The best teachers...

What does this say about rigid and prescriptive curriculums, lesson plans and course outlined that are made before the students ever show up?

What does this say about writing the objectives on the board?

Is an education something someone can give you?

Should school be something done to students or by them and with them?

Do our actions in school match up with our aspirations?

Do we need to play a little game called "you say you want this, so then why are you doing that"?

Our schools are not for sale

Public education is under assault in the United States. Schools are closing all over the country and things might be at their worst in Philadelphia.

Watch this:

Our Schools Are Not For Sale from Media Mobilizing Project TV on Vimeo.

There is a manufactured crisis going on where standardized test scores are used to undermine confidence in public schools so that education entrepreneurs can pour private equity and venture capital into companies that aim to profit from the public.

If you want to truly understand how and why public education is under assault, consider reading Diane Ravitch's Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools.

Ignoring poverty

Poverty is a problem.

You can't have an authentic and meaningful conversation about education without addressing poverty. One of the first things I learned in teacher college was that a child's basic needs must be met before learning can take place.

Anyone who has spent five seconds in a classroom trying to teach a child who has not had their basic needs met understands how the utter futility of such an exercise.

And yet, I am disheartened by how many so-called education reformers write poverty off with their no excuses mantra. I see poverty less as an excuse and more like an explanation for why some people have such difficulties navigating their lives.

Too often I hear the argument that some people choose to live in poverty. Let's pretend for a moment that some adults choose to live in poverty -- even if this was true, it's important to remember that no child ever chooses to live in poverty.

Some shrug at poverty and say that you can't help people that can't help themselves. I disagree. In fact, I believe we have public education and public health care because people sometimes have a hard time helping themselves. This is why the highest performing countries understand that excellence requires equity.

Let's also stop pretending that education can lift people out of poverty on its own. The best teachers can do a lot of really cool things but overcoming poverty is not one of them. Yes, great teachers make great schools, but great teachers can't do it alone – they require the support of an equitable society. If we are not careful, we risk misinterpreting standardized test scores, and instead of waging war on poverty and inequity, we end up waging war on teachers and schools.

I'm not saying addressing poverty will be easy -- but I am saying that it will be worth it. After all, if we think addressing poverty is expensive, we should pay closer attention to how expensive ignoring it can be.

Ultimately, saying poverty is no excuse is to make excuses for doing nothing about poverty.

Transferring Teachers

Imagine this:

• You are a progressive and innovative teacher who engages students.

• You have worked hard to become very knowledgeable about how children learn and in order to meet all of their needs, you understand that you can't pretend that all students have the same needs.

• You have shifted away from believing that curriculum is something that is designed, laminated and mailed to the school by distant authorities to believing that curriculum is something that is co-constructed and negotiated between teachers and students in the classroom.

• Rather than doing things to students to get short-term compliance, you work with them to nurture long term engagement. 

• Your classroom is grounded in a culture of learning -- not a culture of testsandgrades.

• You understand that real learning can not be reduced to numbers, so you have substituted grades with informative feedback that allows the students to see what they've done well and what they can do to improve. Even though the most important things may not be quantifiable, they can always be observed and described.

• You understand that sixty years of research tells us that we don't internalize knowledge by simply being told to do so. Real learning is constructed from the inside while interacting with others, and that's why your students spend most of their class time on project-based-learning and performance assessments that are collected in learning portfolios.

• You understand that the real purpose of a Professional Learning Community should be about learning and not about standardization.

Now imagine this:

• You are approached by your grade-level or subject department head or a teaching colleague and they are concerned that you are not giving the same worksheets, textbook assignments, quizzes and multiple choice tests on the same days in the same manner as the rest of the school or school division.

• You are "asked" to meet with your administration and they are concerned that you are not a "team player" and that you are not "collaborating" with your Professional Learning Committee. 

• You explain in detail how and why you are doing things differently. You show how your teaching is grounded in evidence and research, and that you are getting results via student engagement.

• You are told by your principal that your teaching assignment is changing next year. Instead of teaching courses that match your expertise and passion, you are teaching something that you have little to no expertise or passion. 

• A year later, your administration observes that for some reason you appear unhappy so they suggest you transfer. When you hesitate at the "offer", your administration reminds you that you really don't have a say in a transfer.

Are there good and bad teachers? Yes. But let's not pretend we can agree on who is good and who is bad. There is no agreement on what constitutes good teaching.

Some people complain that it's nearly impossible to get rid of bad teachers, and there might be some truth to it -- but I find it sadly ironic that too often we treat good teachers so poorly that they leave. If we talked about making good teachers even half as much as we talk about firing bad ones, we would probably get somewhere.

