Back in the 80s I drove a 1966 Plymouth Valiant. It was slow, ugly, comfortable and simple. When I looked under the hood, there were about four different items and even I could figure out what each of them was supposed to do. Now I drive a 1996 Geo Prizm. Looking under that hood is like looking into a human brain. There are at least 175 different items and I have no idea what any of them do. I’m not even sure which thing is the engine.
Cars have changed. So has teaching. Specifically, I can think of three major changes happening right now that are having – and will have – a major impact on how teachers do their jobs.
First of all, job security is over. That’s clear. When I was in college, there was an implicit bargain struck by those of us who went into teaching: we would sacrifice the opportunity to get rich and settle instead for the security of knowing that we would always have a job. And for the most part, that’s been true. No one got rich working in a classroom, and unless you get caught on video performing a felony, you’ll get to keep your job. But those days are coming to an end. That ship, if it hasn’t already sailed, is about to leave the dock. Teachers who want to keep teaching will have to keep teaching well. Thank God.
Which leads me to the second major change: teacher unions will have to either change or risk becoming completely irrelevant. Contrary to myth, teacher unions do not have an agenda separate from, and independent to, their membership. They do their members’ bidding. And their members have consistently told them to do three things: get us more pay, give us lower class sizes and help us keep our jobs no matter what. For the most part, teacher unions have been able to deliver on only one of those mandates: job security. Salaries haven’t gone up, but class sizes have. And job security is becoming a thing we remember. In the face of this reality, what use are the unions? Personally, I’d like to see the unions take the lead on teacher evaluation, accountability and professional development. Obviously, this would be a major shift, but the seeds are already there. The NEA has played a major role in developing and promoting the National Board and just last week they released a policy statement on evaluation and accountability that, for the first time, suggests the use of student performance to evaluate teachers. I don’t know much about the AMA or the ABA, but from what I do know, both organizations are run by their own members and are deeply involved with the professional development and accountability of doctors and lawyers. We need that in teaching, and the NEA needs to either step up to that plate or risk total irrelevancy.
The third major change, from my perspective, is this: teaching will become increasingly complicated while becoming increasing easier. Do you know what a “data coach” is? You will. Does your school have an MTI coordinator? It will. Do you work closely with your school’s “dean of vertical alignment?” You soon might. The teaching force is becoming more and more diverse in terms of responsibilities. When the economy turns around, money will flow back into education. But I don’t think it will go back to where it came from. Money will go to programs, not people, and most of those programs will make this field more complicated than ever, with teachers assuming different roles within the same schools. There will still be teachers working in classrooms, but the hardest part of teaching – figuring out what each student needs and providing the appropriate resources – will no longer be the sole responsibility of individual teachers. We will need to depend on one another more and more and share the responsibility for the education of every student. As a result, each individual teacher will have a more specialized – and easier – job. Technology will also complicate things while simultaneously making the job easier. I don’t need to be a great art teacher anymore; I can find excellent art instruction on-line, freeing me to do what I’m good at: monitoring student learning and adjusting the pace of instruction. Organizing this complicated network of collaboration will be difficult, but if done correctly, schools will be far more effective.
So if that’s where teaching is headed, what does that mean for you and me? I have four words of advice:
1. Get really good at what you do. No one’s going to be there to protect you if you’re an ineffective teacher. Nor should they. The days of second and third chances if you fail are over, along with the notion that a graduate degree or experience is a proxy for teacher competency. You are essentially only as good as your last lesson. Whether that’s good or bad is a subject we’ve debated frequently on this blog, but in the end it doesn’t really matter; if you’re a good teacher, you have little to worry about, but if you’re bad, either leave or get better.
2. Get really good at collaboration. Learn how to work with other teachers, because that’s where this profession is heading. The days when you could close the door to your classroom and deal only with your students might still be with us, but I think that’s going to change, and quickly. Get used to it.
