Nancy Flanagan at teacher in a strange land started a meme, inviting others to share the five things that policymakers should know about one’s classroom (or school). While I started with a longer list, I settled on these 5 things, which are in no particular order…

1) Classrooms are not flat environments, with everyone learning and needing the same thing at the same time. This is important to keep in mind as policymakers want to create one curriculum for all students and/or one form of assessment intended to measure the learning for all kids. Having assessments embedded within each lesson in conjunction with high standards targets learning more effectively than the ‘one size fits all’ approach.

2) Instruction always starts with the kids – it doesn’t start with a textbook. Thus, it is important that teachers have both the time and strategies to get to know the kids in their classroom. This will allow teachers to tailor lessons to the needs of each student, building on their prior knowledge. Overall, teaching is an art and science… just because you know the content (science) doesn’t necessarily mean that you can ensure that students understand the information.

3) All day kindergarten (and preschool) matter! Having taught elementary students for 16 years, I can often tell which students have had such high quality early learning experiences. It is always frustrating to see, at the age of five, that some kids are already so far behind their peers. This needs to be fixed as we can do better! ALL students deserve a great beginning – all day kindergarten is a place to start. I KNOW that we will see a return on the cost associated with all day kindergarten as students progress through school, requiring less and less intervention.

4) Professional time, within the day, for learning, collaboration, and in-depth work is needed in order to improve both instruction and student learning. Having been in a place where weekly professional development sessions during the school day are the standard, I have experienced, first hand, the positive impact that such time for teachers has on student learning. This time has helped the whole staff ensure that student learning is seamless, from grade to grade, while holding students to high standards. In addition, we have become better assessors of learning, discuss both pedagogy and content often, and frequently ensure that students didn’t fall through the cracks.

5) No more unfunded mandates! Schools are already doing so much to fund the mandates locally (i.e. bake sales, teachers buying things out of personal resources, begging, etc.) because of the shortfall from the government – and it feels so piecemeal and not student need driven. How does one compromise on the education of a child because of funding? This is something that we face each day in the schools… If a student needs extra assistance or specialized instruction, they should have access to it. And we have an obligation as a state to fully fund public education – it is our paramount duty!

To keep the ideas flowing, and to gain additional insight into what policymakers should know about our practice, I am going to tag a few teachers from the teacher leadership network who always provide readers with lots of ideas to consider.

Ariel Sacks at on the shoulders of giants
Renee Moore at teach moore
mary at Walking to school

And a couple others who I think will provide somethings for us to think about…
its not all flowers and sausages
So you want to teach, education for educators