Obama referenced our floundering goals in education:

At a time when other countries are doubling down on education, tight budgets have forced States to lay off thousands of teachers. We know a good teacher can increase the lifetime income of a classroom by over $250,000. A great teacher can offer an escape from poverty to the child who dreams beyond his circumstance.  Every person in this chamber can point to a teacher who changed the trajectory of their lives. Most teachers work tirelessly, with modest pay, sometimes digging into their own pocket for school supplies – just to make a difference. Teachers matter. So instead of bashing them, or defending the status quo, let’s offer schools a deal. Give them the resources to keep good teachers on the job, and reward the best ones. In return, grant schools flexibility: To teach with creativity and passion; to stop teaching to the test; and to replace teachers who just aren’t helping kids learn.

His remarks are shorthand for those who follow education issues and reflect most of what has gone on in the past year.  Here's the translation.


First of all, layoffs are looming.  Most localities will run out of stimulus money this year and will have to increase classroom sizes as they lay off teachers.


Then he references the recent report published in the New York Times on how effective teachers improve a child's earning power.  This report has dubious goals and questionable conclusions about using Value Added Measures which rely on test scores to rate a teacher's effectiveness, so the remark about what "we know" is not exactly all that quantifiable.  It is clear though that effective teachers who are well supported can make a difference. A large part of a teacher's ability to be effective hinges on the system he/she labors within.  Clearly the current system under NCLB has done much to stagnate student achievement in the past decade.  And equal access to a strong educational foundation has widened rather than narrowed.  Teachers argue that their ability to remain effective has been stripped from them.


Obama's line about saving poor children through education is seen by some as a cop-out for the rest of the nation.  Laying the cure for poverty at the feet of the teaching force absolves the rest of us from making changes to a tax code that dooms whole swaths of our electorate to a lifelong struggle for economic stability. Student achievement will benefit when households are not under continual strain.


The "bashing" line comes from the media onslaught starting with Waiting for Superman last fall and continuing in the NBC Education Nation where teachers and their unions have been routinely vilified and sidelined so that billionaires and corporatists can gain credibility in their argument that the cure for public education is a weakened teacher's union and tighter, more frequent measures of teacher effectiveness--i.e. testing, testing, testing, to produce data, data, data. 


The last bit--"let's offer schools a deal" refers to Obama's language in his actual "blueprint" (why is everything a blueprint these days?).  The blueprint was released after the speech and contains the following language in reference to a plan for education:

Attract, prepare, support, and reward great teachers to help students learn: 

Teaching is a profession and should be treated like one. The latest research says a great teacher could increase the lifetime income of an entire classroom by hundreds of thousands of dollars. 

The President is fighting to protect our schools from being hurt by the recession by providing states and communities with funds to prevent teacher layoffs, and avoid increases to class sizes or decreases in the number of school days. 

The President is also asking for a new competitive program that will challenge states and districts to work with their teachers and unions to comprehensively reform the teaching profession by:
o Reforming colleges of education and making these schools more selective;o Creating new career ladders for teachers to become more effective, and ensuring that
earnings are tied more closely to performance;o Establishing more leadership roles and responsibilities for teachers in running
schools; improving professional development and time for collaboration among teachers; and providing greater individual and collective autonomy in the classroom in exchange for greater accountability;
o Creating evaluation systems based on multiple measures, rather than just test scores; o Re-shaping tenure to raise the bar, protect good teachers, and promote accountability. 

So this list looks like the devil's details.  Those who have read the report Transforming Teaching: Connecting Professional Responsibility with Student Learning will recognize some of the bullet points.  The teachers who wrote the report argue that teachers will assume accountability when we have more control over the training, the workplace, and the criteria for advancement.  In other words, ownership of a supportive system in tandem with accountability.


The door is not fully open for professionalizing teaching, but this looks like a window to crawl through.  


Nothing happens until discussion ensues.  Start talking.   Our representatives need to know which bullet points need to be pushed forward in this agenda to lift teachers to the role of professional.  Our children and the future will benefit.

Existentialism

Teaching is the absolute best way to learn something really, really well.  Especially if you teach a topic repeatedly to audiences of different sorts of learners.  This is why collaboration, think-pair-share, and any of those other gee-whiz strategies work so well. They move students into the role of teacher.  You can't explain something very well, and in varying ways, if you don't understand it.  Probably the chief challenge in teaching is to remember that your audience does not understand something as well as you do.  Teaching is the ultimate mind-matching exercise.

