I've spent my free time recently preparing remarks in response to recognition as an Inspiring Educator by my alma mater Shenandoah University.
So, I'll cheat a little here and just post those remarks. Warning: it's lengthy. Also, I cribbed some from earlier posts. My remarks are directed toward other teachers and, I hope, inspire others to take action.
Not “Just a Teacher” but
the Hope for America’s Future.
When you’ve been asked what you do for a living have you
ever replied, “Oh, I’m just a teacher…”
Or maybe you have heard others consider what they might want to do with
their lives, and they throw teaching into consideration. As in: “I think I will teach. Then that will give me time in the afternoons
to….(fill in the blank) write my novel,
pursue my acting career, take classes for my real career.”
Those of us in the teaching field who have spent a lifetime
working to create a better future for the following generation are at a
distinct disadvantage. Teaching is probably the only career where nearly every
person in the nation has watched the work on a daily basis. We have all been taught, so naturally we feel that we can do the job easily
enough. It certainly looks easy from a
desk in the room.
Of course those of us who have been in the field for a while
know the full scope of the job and snicker at the “I’ll use my afternoons to
pursue another career” commentary. We
wait with our arms folded to see how that
plan works out.
If I were to get my wish I would expunge the phrase “just a
teacher” from all conversations, and would especially insist that teachers
themselves never let these words pass their lips. No coffee cup of mine (or anyone else’s for
that matter) would ever read: “Those who can, do. Those who cannot, teach.” Because teachers in this nation do, and do,
and do, and do for nearly every child of every parent in the country.
But just what is it that teachers do?
In 2010 and 11 I was privileged to serve on the National Education
Association Commission on Effective Teachers and Teaching. Our charge was to envision a teaching
profession, led by the teachers themselves.
For me, this was an opportunity to realize a lifelong dream: to see
teaching established as a true profession.
One of the other commissioners on the team was Mary Hatwood
Futrell. You may not remember her, but I
do. She was the NEA president in 1983
when "A Nation at Risk" was released. At
the NEA convention Futrell called for the same thing that was recommended in
the 1983 report: a Teaching Profession. I
watched her speak on television. I
wanted that then. I think we are long
overdue for it now. To serve with her
has been a chief satisfaction of my career.
In our work on the commission we were frequently reminded that
the definition of a profession is that it claims a clear, rigorous, universally
accepted body of knowledge and skills.
So the question of what is it teachers know and are able to do was
central to our work.
Though the National Board for Professional Teaching
Standards had, I felt, already defined much of this work, we set out to examine
the entire continuum of a teaching career from pre-service through a career
ladder that would ensure that teachers who grow and excel in their career might
continue to enjoy challenges, growth, and financial reward without leaving the
classroom. Keeping talented teachers in
front of students should be a chief goal of any educational system.
We defined the following
knowledge as necessary for success in today’s and the future’s classrooms:
- * Knowledge of
the content matter.
- 8Child,
adolescent, and abnormal psychology
- *English
language development and second language acquisition strategies
- *Instructional
methods, strategies, and practices
- ·
Curriculum
models and practices
- ·
Instructional
technology practices and information technology use
- ·
Standards-based
curriculum design
- ·
Content-based
reading and writing strategies
- ·
Instructional
adaptations to address students’ individual learning styles, readiness to
learn, and level of independence
- ·
Instructional
accommodations for students’ special learning needs
- ·
Impact of
socioeconomic background, ethnicity, race, gender, language skills, disability,
and other factors on teaching and learning
- ·
And classroom
management strategies
And that is just the
knowledge that every teacher today
needs in order to serve our diverse population.
In addition to those, teachers need to learn how to do the following:
- ·
Plan instruction
- ·
Guide students
through a variety of learning experiences
- ·
Assess student
progress
- ·
Analyze student
learning out comes
- ·
Diagnose
special needs, prescribe learning strategies, develop remedial plans, and
adjust instruction to suit special needs
- ·
Reflect on practice
- ·
Collaborate
with colleagues
- Incorporate 21st
century skills, such as critical thinking and problem solving, into teacher
practice.
It turns out that teaching is rocket science.
Though that is the knowledge we identified, the best
teachers have so much more. And the disposition to teach is much less easy to
quantify, but I will make a stab at it.
Since
most teachers are women, their supposed frailty as the weaker sex often leads
to an outsider's view of teachers as clueless, sheltered idealists, out of
touch with the world.
Nothing of the sort.
A career teacher has seen every permutation of human
behavior and dealt with it at eye-level: students who have been abused,
students who abuse others or drugs, incidents of criminal behavior, mental illness,
extreme poverty and homelessness, sexual aggression, bullying, breakdowns,
violence, along with smaller matters like broken hearts, illness (think
everything from vomit and bloody noses to a shocking death), fire drills, bomb
threats, lockdowns, extreme weather, car accidents—the whole panorama of human
conflict.
Teachers cannot afford to be cowed.
No flinching allowed.
They plow in to find the source of a problem and then model
the strength and skills to move students beyond those realities to imagine a different
life.
Just part of the job.
It is a balancing act that excellent teachers can make look
very easy.