3. Tell your story. When I see teaching as portrayed in the media, it’s clear that the public has no idea what we do. Most classrooms shown on TV look like the places where Beaver Cleaver learned to read, and ironically, these shows are produced by people who are too young to have ever even seen Leave it to Beaver! We don’t stand in front of blackboards, facing five rows of desks anymore. We manage a constantly changing mélange of large groups, small groups, individual conferences and technology-based learning activities. But no one knows that. No one outside of our world has any idea what we really do all day. And that’s our fault. I once had a pharmacist ask me why I needed planning time, since all I do is teach the same lessons year after year. We act surprised and hurt when we aren’t appreciated for the difficult and complicated work that we do, yet most of us do nothing to spread the word. Over the past ten years, I’ve worked with dozens of National Board candidates, helping them organize and write portfolios of their teaching practice. They frequently resist the idea of telling what they do. It feels like bragging or boasting to them. To which I say, “Not if you stick to verbs. Boasting is all about adjectives. Telling your story only needs verbs.” Another thing: be careful how you “accidently” tell your story. Assigning a word-search worksheet for homework sends a clear – and hopefully inaccurate – message to parents.
4. Focus on the kids. Every change to our profession needs to pass through a very simple, yet extremely important, filter: will this program, policy or proposal have a positive effect on student learning? If so, then it’s good; if not, get rid of it. And you and I, the teachers in the field, have to be the ones to make that call.
Change is hard. I hate it. I’m the kind of guy that can eat the same breakfast, every day, forever. But change is frequently good. That ‘66 Valiant I used to have was a great car. Great because it was so simple to fix. The Geo Prizm I have now is horribly complicated.
But here’s the thing: I had to fix my wonderfully simple ’66 Valiant all the time. Sometimes in the middle of intersections.
And the messy, complicated Geo Prizm, with the human brain under the hood?
It’s been in the shop only once over the past 15 years.
Thanks DrPezz, you’ve said that before. I have seen that at my school, unfortunately, but I’ve seen it in other buildings as well and I’ve heard the frustrations of parents whose children are in other Seattle schools.
These teachers are the minority, the extreme minority – like maybe one a building – but they are still a huge obstacle to what we’re trying to do.
And you have obstacles too – you’ve said a few times you don’t have administration in your building that can recognize good teaching. That’s a problem.
“a teacher who is waiting for retirement, counting the days to Friday, and who doesn’t really care about kids.”
I just have not seen this in my school. To me, it’s a straw man argument used to encourage support merit pay, RiFs tied to evaluation, and for so-called reform.
Based on the descriptions I’ve seen you post on this blog, I’m really glad I teach where I do. Sounds like your environment is awful.
Dr Pezz, you’re right – it’s poverty more than race, but the two are linked in our country, and poor children can be taught.
To me, it’s like a car crash. Your car runs a red light and smashes into another car. Maybe you weren’t paying attention, and it could have been prevented. Or, if your brakes failed, no amount of attention or caution could have prevented the accident.
Right now, the dismal academic accomplishment of poor children is being explained away as failed brakes – every time. Every accident – failed brakes, not preventable, not my fault.
I strongly believe a child’s poverty is not failed brakes – it does not erase liability for the crash. I think if a school has a shared mission, capable leadership, and teachers who are committed, the car won’t crash.
Our problem – at least in many of the schools I’ve seen – is that we don’t demand strong leadership, we don’t demand that the teachers in a building have a shared vision and strong commitment, and we hobble educators and administrators in a hundred different ways.
We claim to be hobbled by bad parenting and lack of public funds, but we need to admit that the biggest obstacles come from within.
One self-imposed obstacle is partnering a highly-committed teacher with a teacher who is waiting for retirement, counting the days to Friday, and who doesn’t really care about kids. We hobble by making a highly-skilled teacher try to make up ground lost when students wasted the previous year with an incompetent teacher.