I managed to avoid teaching existentialism for years just by teaching in the lower grades.  But when the works of senior year pushed us into the realm of philosophy, I had to get a handle on this one--a philosophy that runs through most modern works and that initially appeared to me to be depressing: life has no meaning, do what you want.  Turns out there was so much more--and paradoxically--less.

My journey started with my colleagues: "Explain this philosophy to me in a way that helps me explain this to my students."  They complied.  We had a discussion over lunch.

As with any inquiry, once the question is asked the answers begin to appear everywhere (so says I - and Socrates) and I was on a collecting spree, always looking for works to flesh out my simplistic view of a modern dilemma:  What is the meaning and purpose of life?

My favorite was Jean Paul Sartre's defense.  Sartre's view is hopeful.  If life is purposeless then humans are free to determine their own purpose. But in defining ourselves as human, we must first define our purpose and then taking action becomes obvious since it will result from that stated purpose.  Those who face down their 'existential crisis' and come out on the other side become the opposite of Eliot's hollow men.

Next, on a snow day, I read Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning.  It's a little book that can be read in a sitting.  Frankl, a concentration camp survivor, reformed his psychiatric practice after the war to help depressives find their way out of their mental prison camps by defining their own purpose - and then taking action which conforms to the belief.

Simple, really.  Pick a reason.  Act accordingly.

Now on to the kids.

Existential movies abound in the popular culture and this provides access for youngsters who are yet to face the crisis most humans endure at one time or another.

Through the plot of a popular movie, most students can grasp the notion of feeling lost or rudderless and then finding something to live for. (In most movies, the characters choose to live for each other.  Christians call that charity-or the greatest of these: love).  In a list of movies (Up in the Air, Little Miss Sunshine, Garden State) the class can usually find one most have seen and then explore how the philosophy is expressed.  After "getting it" they can transfer their new understanding to more difficult works. (Hamlet, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead)

And then there's this little gem from The Onion that lightens the mood after we've delved into some heavy material.

After spending all this time in my own search for a clearer understanding, I see the philosophy everywhere.

Apparently, that's the reason behind all these Mission Statement workshops. Too bad most of the time these are a hollow exercise rather the opportunity to wrestle with a collective view of the purpose of a public schooling system--or our particular school--or the ideal school.

And how about this?  If the purpose of a nation is to make money ("The business of America is business.") then what kind of actions would naturally stem from that as a purpose?

Discuss this amongst yourselves.

Dear Colleagues,

Today is an unexpected snow day-- a hole in my professional life I will fill in speaking frankly about teaching.

But first, a story:

My daughter is a Veterinarian.  I am extremely proud of her accomplishments in this field because I know of the dedication and hard work she put in to achieve her dream of working with animals.  I know where the dream began: pony club.  She started riding horses after working on a girl scout badge at age 10.  She loved the horses so much that, even as a teen - those sloths who love to sleep in, especially on a weekend or snow day -- woke up early every Saturday-on her own- just for the privilege of mucking a stall.

Her passion for learning about horses and animals remained unabated through the storms of adolescence and young adulthood.  To my surprise, she worked methodically toward her DVM with little input from her parents other than the support of time and resources.  And now she works to maintain the health of the pets in her community.

What does this have to do with teaching?  Everything.

My daughter works with pets.  I work with children.  Other people's children.  Our preparation couldn't have been more different.

First, she had to have an undergraduate degree before entering formal training for her profession.

To get into Veterinary School she had to document 400 hours of volunteer work with animals.  A hundred of those hours had to be under the supervision of a licensed vet.  This, I assume, would weed out the applicants who want to work with animals because they think they are cute and lovable.  Some of her experiences involved unpleasant activities.  There was a trip to a rendering plant.  Collecting semen.  Sticking pigs.  Putting down a favorite pet.

Working with animals is decidedly unromantic.  Best to get that notion out of the way.

Her final year in Vet school was entirely clinical.  She worked in various parts of the state through rotations that took her onto farms and into animal hospitals, putting down large, expensive animals, rehabbing, treating, caring for large, expensive animals.  All under the watchful care of a top practitioner.

Oh, and there was a test.  Several, in fact.  A national test first and then one each for Maryland, West Virginia, and Virginia.  All required for a practicing license.  And then the real learning began: a daily practice where hundreds of informed decisions are made on the spot every day.  All augmented by continuing professional development for a field that is always learning.

