Throw Down the Gauntlet: Break the Chains of Bad Practice, Build Our Future

SPEAKER: Vicki A. Davis - aka CoolCatTeacher

I always enjoy reading the articles that talk about what kind of students that we need to create for our future, and I feel strongly that this is where I head in my own classroom.  However, as I talk to many friends in education, they feel that they are educating industrial age workers, largely because the system is itself a product of the industrial age.

This week, Education Week says in its article, The Case for Entrepreneurship Education

"As leaders, how can we develop a systemic initiative to keep young people in school, learning academic and work skills effectively, motivated to be productive and engaged in their communities and the larger economy, and developing success-oriented attitudes of initiative, intelligent risk-taking, collaboration, and opportunity recognition? Entrepreneurship education is one answer to this question, and an important tool to help every child explore and develop his or her academic, leadership, and life skills, as well as potential."

Unfortunately I cannot read the rest of the article (hidden behind a subscription wall), however, I've been turning over some very thoughts related to this subject lately and would like to use this opportunity to share them.

Before I share my "gauntlets" - here are a few thoughts:

1 - Excellence & Excuses

Excellence is assumed.  Everything we do should be aiming for excellence.  Every school and teacher has its excuses.  Good teachers don't make excuses, they overcome them.  We all have our trials, but a commitment to excellence and drive to succeed no matter what is a prime ingredient in excellent teaching and excellent classrooms.  Teaching is toxic, but the best teachers turn it into a joy.

Excellence doesn't settle but finds a way to achieve anyway.  Excellence, quite simply, overcomes excuses. 

2 - Empowerment & Accountability

I don't believe that technology is correlated with high achievement, any more than rubbing Einstein's head would have made someone smarter.  However, a common denominator of successful schools is that they have technology and are EMPOWERING.  They give their teachers flexibility but they also hold them accountable.

I had a long talk with a fellow teacher in a large local public school system.  She has two planning periods.  One period is "team planning" with four other teachers about how they work through individual issues with the 140 kids that they "share."  She says she really needs this time.  The other planning period is "team planning" with the math department.  They all have to stay together so that they can keep the standards together.  She can't move ahead.  She's not allowed to enrich or add anything.  And every Friday, an "official test" graded by the "officials" comes down to her to assess how she's doing her job.  She's fine, her kids ace it.  Another teacher across the hall doesn't do well at all.  (And of course, the students will be punished!)  She usually finishes her weekly tasks by Wednesday but isn't able to fill up the extra time with enriching activities.

And yet, she says that she could do so much MORE.  And that is what standards do, they often pull up the lower performers but they can suppress the higher performers if poorly implemented.

Instead of hiring and requiring people to be great teachers and empowering and expecting them to do their job, we are trying to make mediocre teachers better and keep the great ones from upsetting the applecart and "going to fast" and making the others look bad.

Tell the teachers what the students need to know by when and let them get there in a way customized to the students in the classroom.  No two classrooms are alike.  No two students are alike.  Welcome and encourage enrichment.

And when a teacher is a poor teacher, it should be dealt with.  Every staff has their "duds" - the teachers that everyone knows don't teach.  And yet, these teachers are allowed to stay in the classroom for a variety of reasons.  Sometimes they are a coach, sometimes they are related to the "right person."  Accountability should be applied equally and not meeting the standards of excellence should have consequences for not only students, but teachers.

3- Room to Breathe

So many teachers have no time alone in their own rooms.  My friend with the two planning periods, has other classes meeting in her room.  If she finishes planning early, she cannot go back to her room.  So, she can come in before school (and she does) and stay well into the night to get things in order.  Good teachers need some time to think, organize, get their rooms in order, and get things done. 

When is she going to get things done?  I just don't understand it.  This is a challenge for me as well as my room is usually bursting at the seams! 