Keep in mind that the tactics used in the example above by administration can be used on any teacher regardless of their quality. Transferring a teacher like this can have two goals:

1. This is an effective way of getting rid of lazy, incompetent teachers who refuse to engage competently and professionally with students, parents, colleagues and administrators (of course, it doesn't actually get rid of them, it just makes them someone else's problem) -- but it can also be an effective way of getting rid of outspoken teachers who refuse to mindlessly comply with every top-down, drive-by directive dispensed by distant authorities who are as geographically distanced from the classroom as they are pedagogically.

2. By making an example of these teachers, administration can keep other teachers compliant.

Sometimes transfers are a breath of fresh air that allows a teacher to re-energize. But sometimes the threat of a transfer can be an instrument of control between the powerful and powerless -- that's why sometimes teacher transfers have less to do with learning and teaching and more to do with compliance, punishment and power.

Innovation can be intimidating because it often involves ambiguity and change -- but ambiguity and change can often challenge competence which is why some of the most competent people can sometimes be the largest obstacles to change.

It takes courageous leadership to empower teachers to engage students in progressive and alternative ways, but that means we have to stop using the threat of a transfer over teachers to merely get them to do whatever we want. Changing and improving school will only happen if the people most responsible for implementing changes are actively engaged in the process.

Giving teacher's permission to make school different and better is not the same as telling teachers to just do what they are told, and you can't expect teachers to be innovative and progressive as long as the threat of a transfer looms over them like a guillotine.

The problem with getting teachers used to simply doing what they are told is that they might get used to doing only what they are told.

If teachers resign themselves to being nothing more than agents of the state for delivering top-down mandated, prefabricated, content-bloated, scripted curriculums then it makes sense to do whatever it takes to manipulate, bribe, threaten, bully, harass kids into doing whatever it is we want them to do. If this is our perspective, then as long as the kids do what we want, even begrudgingly, we consider compliance our mandate. And if this is how we want to treat children, then I guess it makes sense to treat teachers this way too.

But...

...if teachers see their responsibility as engaging every learner in a personalized journey in discovering and constructing their passion, we come to see authentic engagement as infinitely more important than compliance. And if this is how we want to treat children, then I guess it makes sense to treat teachers this way, too.

Ultimately the best teachers come to see school not as something done to kids, but something done by them and with them. Likewise, the best administrators and even policy-makers see school reform not as something done to teachers, but something done by them and with them.

Mr. Bower, I can't do my project anymore

I sometimes think about a conversation I had with one of my grade 8 students while we were learning about World War II and The Holocaust. It went something like this:

Reagan came up to me in the middle of class and said, "Mr. Bower, I can't do my project anymore."

I was a little taken aback. Reagan had been so eager to start her research on Dr. Mengele and initiated a majority of her project. At first glance such a pronouncement from a student might easily be labelled as defiant, but I was pretty sure there was something else going on here. So I asked, "Really, Reagan? Why's that? What's up?"

"At first I thought I wanted to learn more about what happened during The Holocaust, and then I started researching Dr. Mengele in that book you suggested, The Holocaust Chronicle. But now I'm just saddened by it all. It makes me so sad to read about the awful things that these people did to others. I just don't think I want to do this anymore. I don't want to be sad."

"That's fair. I know that sometimes I have a hard time reading books about The Holocaust. Sometimes it's hard to spend a lot of time focusing on such an uncomfortable topic." 

"Yeah. Totally."

"Before you quit your project, Reagan, I have a question for you. Would it be worse if some people like you and me got a little sad from spending time learning about The Holocaust or would it be worse if we avoided being sad and just forgot about The Holocaust?"

Reagan stood there looking at me.

She didn't say a word.

I knew she was thinking.

In short order she went from looking perplexed to certain. She said, "It would be way worse if we forgot."

"Why is that?"

"Because if we forget, we might avoid being sad, but we would risk allowing it to happen again. And we can't do that." She turned and went back to her project. 

I was proud of Reagan.

***

A couple thoughts:

• Can you see how asking Reagan about what was up was more productive than just assuming she was being lazy or defiant? People like it when you seek to understand them before you seek to be understood -- and children are people, too.

• Can you see how lecturing Reagan about why we need to learn about The Holocaust would have missed the point? Can you see how asking provocative questions that inspire thought are the real work of teachers? 

• Can you see how a text-book, computer software or app can't do this? Reagan needed "just-in-time" feedback and guidance that only a real life teacher that she has a relationship with could provide.

• Can you see how this conversation with Reagan would be very difficult to quantify or symbolize on the report card and yet witnessing her new-found realization is what might matter most? The most important things that happen in school may be difficult, if not impossible, to measure but they can always be observed and described -- this is why assessment is not a spreadsheet, it's a conversation. And when we try to reduce learning to a number, we always conceal far more than we ever reveal.