We hobble with things like telling a principal who has a strong vision that she can’t hire staff who is agrees with that vision – she first has to hire staff waiting in the “displaced” pool. Sometimes, she is forced to take a teacher simply because that teacher has a contract. Efforts to legislate for “mutual consent” have failed in Washington state.
We hobble by making it practically impossible to fire an ineffective principal.
We hobble by allowing school board members to run again and again, so they’re more concerned with getting reelected than they are about serving those who may not be organized enough to run campaigns on their behalf.
And we hobble by making superintendents answer to said school boards.
I’m not saying a dicatorship is better, but I am saying we’re so watered down that nothing gets accomplished. We’ve checked and balanced our way into immobility.
I don’t think we would need charter schools or testing if all educators were willing to step it up a notch, stop making excuses, stop attributing failure to a child’s socioeconomic status, and stop insisting that the school structure that existed in 1955 is the best we can do.
When I say these things, I’m dismissed as having “drunk the kool-aid.” I’m reminded (though I don’t need to be) that I am the union, that it must be just my building or my district. I’m told I’m arrogant.
To me, Tom’s post encourages us to get our act together. Public schools are “under attack” because we keep claiming to be doing the best we can, even though it’s obvious we could do better. We can do better – better than the best charter, good enough to make so much testing unecessary.
I agree with Tom completely that for a long time, being a teacher meant job security. I think that job security can be gained by being good at one’s job, and being able to prove it – maybe with student gains, maybe with visible evidence like evaluations (it’s stupid to try to link scores to art or music) – but we’re lying if we say we can’t prove we’re competent teachers. We’re lying if we say the best way to measure competency is with seniority. And we’re lying if we say a child’s poverty explains poor academics.
In my experience as an educator poverty, not race, has been the biggest factor in the achievement gap. Those without solid family structures or home lives do not receive the support (or have the pre-school foundations) struggle mightily.
If every night my middle class students have a safe, quiet place to do homework (and a parent present to ensure it gets done), that is a huge advantage.
All students can learn and we should do our best to help them, but we also have to recognize that the students will progress at very different rates based on a number of factors outside of school.
P.S. On the evaluation issue, I had a very poor evaluator who couldn’t even identify good from bad teaching, so having my job linked to an evaluation is a frightening prospect.
Nancy, “Ummmm, no,” right back at you.
This hysterical paranoia has to end. It’s just not rational.
Tom is right – the LA Times wants to sell papers. If you looked at some of their teacher “evaluations” you’d see that they were hooey. They’ve given teachers some spot on a rainbow spectrum and badly, shallowly, explained how they settled on the label. Any mentally stable teacher would have flipped the LA Times the finger and gone on with his job.
Charlie is right, data raises questions. One question it raises for me is why are so few teachers outraged that poor kids of color test so poorly? And why do so many teachers continue to claim that kids of color test poorly because of their parents, their skin color, or their poverty? Teachers continue to claim it will never change, so it’s not fair to expect teachers to be held accountable for teaching these children in a way that will get them the same scores white, affluent children get. This way of thinking has to stop. We are teachers. If we get a child in September who is reading at a fourth grade level, we are capable of having him reading at a higher level by the time we’re done with him. And if we can’t improve that child’s ability, or the ability of the other children who spent nine months with us, then maybe we need to take a good look at whether we’re doing a good job.
The reality is that children can be taught to read, and write, and do math. It doesn’t come only from home. It isn’t genetically passed down.
And I’m sorry about the teacher in LA, but I’m less afraid of the newspaper putting me somewhere on a spectrum than I am that children will spend a year with me and learn nothing.
For me, the key is that the data is used correctly – to provoke questions rather than to provide answers.
Point well taken, Nancy. If everyone – including those who evaluate teachers – does their job well, then we have little to worry about. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case.
What’s happening in LA is regrettable, but as far as I know it’s being perpetuated by the newspaper, not the district or state administration, and their motivation, at least at some level is to sell newspapers.