Contrast that to teaching - where we work with actual human beings and shape their destiny.  On the Great Chain of Being, even children rise above the level of animals in their closeness to God.  But you would never know it in America.  Somehow we find it acceptable to relegate our children's development to chance.

Today, assuming the role of teacher can mean simply changing your mind on the way to someplace else.  We let recent undergrads become short-term teachers after only five weeks of training in Teach for America. The answer to the teacher problem has been to ask for less from the workforce, not more.

The plan du jour is to throw adults -- and now computer software -- at the wall and see what sticks.  Meanwhile, the wall is a group of young people in their developmental years.  We won't get those years back down the road.  In addition, any yahoo walking in off the street with an opinion is allowed to make sweeping changes.

Because we have all been taught at one time or another, we all assume we can teach.  Even teachers sometimes see their work as requiring little skill.

I could not disagree more.  Those who succeed have come to grips with the nature of teaching, and its often very unromantic realities.  (See veterinary corollaries above.  Real kids are not always cute and lovable.)

In creating the document Transforming Teaching: Connecting Professional Responsibility with Student Learning, the commissioners outlined the skills and knowledge teachers need to be effective.  Every teacher candidate should be able to demonstrate (from p. 11-12):

KNOWLEDGE: We believe that for future success, all pre-service teachers need to learn at least the following:

uContent matter appropriate for teaching the subject area(s)

u Child, adolescent, and abnormal psychology

uEnglish language development and second language acquisition strategies

u Instructional methods, strategies, and practices

u Curriculum models and practices

uInstructional technology practices and information technology use

u Standards-based curriculum design

u Content-based reading and writing strategies

uInstructional adaptations to address students’ individual learning styles, readiness to learn, and level of independence

uInstructional accommodations for students’ special learning needs uImpact of socioeconomic background, ethnicity, race, gender, language skills, disability, and

other factors on teaching and learning

u Classroom management strategies

SKILLS: We believe all pre-service teachers must learn to do the following:

u Plan instruction

uGuide students through a variety of learning experiences

u Assess student progress

u Analyze student learning outcomes

uDiagnose special needs, prescribe learning strategies, develop remedial plans, and adjust instruction to suit special needs

u Reflect on practice

u Collaborate with colleagues

uIncorporate 21st century skills, such as critical thinking and problem solving, into teacher practice

alongside effective teachers. A series of classroom experiences such as the following will allow candidates to apply the content and pedagogical knowledge and skills they acquire:

SCHOOL-BASED EXPERIENCES:  We believe that to be successful in today’s complex learn- ing environment, all pre-service teachers need to spend significant time in schools working

u Observing a variety of effective teachers uAssisting with small and large group instruction uPlanning and conducting small group and whole class instruction uTeaching a diverse range of students for an extended period of time u Conferencing with individual students uConferring with parents and other responsible adults u Collaborating with teams of teachers

Turns out it IS rocket science.

Ok.  I know.  I already hear you complaining, "That's costly."

But the top tier education countries underwrite the tuition and subsequently attract top candidates who succeed in a rewarding, high-status, lifelong careers.  These teacher-led professions are continually examining and improving themselves.  That vision is far less costly in the long run than our current practice of churning teachers.  And are you telling me the 'richest nation in the world' cannot afford to do what's right for kids?

Read and rally around the report.  We cannot wait for someone else to hand us what is clearly necessary.

It must be demanded.

Dear NEA,

I have a New Year's Resolution for you:  Man-up.

That's what my students would say.  That's much of what your membership seems to be saying. And that's what I implore you to do.

I have been a teacher since 1978 and an NEA member for almost as long.  But the fact of the matter is that, as I improved in my abilities to teach through an association with other professional organizations (the National Writing Project, The National Council of Teachers of English), the NEA became less and less important in my professional life.  I came to think of my membership as an insurance policy: a fall back in case I ever found myself battling against the district that employed me which, it was clear, would treat me like a freelancer and leave me twisting in the legal winds should anything go awry in my teaching life.  (And there are so many things.....)

The NEA has done nothing to change that view over the years.  I hear from my organization almost weekly, but only to excite my interest in an NEA MasterCard, an NEA low-interest loan, an NEA home-owner's insurance policy.  The monthly newsletter NEA Today goes largely unread. Most of the teaching tips or online resources have come to me months before in online communities where my professional development continues.