4- Hope and the ability to "fix" what is broken

Where there is no vision the people perish, says a proverb.  So many feel like hamsters on a wheel.  Do the same thing every year, don't change, don't improve, be here.  I think that many teachers are as disillusioned.  Recently, a local school system here spent a small fortune to bring in a motivational speaker for teacher preplanning. The teachers were brought in, shown a fashion show about how to dress, and then berated for several hours for being unprofessional.   The teachers were upset and the debacle ended up in the local newspaper.  Motivational is when someone actually listens to your problem AND DOES SOMETHING TO HELP!

Most teachers are idealists.  We teach because we believe in what we're doing.  Believing that we are shaping the very future of our country and world, we want to do our best by these children of the future.  So, when we see something broken, WE WANT TO FIX IT RIGHT THEN.

The nature of teachers is to fix the boo boo, wipe the tear, listen to the teenager's gripe.  When we come up against hopeless situations that are irreparably broken and some consultants or business people in a room who have no clue about education try to think of another idea to "fix" the problem that they do not understand nor know how to fix, we get frustrated.  We can lose hope.

If someone would ask and involve teachers. 

Now, there is a fine line.  There are many teachers who see only the classroom, the micro view, and cannot see the macro view.  And yet, there are many teachers who do see the macro view and could help and advise situations.  Teachers cannot do it alone, but efforts to reform education sans the classroom teacher WILL fail.

Problem solving should go on the front burner and empowering people to FIX problems instead of just complain about them should be on the first order.  (Good principals do this already.)

5 - Let them create

In a society that needs creativity, innovation, and common sense more than ever -- why are our school places of routine, standards, and senseless bureaucracy.  I know teachers that spend an hour of time filling out forms for every hour of class time.  When do they plan?  What are most of the forms?  A nothing piece of paper that no one reads!  I'm sorry, but the volume of paperwork in most American public schools is asinine.

Let bureaucrats come in and fill out the paperwork and let the teachers teach.  Empower teachers to create projects and engage students.  This is where the teacherpreneurship really comes in.  Let teachers connect, give them the tools that they choose. 

Let teachers TEACH!

Let them do things to allow for creativity and innovation in the classroom.  But remember, such creativity starts with the teacher.  If the teacher is using their own strengths and is engaged, the students will follow suit.  What is an exciting tool for me to use, may be not so exciting for another teacher. (I'm terrible at podcasting in the classroom -- since I'm not a very auditory learner, it is hard and frustrating for me.  If my husband had to blog he would roll over and die!)

6 - Respect Individuality

Teachers and their students are individuals.  We are as different inside our heads as we are on the outside.  To require a standard lesson plan that is one size fits all is just not the right thing to do.  Differentiated instruction and learning styles teach us that this is not true.  So, we need to be able to customize the classroom.

Get over the buzzwords and do something

It is so wearisome to hear all of the buzzwords.  I came from the business world and often business people think that they have education all "solved."  I can tell you that I didn't understand ANYTHING about the classroom until I entered one. I didn't understand teenagers, puberty, kids, or even parents until I had a few years under my belt and there are still a lot of things I don't understand. 

But I do know this.

If we improve every individual classroom in America, American education will improve.  Adding bureaucracy and diplomacy on top of the struggling teacher will only continue to drive the hope, innovation, and individuality out of our schools that we so desperately need.

It is obvious that we can produce athletes, a well rounded person is important.  But now we need more.

The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expect different results. Right now, I don't see anything really changing except in the pockets where administrators have inspired vision and teacherpreneurship in their teachers.

So, I throw down the gauntlet. 

• Stop reducing headcount and reduce paperwork. 

  • Require bureaucrats to spend time in the classroom and let THEM record their observations.  The teacher writing down what they are doing ISN'T an observation. 
  • Use webcams or podcasts to stream out of the classroom what is happening -- observe and let the teachers teach.  There is no excuse for having teachers WRITE down how they are accommodating a student when you could literally record with a webcam everything that happens with that student in class.  The teacher's view is just that - the teacher's view.

