Summary: Some discussion of great teaching and great schools. A conclusion that interweaves family values and the prospect of stronger home and school relations.
Question: What do we hope for, expect, of our teachers? Answer: The proven and worthy learning of students.
If a person employed as a teacher doesn't create a sufficient degree of learning in her/his classroom she hasn't earned either the classroom or the pay. While this proposition seems to neatly discriminates conditions for teacher release from those of continued employment and advancement its implementation has been impeded by practical and political difficulties
Part of the difficulty in implementing this simple principle is how we measure good teaching . I'll start with what I think is a focused and realistic definition of successful teaching as it is reflected in its product. I'll then outline several of the practical steps necessary to implementation.
A good teacher delivers worthy objectives to each of his/her students. A worthy objective is one that is both: a) accessible (i.e., the student is ready for it) and b) a part of the highest priority portions of her/his potential. One could say that a good year for any student is one in which a higher portion of this year's possible worthy objectives (the set of worthy objectives will be different for each year for each student; every learning opens new doors; once one has mastered a particular learning new ones become accessible, some more interesting, others less so--and so on) is mastered. Realization of an enhanced portion of those worthy objectives this year , when compared to last, is evidence of improvement in teaching. If we see this to be the case for the the average student working with a teacher, we can infer that that her/his teaching is in the "very good" to "excellent" range. We see a "competent" teacher if we determine, on average, that her/his students have mastered as many worthy objectives this year as last.
Therefore: if, on the average, a teacher's students achieve an equivalent or better portion of this year's worthy objectives, then we will say the teacher will be paid at least a living salary and be offered continuing employment within our school.
(The use of "portion of worthy objectives" tends to allows comparisons between teachers and other teachers, between teachers of one discipline with those of another discipline. If I am judging a teacher of reading I will compare the percent of mastered,worthy reading-related objectives for all her/his students this year with the set of mastered, worthy reading-related objectives for those same students during the prior year. The result will be a ratio (for example, last year's average was 75% while this year's is 100%-- the ratio, therefore, is 1.33 -- a commendable one). Whatever subject, whatever the overall character of the students you work with, if you meet or exceed the average "portion of worthy objectives" you stay and possiblly get a bonus. This would be so with gifted students, with students who are ADHD, with adults, with preschoolers.)This measure of teacher competence has nothing to do with credentials, nor courses taken, nor an individual's length of past service within the school or school district. It is related only to the mastery of worthy objectives that the teacher has, together with her/his students and their families, affected.
A Great School?:
What is a good or great school? One which, on a year to year basis, effectively supports the efforts of all teachers, particulary the effective ones. It does this in a just way -- that is, in a way that provides a living, rewards merit and which fairly expects in return sincere and energetic support of the common enterprise. What is an effective teacher? One who enables students and their families to define an optimal realization of each child's potential and who enables an accelerated realization of that potential from month to month to month. On a year-to-year basis her/his student's realization of potential (defined in terms of number of worthy objectives per unit time) improves upon or equals the same measure which was achieved by this time last year.
There are, of course, obstacles to achieving the reality of such a worthy school.
- Developing a broadly based change process that will transform pay systems to suit what is essentially a Fair Shares (see Jan 25 entry and references) approach to teacher pay.
- The absence of broadly accepted criterion referenced testing systems(not so much based on norms as on the sequence of essential learning objectives leading toward mastery of a given subject matter (reading sheet music, autobody repair and oral reading skills each being examples). which are suited to the "worthy objectives" view of what should be taught. Initially each school will have to develop or find its sequence and categories of worthy objectives. Those objectives will need tests of robust and sufficient rigor to pass muster in the comparing of this year's portion of mastered worthy objectives to last year's --- for each teacher.
Implications for Even More Change?
If this admittedly strong statement is worthy: there are some follow-up implications:
- Teaching of the sort noted here is the defining center of a good school: its functions are specialized, difficult and precious. Therefore, in order to protect and nurture teaching excellence and its necessary and unique ties with both families and the larger community, schools should NOT be planned., housed, financed or evaluated in the same cluster with unrelated activities. As examples of the problems that can occur if such clumping occurs:
- Competitive Sports -- undermines clear definition of schooling, tends to sharing of personnel and, too often, to slidding such persons in as 'teachers' when they would not, by their presence or example, support the <u>schooling</u> enterprise, let alone--IMHO this is too frequently the case -- demonstrate competent teaching. This is not to say that learning to play a sport can't be taught in schools, rather it will be taught as part of individual development/realization of her/his own potential. A strong competitive sports team is outside of and destructive to the central charge of a school.
- Social Services: defining schooling as one of a set of social services tends to muddy the definition of the school and of teachers. Teachers are not child care workers or family counselors or social workers. They should not be expected to do the work of the others in "off" hours, nor should they be asked to do the work of the others during instructional hours.A teacher should not be expected to work with a child who is clearly disruptive to or destructive of the teaching/learning enterprise. There must be a certain threshold of civility any child must demonstrate before s/he is placed in the hands of the teacher.
- Community Leisure Activities: Yes, a public school building is community property, but the school building should not be so generically designed or managed so as to disrupt or diminish the schooling/teaching process.
- Support personnel must be there to support teaching on a case-by-case basis. Schools will always have to deal with "issues of order" in any group enterprise. However, if the primary function of nonteaching personnel is to maintain discipline and order the school then the school is probably dysfunctional, is definitely less than it should be. The teacher is the one who delivers on the promise to facilitate a realization of individual potential. Our expectation of the teacher should not, however,amount to hanging her or him out to dry. A strong professional skills advocacy, training and support cadre is what each teacher needs as a platform and resource for her or his excellence. The preservice training and the post-graduate on-campus, discipline-related training cannot be all the support he/she gets. For the duration of a teacher's service there must be a meaningful student-by-student problem-solving support cadre in place and available.
- It may be that optimal instruction is only occasionally based in the classroom and primarily has the teacher as technical resource to and coordinator of a group of family home schooling systems. In this point I am trying to remind us all that at the center each child's school experience is to optimally realize her/his potential. In pursuing this goal the optimal balance between home and school time will vary from child to child and from family to family. Obvious implications: parent volunteers (needing training and coordination), homework (support and training for parents here), excursions. There has to be increased penetration of family values into the classroom and increased penetration of the "schooling for realization of potential" agenda into the home and family. The teacher and school that are truly effective are facilitators and nurturers of home schooling and independent learning. The balance between home and school time will vary from child to child and from family to family.