Ten years ago I shouted at the NEA as I read the Sunday editorials.  It was clear that the "Texas Miracle,"  discredited as a fraud even as the Rod Paige plan was being marketed wholesale to the nation, was going to visit a classroom very dear to me: my classroom.  And so it was.  But where was my 3.5 million teacher-strong union on this plan that flew in the face of all the research we know about motivating, engaging and helping students toward a better life?

Silent.

So here I am.  Ten years out speaking in a little-ole' backwater blog.  Wish I had the backing of a large education group.

Here's what I know about the union from the ground:

• We are under attack, and sometimes deservedly so.  We need to lead the reform issue from a moral high ground.  By leap-frogging over our detractors we can create a profession where our clients - the children we teach - are at the center of everything we do. I want what Mark Simon suggests:  "Teacher Unions have a responsibility to advocate not just in the narrow self-interest of their dues paying members, but in the public interest, from a teacher's perspective." (Thanks Steve Owens.)
• I can't convince young teachers to join.  They don't get it. We are losing them and a whole generation who will not seek teaching as a viable career. In this way, if the union is not destroyed outright by the current "reformers" it will die a slow death of attrition.  And so will teaching.  What will be left in its wake?  A predatory, privatized patchwork of questionable ethics.
• On the largest issues we are defensive.  Not a good position.  We need to lead.  The more involved in policy I've become the more amazed I am by the alphabet-soup of disparate education associations all speaking similarly on the same issues but undercutting each other's message by being too many, too small.  Pull it together.   We need a single, very large, credible megaphone if we are to combat the billionaire's boys club.  That means leading from effective practice first.  It will raise our collective voice above the fray of profit-making plans.
• I did two years as a union rep in my building.  Much of what went on in the local was about next year's raise.  We didn't even address the "slave clause" in my contract which describes my work as "anything necessary for the smooth running of the school."  Pretty vague description of teaching and learning.  I wanted to argue for a better definition of my role and practice.

Here is what I mean by Manning UP:

Assume the responsibility for improving education and take on the role of Educator-in-Chief.  We know what conditions are needed for good teaching.  It's time to put our effort, our money, and our mouths where our hearts are: demand what has already been proven best for the children of the next generation by demanding the training, induction, and working conditions that allows good teaching to flourish. Do it on OUR terms, from the position of Effective Teaching, not a corporate manual.  The plan has already been outlined in the Commission report Transforming Teaching.*

Embrace the report.

It has already been heralded as a ray of hope in an education wasteland.

We need to lead. After all, America invented public education.  It's time we  re-invent public education for the 21st Century.  It will mean hard work, embracing change, speaking out about what really works, and even arguing amongst ourselves and conducting ongoing research, but I volunteer to marry my effective teaching chops with your organizational chops to create a robust profession.

Do it.  Or it will continue to be done unto us.

Three and half million people moving in the same direction has to effect some sort of change.

*Disclaimer: I served on the Commission.

Boxing Day

Today is the traditional British holiday reserved after Christmas to celebrate the servants--those stalwart workers who keep the manor house running, make the holiday go smoothly, and generally make life much more enjoyable for the upper classes.

The "box" in Boxing Day refers to the the vehicle for enclosing the gift for the servants (and not for the fisticuffs I imagined when I first heard the term.)

I say we co-opt this day and turn it into an American celebration of public servants, those handmaidens to government and the collective good who make our lives run much more smoothly.

So, cheers, to the guy who came by two days before Christmas and collected the remaining leaves on our street. Their duties were delayed by the extensive cleanup needed after the surprise Halloween snowstorm that brought down limbs and trees all over town.  They cleaned that up too.

To the firefighters who show up night and day to correct our wrongs.  To the police who patrol our streets in the dead of night.  The snowplow operators who go out in the worst of the weather.  To the mail carriers, the emergency technicians, the road and bridge builders.  To all the invisible workers who keep everything humming.

And, of course, to teachers, who make every other occupation possible.

Happy Holidays.

Teachers Leading their Profession

Today the NEA released the report of the Commission on Effective Teachers and Teaching and the NEA responsed to the recommendations of the 21 teachers from across the nation.  I was privileged to be one of those 21 teachers appointed to the Commission for the past year.  We first convened on December 10, 2010 and our charge was to define effective teaching and imagine a teacher-led profession that would result in a true reform of our nation's schools.