When it comes to data, I find classroom-generated numbers far more useful than summative, standardized numbers. I can respond, for example, to information about which students do or don’t know their times tables.
I’m not sure we’ve reached the point where summative, standardized data is useful in evaluating teachers. I wouldn’t mind seeing stuff like VAM used to evaluate teaching strategies, which could then be used to inform teachers about which ones are effective.
“Teachers who want to teach well and can teach well have nothing to fear.”
Ummm, no. Perhaps in some districts. Perhaps in some buildings, under fair and intelligent leadership. Perhaps in a large majority of cases. And I would have agreed with this statement, without reservation, ten years ago.
But the needle on “teaching well” has moved, and public opinion has shifted. Many people believe that there is really only one accurate indicator of a teacher’s ability to teach well: standardized test scores.
Think about Rigoberto Ruelas, elementary teacher in Los Angeles, who requested students whose first language was not English, because he believed he could teach them well, as a first-generation college grad himself. When the LA Times publicly humiliated him by labeling him an “ineffective” teacher (because his non-English speaking students’ scores were low), it ruined his career. Disconsolate, he took his life. Yet the LA Times continues to publish rankings of teachers in LA.
Tom makes many good points here. But fine teachers–especially excellent teachers who are outspoken on behalf of their students–are in jeopardy all around the country.
Larry Cuban had this gem of a post. So you think data-driven decisions are going to yield better results, right? Okay, how about some data to back up that assumption?
http://larrycuban.wordpress.com/2011/05/12/data-driven-instruction-and-the-practice-of-teaching/
Wow, Tom – that was quite a read. I agree with you, though maybe a little more alarmed than you are at some of it. It’s the implicit faith in data that would drive me crazy. (I’m not saying that you posited that faith, but to the extent that it’s part of the future picture, I don’t like it). A data wall? Yech. Or maybe, it depends on what the data might be. If we’re looking at crappy state tests and trying to read something significant into each difference in results, that’s not for me. Those variations are inevitable and the cause/effect assumptions that follow are largely a waste of time. What would be truly amazing would be if results always matched up. If the data we’re discussing are more varied, based on a whole variety of student information beyond standardized tests, I’m interested in the conversation. But overall, I think you’re offering good advice. We have to excel in our profession, collaborate, lead the way, keep focused on students, and tell our stories.
I like the positive tone in your post as you’ve come to reach acceptance. It’s admirable. And your words ring true. Although I don’t know what an MTI coordinator does, we have a data wall, and this Friday, we’re telling kids to stay home as teachers meet for a “data day.” Once all the kinks get worked out, I hope the end product is as reliable as your Geo Prizm.
I think you’re right about telling your story. It’s clear to me how little people understand about classrooms today. I’m working with WEA to launch a new project to do just that – tell your story. It’s in its infancy right now, but we’re hoping teachers will share their stories on video camera and post them to YouTube. I think the plan is to start a YouTube channel devoted to “teaching” the public about what it is we do. It drives me crazy seeing classrooms on TV always with 9 to 12 kids, sitting in rows.
I hear you, Kristin. It’s actually taken me awhile to get to this point.
I think we all need to understand that people embrace (or at least accept) change at different speeds. Someone like you, Kristin, figures out early which direction is right and can’t wait to get there.
People like me, who are content with almost anything, as long as it looks like it looked yesterday, take some time.
But eventually we get it.
Be patient.
I love this post.
I especially like the part about “nothing to fear.” Fear is causing so much resistance and blindness right now. Teachers who want to teach well and can teach well have nothing to fear.
And some things haven’t – and I don’t thing ever will – change: A teacher who knows his craft, who sets high expectations and has clear, but flexible boundaries, who cares enough about the students he teaches to push them to work hard – these teachers have been around for a thousand years.
And they have nothing to fear.
Best post I’ve written on this site in a long time.
Best post I’ve read on this site in a long time. Thanks for sharing, Tom!