• Common Sense Curriculum and Professional Development Activities

  • Let curriculum directors and teachers decide what gets through the filter. Give them rights to unblock the tools that they need to teach.
  • Move towards a model of embedded professional development.  Binge professional development that happens in one day rarely creates sustainable, system wide change.  Move toward embedded programs like the 23 things that involve teachers in their own pd and requires them to research, reflect, and use the tools.
  • Put technology that teachers use on the top priority list.  If they cannot print, fix it.  If their computer doesn't work, get them a new one.  Does the vice principal really need a new computer every year? 
  • Realize that not every teacher doesn't want or need to use technology all the time. 
  • Stop paying for gurus to "travel" on site and link them in virtually. Find and empower local "gurus" that you have right on your campus.
  • Consider letting students create teacher PD as part of their technology education program.
  • Provide technology integrators to work with teachers and projects in the classroom on an ongoing basis.  Mentoring through a project the first time is often what many teachers need.

• Common Sense Leadership

  • Be careful about all edicts.  Respect the individuality of teachers, but expect them to teach and do a good job.  When they don't do a good job, remove them. 
  • Boards of Education need to hire administrators and empower them to hire and fire. 
  • Too much political turmoil is BAD for education if it keeps teachers from teaching and administrators from doing the right thing.

• Digital Citizenship In School

  • Put in a little preventative education by putting digital citizenship components at every grade level. 
  • Educate students on the proper use of their tools and on what it means to be a professional student. 
  • Put in digital citizenship behavior codes in addition (or as part of) honor codes.  Students should respect the privacy of other students and should not have the right to film or transmit the image of another without their permission.  Students who do so, should be disciplined. The enemy is the behavior, not the tool.  It is time to teach people how to behave and to teach students that online behavior has offline consequences.
  • Understand that cell phones are part of the Internet and part of digital citizenship.

• Reject Ethnocentrism

  • Move away from ethnocentric viewpoints.  Yes, this article has been driven at American education, but not because it is the only education, it is the only educational system with which I have any authority to speak. I've done a lot of work with schools of all types here in the US and this is what I've seen here.  I've seen my students have their world view blown wide open when they see how incredibly competent students are in other countries.  When they realize that competent people live all over the world, their viewpoint changes.  An entitlement mentality is a ticket to the poorhouse for any nation.  Understanding that working hard and doing one's best is essential for success in today's society.

• Look at the Whole Mind

  • Put art and drama back into schools.  We have a whole brain -- we are creative and logical, we are artistic and textual -- we need all aspects of life to be included.  Sometimes if a student can have ONE class that they LOVE, it helps them tolerate the things they don't love.  People aren't going to go into fields that they are poor at and hate, but things they are good at.  So, we need choices!  Let them paint AND do math.  Let them act, run, dance, and read!  They are a whole person, it is time to treat them that way.  I think kids are quitting school because there is nothing there they even enjoy.
  • Integrate digital storytelling at every grade level in all subjects. 

And I'd like to ask you, if you were able to be brutally honest, what would your gauntlet be?  What gauntlet would you throw down to improve education?

Photo license purchased from istockphoto, you do not have permission to copy or reprint this photo.

Comments

[Max]

great post - i'll comment more in a moment, but the first connection that comes to mind is Mitch Resnick's educational approach for a creative society:

Sowing the Seeds for a more Creative Society
video: video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6387780251240071146
and the 2008 paper:
ttp://web.media.mit.edu/~mres/papers/Learning-Leading-final.pdf.

[Donna]

I think you hit all the major gauntlets I would have come up with! Nice list!

[Donna]

I think you hit all the major gauntlets I would have come up with! Nice list!

[Max]

You argue against standardized teaching plans etc. "To require a standard lesson plan that is one size fits all is just not the right thing to do." and i agree in principle - the key
problem is how to scale the personalized teaching as choaching approaches? In my experience good teaching needs time and in most scenarios there is not enough time to attend the needs of the individual student.