It isn’t.
Not everyone can do it.
It means hearing about student struggle without blinking. Or
running away.
It means acknowledging situations with compassion while
exhibiting confidence. Kids need to see adults who can handle “whatever”
without wigging out.
And then teachers will insist on and assist kids to cope and
continue learning.
Teachers who fail make mistakes of two kinds: coddling
hard-luck kids and expecting less than their best, or going overboard by
ignoring hindrances and focusing solely on curriculum.
One instructional text puts it this way: Some teach
kids. Some teach their subject. The best teach their subject to
kids.
And then there is a sense of humor. That is a must.
We laugh in the face of puke or public breakdowns – both
extremes every teacher faces in the classroom at one time or another.
We feel the emotional tenor of a building as it ripples
through the school year, and shrug off both up and down days to face the next
day with the same equanimity as the previous day.
It is a tightrope walk teachers – primarily women – enact in
full view on a daily basis.
Good teachers know more about the realities of their
community than their sheltered friends in business.
Good teachers are about as real as they come.
Good teachers are smart, and flexible, and ruffle-proof.
Good teachers are tough – and warm – and funny.
So please don’t tell anyone that you are “just” a
teacher. In fact, if I am an inspiring teacher, I would wish
that I could inspire you to stand squarely and claim the revered title of
Teacher with a capital “T”. But I
wouldn’t stop there.
As a member of a profession whose sole objective is to
advocate for children, I would ask you to go further by speaking out about the
current state of education and the past decade of so-called reforms.
In 1983, my hero/mentor/role-model Mary Futrell told People magazine: "If we sit back
and do nothing, they will push us around.
Teachers are no longer going to be the passive little old ladies who
accept what's handed to them."
Well, I feel that in the current era of reform they have been pushing us around. In the void created by the failure to
establish a true teaching profession—a hallmark, by the way, of the nations who score
at the top of the often reported international PISA exams—policymakers have
entered our arena and defined our work for us, often based on assumptions that
are neither valid nor true for what it takes to create a climate for effective
teaching and learning.
For instance, we now have standardized tests that teachers neither
see, create or assist in scoring, creating the impression that teachers cannot
be trusted to either assess or evaluate their own students. This work has been taken away from the
teaching force and added sometimes hobbling costs to localities.
In an effort to improve scores, scripted lessons and
stringent curriculum maps imposed wholesale by systems remove the possibility
for individualized teacher decision-making in the immediacy of the classroom, where
teachers can assess student’s abilities and understandings and can re-teach or
re-group when children fall behind the approved schedule. Researchers who have
observed and documented teachers involved in the real work of classrooms, estimate
that a teacher makes approximately 1,320 discreet decisions in a day. Scripts and timelines strip away the
decision-making autonomy of a professional teacher.
Other seemingly benign efforts to improve schools, like
Teach for America or Career Switcher programs, place the emphasis on content
knowledge and give scant training and attention to the other skills of an
effective teacher. Programs such as
these imply that anyone can teach, a premise which puts children in the hands
of novices who are often overwhelmed by their new careers. Frequent turnover of instructors and
instability in the neighborhood school is the result.
Finally, the most recent reforms are teacher evaluations tied
to student test scores which have at their core the assumption that one test on
one day is an accurate measure of the time, effort and talent a teacher puts
into instruction. The other suspect
premises are that all children proceed at the same rate and that it is a
valuable use of resources and instructional time to submit students to
relentless testing in order to evaluate the adults in the room.
The debate has been going full throttle on every side of the
aisle for ten years and all corners have been heard loud and clear except from
the teachers themselves. Those who have
had sway in these new directives are now threatening the very fabric of a
touchstone of our democracy, a free and public education for every child.
So what can we do?
First, know your students. Know
your work. Continue to learn and
grow. Be proud of what you do each day
for the children of our community. And
in the confidence borne of effective practice, demand that the work of teachers
be recognized as a profession.
The outline for establishing a teaching profession exists in
the document created by the members of the Commission on Effective Teachers and
Teaching. Secretary Arne Duncan has
given the report his support through his R.E.S.P.E.C.T. program. Seek out the report and the initiative and
make sure it becomes a reality by insisting that teacher organizations you
belong to join in the efforts to create a new profession. We need to stand on our authority as the
deliverers of instruction and speak in a single voice in defense of a joyful
education as a necessary right for every child.
Every child should have access to a rich curriculum that includes music,
art, and physical education. Every child
should be able to go to a neighborhood school and learn in safety beside their
diverse neighbors. Every child should
have a well-trained, well-compensated teacher leading them in lessons that are
appropriate for the child’s age and abilities.
Every child needs a well-lit, well-resourced classroom where the message
“You are valued” is apparent in their surroundings. Every child should have access to the joy
that comes from learning and the opportunity to find and leverage their own
potential.
Please join me in working toward a true teaching profession,
where the voice of those who know, love, understand, support, encourage, and
challenge the children of America are heard with the respect due to those who
have the knowledge, skills, and compassion to build the next generation every
day in every classroom.
And never say, “I’m just a teacher” again.