You can read the report, Transforming Teaching: Connecting Professional Responsibility with Student Learning, here.  The recommendations are comprehensive and include changing expectations in teacher preparation, induction, and providing a career ladder where accomplished teachers can take on differentiated roles that would lead to changes in schools across the nation, all monitored and evaluated by teachers themselves.

In her remarks, the Commission Chair Maddie Fennel, a fourth-grade teacher from Omaha, Nebraska said the following:

We must make clear to the public, in both our words and our actions, that student learning is at the center of everything we do. Our vision is of a profession that clearly and visibly puts student learning at its core and guarantees that students acquire the critical thinking ability, ingenuity, and citizenship skills they will need to thrive as 21st century citizens. The schools we envision develop students’ academic knowledge, critical thinking, and innovation skills, while also attending to their overall well-being. Our vision for the teaching profession rests on three guiding principles:  1. Student learning is at the center of everything a teacher does.   2. Teachers take primary responsibility for student learning.         3. Effective teachers share in the responsibility for teacher selection, evaluation, and dismissal.

We envision a teaching profession that embraces collective accountability for student learning balanced with collaborative autonomy that allows educators to do what is best for students. 

I can assure you that changing the landscape to ensure success for all of our children, along with a schooling system that ensures the well-being of every child was at the fore of every discussion.  We were always aware that our nation cannot stand on the status quo and that the real road to reform will rely on strong, effective teachers in every classroom.

The NEA's response to the report is to initiate a Three-Point Plan for Reform which includes raising the bar for entrance into the profession,  using teachers to ensure that great teachers are serving our children, and providing union leadership to transform the profession into a teacher-owned profession.

The Commission report did not stop with recommendations to the NEA.  There are suggestions for pre-service providers, policymakers, and the teachers themselves.

The NEA's response is a start.  But the teachers themselves must support and work toward the ownership of our profession--and much of realizing that vision will not be easy.

The Commission has provided the opening for claiming our profession.  Now it is up to us to take on the hard work ahead.

What's wrong with this picture?

Yesterday, flipping channels to see if there was a Virginia Tech game on I could listen to as I baked, I happened on the halftime of the SEC championship game. (You can tell I am a tepid football fan.  There was a Tech game, but I missed it.)

They were just about to begin the huge halftime event: a Dr. Pepper Tuition Scholarship contest.  At stake? $100,000 in tuition money.  Apparently they do this every year.  Who knew?  I didn't.

Here is how the contest works: You enter with a video.  This year's winner expressed her love for Dr. Pepper before launching into an explanation of her goals and her lack of ability to provide tuition money.  Then the finalists come to the championship game and are pitted against each other in a football tossing contest.  The one who can throw the most passes into the hole (isn't this just a mega-cornhole contest?) wins the whole she-bang: $100,000 devoted to tuition payments.

To be fair, in a search of their website, it appears that Dr. Pepper gives away a lot of scholarship money.  But the video, and a love of the product is de-rigeur for winners.

When she won, she completely broke down, barely able to express her appreciation for the opportunity to pursue her education--clearly a relief to an issue where she has struggled.  It was hard to turn away.  As a piece of entertainment, it was riveting.  Who knows what happened to the loser.  We never saw her.

It sickened me.

I know it is America and we believe in pullin' yourself up by your bootstraps, winners and losers, the power of physical prowess, fate, chance, rags-to-riches, but come on.  Since when is throwing 13 footballs through a hole the necessary pre-requisite to gaining an education?

This whole spectacle reminded me of the desperate dancers in the depression-era movie They Shoot Horses Don't They?  The dance marathon in the movie depicted lots of down-on-their-luck participants dancing till they dropped in hopes of winning a prize that stood between them and utter destruction.

So what's wrong with giving away tuition money through an entertaining contest?  Let me count the ways.

• The girl is clearly bright.  Why isn't school possible for her and anyone else who has worked hard and plans to give back?  It used to be.  I remember.  At one time there were several states that offered free tuition to students who had maintained their grades....and wanted to go to college.
• The contestants must prove their love of Dr. Pepper.  Dr. Pepper has conscripted free testimonials from desperate kids.
• My students already suck down too many soft drinks.  Many have diabetes.  And so forth...
• Why does it take $100,000 to go to school?  (It does.  I have colleagues who still owe $50,000 or more as they start their careers--earning just enough to scrape by month-to-month.)
• The winner throws a football.  Yay.  Football reigns.
• We are entertained by someone's need.
• A mega corporation holds sway over people's fate.  Hmmmm.....

I never liked Queen for a Day either.