One suggestion i like is to open the classroom and have i.e. a retired rocket sienctists help in physics or a burned out stock brocker in math....

[Greg A. Williams]

Great post! Thanks for the heads up on your blog about this. So many great "talking points" offered. I always remind people that "differentiated instruction" applies as much to the teacher as it does the learner. Also, the bureaucracy of education is such an important discussion - pros/cons - administration/government/unions. Keep the posts coming!

[Vicky H]

Vicki,

First let me commend all the educator's out there. You do a great service to America, educating our next generation! I couldn't do what you do ~ and I'm glad your doing it.

Second, it must be so frustrating... being full of ideas, wanting to do great things, with road blocks in every corner. I'm not sure what the answer is, but it's so important that these questions are being asked! What a well written thought provoking article.

I think this type of article is also important for parents to read! Parents can help push changes in their schools, we have a voice, we need to use it!

Thank you for writing such a great article, I will be back to read all the other great comments.

I hope a great conversation get's started!

Vicky H

[Max]

i really like your suggestion to make the classroom public (byu streaming what's happening in class)!
that would make it transparent for everybody and would make a lot of paperwork obsolete.

how would you think privacy of students & teachers could be dealt with?

later you write: "Students should respect the privacy of other students and should not have the right to film or transmit the image of another without their permission."

how does that match with above?

There is a great initiative on internet rights that works on establishing a discourse and define netizens rights in a evolutionary way
http://internet-bill-of-rights.org/en/appeal.php

[David Warlick]

Vicki, I love your use of the term, "common Sense." So much of what I read in school initiatives these days is so "schooly." I'm afraid that our vocabulary can become a insulation between what we're doing, and what our students should be gaining.

My quote? "The best thing we can be teaching our students today, is how to teach themselves."

[Vicki Davis]

@Max - Yes, good teaching takes time. I have a 50 minute schedule but that is more than enough for me. What I don't have is reams of paperwork, my lesson plans are written for the students and I to follow, and hours of meetings that serve no point. Eliminate that and teaching will improve.

@Greg - Bureaucracy has a reason but when it becomes the customer, the entire organization suffers.

More comments in a moment.

[Vicki Davis]

@Vicky H - I applaud your efforts to get parents involved at a grassroots level. So many schools don't want their teachers blogging, is it because such things will "upset the applecart." Yes. But in this case, the applecart is being upset by those who have no clue about how to raise apples. It is time that educators speak out on what needs to happen instead of having others do it for us.

@Max - There is a difference between RECORDING with a webcam and streaming live. What I'm advocating for the special needs classroom is a private recording to be attached digitally to the records of the students in the classroom. If a bureaucrat wants to know what is happening in a classroom with the student, let them review the tape -- instead teachers could be required a twitter-like 160 character tag for the day's video footage to give an overview of the day with that student.

I don't advocate live streaming of classrooms out onto the Net without permission and intentional use. I've been asked to do this on numerous occasions, my classroom has to be a safe place where kids can make mistakes without being on the front page of a newspaper.

The problem I have is that some of the worst teachers are the best at filling out paperwork and because NO ONE goes into their classroom to see the travesty, everyone whistles along thinking that a good job is being done. Counter to this, many of the best teachers hate the paperwork and do it halfway and get in trouble w/ admin. Take the classroom to admin if we can't get admin in the classroom consistently.

[Vicki Davis]

@David Warlick -

Spoken well from the king of common sense! Yes, they need to learn to teach themselves, but it certainly doesn't come automatically. The things we should be teaching:

How to create a meaningful, customized PLN for the task at hand.
How to harness technology for productivity (including cell phones)
Digital Citizenship and Good Judgement for the right way to do things and handle disagreements online

So many of these things have been moved out of the classroom that is "too pressed for time."

Also, letting students solve problems and posing questions without answers. All of these things in "common sense" schooling are part of helping them become self directed learners.

And yes, self-directed learners should absolutely be our goal.

The struggle is that it is so hard to quantify - and what parent would ask for that? They want a high math score, science score, etc. and missing the main point of education.

[Max]

touche! Take the classroom to admin if we can't get admin in the classroom consistently.

[Vicki Davis]

I'll check back in here later! Figure it is on to the next "speaker."

[.hj barraza]

Back in the early 90's (this is pre internet for mexico) i used to be in this school "American Institute of Monterrey" which decided to setup video cameras in every classroom.

They could only been seen from the directors office and a few other staff members.

Students felt invaded, some of them insulted (although when you are are 10 you can't really express how survaillance cameras made you feel)

Nevertheless parents loved, for it assured that nothing would go wrong without anyone noticing it and cheating at exams left evidence.

Eventually students got used to them and i dont know if they remain. I only know Beth Wagner now runs one of Latin Americas most innovative schools yet.

In overal, i believe that as with any other discipline and dimension of knowledge, we have to experiment.. and yes there will be mistakes, but as long as we share and learn from them they represent nothgin but progress.

[.hj barraza]

"They feel that they are educating industrial age workers, largely because the system is itself a product of the industrial age."

This is i believe the most important argument in education for the decade... In every education event people reach the same conclusion.

we need to stop educating with industrial processes and head towards mass customization, we need individuals, not clones...

[Vicki Davis]

@hj - What a great example to share. I think it depends on who is watching. However, if my admin wanted me to record video for him, I'd be happy to do it.

[Gabriel Kent]

Government controls in education, or otherwise, simply do not work.

I think a lot of the speaker's complaints, as well as the gauntlet, would be best solved by an increasingly private (competitive) school system.

Only an open education market will ensure the greatest freedom for educators to teach and students to learn.

Why? Because the education bureaucracy will always have imperfect information in which to derive policy.

(;||<

[Vicki Davis]

@gabriel - I think there is a place for both - having checks and balances is so important in our society. Also, having competition is important. So, to get rid of "public" and privatize it all is to put in place another bureaucracy, is it not?

Leaner organizations are important, that is so true. But I've worked with both environments and they both have strengths and weaknesses. Smaller private schools have politics that can make it tough to teach. I believe empowering teachers to customize the classroom is the ultimate tipping point, whatever the model of the school.

[Donna Williams]

Oh my! This is the most hard-hitting, "tell it like it truly is" blogs that I have read in a long time. I admire and applaud your candor. My favorite statement is "let teachers teach". Amen. Can I have one day in which I have no paperwork? Ha. I also think that respecting individuality is crucial. I consider myself to be a creative person but I must adhere to a standard lesson plan and even a standard discipline plan (the clip system--please don't get me started on that).

I would throw down the gauntlet on teacher observations. I think administrators should observe more than one day/one lesson. I also think that teachers should be able to be able to be more involved with the process. I dread observations every year because it is a 30-45 minute glimpse of 1% of what goes on in your classroom. There is so much that they miss by only coming once and for such a short period of time. I also think webcams and such could be used in some way as part of the procsess.

Thank you so much for this post.

[Donna Williams]

@ Vicki Davis

I agree about the paperwork. Not to say I am one of the best teachers but I feel like a lot of the good things that I am doing are eclipsed by paperwork "issues". For example, my first year of school, I had no clue about any professional job. I had no clue about paperwork and what was truly expected. My paperwork was not up to par and I got in trouble. However, all of my evaluators stated that I had an awesome learning environment, rapport with students, and great lessons. But who cares about that because I filled out my form incorrectly.

[Louise Maine]

Looking that the vast American public cannot think critically on most issues, what will it actually take to change things. People have forgotten what is most important (in education and how we have failed the earth). Will it take something catastrophic to drive that point home? There is so much evidence out there.