A few weeks ago I experienced a first in my teaching career. Leaving school one afternoon, I was overcome with the feeling I did not want to return the next day. The source of this feeling was my overwhelming frustration at the apathy displayed by several of my colleagues.
My constant inner battle as a curriculum specialist at Brighton is how to balance what is best for children and at the same time nurture needy teachers. How do you work in a situation where the teacher needs are often greater than the needs of the students?
Last year our school had 272 days of job embedded professional development for our faculty of 42. This averages to be about 6.5 days per teacher. My principal and I firmly believe this was essential instructional training for our staff. We purposely chose a professional development model that offered training followed by intense classroom coaching. Yet here we are not quite four months into the next school year and for some teachers it seems we need to start all over again.
On a daily basis, I see teachers who start classes late, chatting on their cell phones while they eat breakfast in front of the students, whom they often refer to as "those kids." There are even a few classes where I have yet to see any instruction taking place.
As I pour over the last nine-weeks grade distribution forms, I realize that in one middle school grade level 60% of the students are failing Math and English. This is of great concern considering 66% of our eighth grade students are overage (we are a K-8 school).
Recently, I observed the teachers' expressions as my principal shared the first part of the video Failure is Not an Option and talked about her own life experience of growing up as child in a school very much like Brighton. She commended the teachers who made a difference in her life. The teacher reactions to this presentation were for the most part thoughtful and interested. However, the reaction of our weakest teachers ranged from rolling their eyes back in disgust to the one teacher who was busy sending text messages on her mobile device.
In our school we constantly strive to give teachers the support they need. At every grade level meeting, I try to give the teachers some materials that will make their work simpler. Our peer assistant from the State Department of Education disaggregates all of their test data, including quarterly benchmark tests, and pinpoints the exact areas of instructional need. Our schoolwide student-teacher ratio is an enviable 10 to 1. Teachers in our school have unlimited resources to use for instruction. We are constantly involved in ongoing job embedded professional development. This year, our faculty wrote professional standards for Brighton teachers that are posted in all classrooms. But we just aren't there yet.
So, how do we become a faculty of professionals? That's different than asking "when will we have professionals on our faculty?" We already do. We have some wonderful, committed teachers. But we are not yet a faculty where professionalism is pervasive. As the person who is here to assist in instruction, I am weary of feeling like I am the classroom monitor or policewoman, and I have an exhausted sense of urgency for what is not taking place for the children of Brighton in some classrooms.
As a professional educator, I am burdened with what Rick DuFour and others write in Whatever It Takes about our moral imperative to teach our children effectively. I believe we also have a moral imperative to our profession to insuring the quality of teaching. This is the bottom line issue in my school—teaching quality. I do not think my school is alone, as other low-performing schools are attacking this issue by partially or totally restaffing themselves. It is time for teachers to take charge of our own profession and set standards of excellence for all teachers to insure that all children, no matter where they live, have a quality teacher in the classroom.
Some readers may think by writing this I am not being supportive of our profession and that I am not willing to do whatever it takes to help the teachers in my school become professionals. This is not true. I hurt for the teachers in my school. Many of them have spent their careers at Brighton trying to make a difference. The majority of the teachers work very hard, but fail because they lack needed skills. These teachers we can help, but it is slow going and students are falling by the wayside while we work through this process. While it is a true dilemma, at least we can make incremental improvements with those who are willing to grow professionally.
However, I do not know what to do with those who will not try and are protected by tenure. This is a real issue in my school, in my state, and in our profession. This is the spectre that haunts me and motivates me to go back every day and try again.
Betsy,
I can both feel and understand your frustration. You cannot be a dedicated member of any profession and not feel anger at other members who are on cruise control. In your case, you have put so much thought and energy into helping the kids of Brighton and you have been in a position to see other teachers make such a great effort, that it must be doubly frustrating to find a core of teachers, or even a single teacher who does not share that drive. A teacher who will not prepare, a teacher who will not instruct, a teacher who refuses to improve practice, a teacher who does not like or, at least respect the kids is a roadblock to student success. And just as there is ALWAYS a student in the class who is disruptive and challenging, there is ALWAYS a teacher in the school who is contrary and determinedly ineffective.
I know that feeling of not wanting to have to go in and confront the problem again. I've had students who made me feel that way. But you know something, it's been years since I've been in that situation--not because kids have suddenly gotten better, but because I gradually have. I've learned how to head them off, how to pressure them to modify their behavior, how to reduce the attention they get for being disruptive and increase the attention they get for being on task. I've learned how to push them at times to go beyond the edge of acceptable disruption so that they recognize that they are in the wrong when parents and/or administrators are called in. I've learned how to use peer pressure to nudge them. And I've learned patience. I don't know about 'Bama but around NYC it's darned hard to get a trouble maker out of your class and even harder to get one out of your school. So you exhaust all other avenues before marshalling the great energy it's going to take to pursue that process.
Then those kids grow up and a few of them manage to become teachers who still deal with life the way they did when they were kids because, after all, it worked for them. But guess what, they respond to the same things that they did when they were kids, too.
You're doing the right things with the PD, but for these teachers(students) it is not enough. They need pressure brought to bear. They need to be made to feel more uncomfortable not doing what they should than doing what they should. Tenure or not, there are procedures for disciplining teachers just as there are to pressure students. Often, I hear, "They're adults, it's not my responsibility to make them act that way" and I know that it is just an excuse we give ourselves to avoid confronting uncomfortable situations. I try to keep in mind that kids aren't important because they are young, they're important because they are people. It's a peculiar twist of modern American thinking that makes people less valuable the older they get. If I'm not to be cared about as an adult, then it was a waste of energy caring about me as a child. Which is not to say that every person fits every where. It may be time to start the process of creating a file on some of those tenured people and making it clear that their choice is change or be removed. Only you and your principal can decide that. But don't turn your upset on the tenure system. Keep in mind that those disruptive kids just as often make it to administrative positions as to teaching positions and without a protectant such as tenure they can do a great deal of damage. It SHOULD be a difficult process, just as it should be difficult to remove students. It gives both sides a chance to change and develop as well as making removal a last resort, not a convenient way to avoid a problem.
We want our education system to be humane. Well, that only happens when it is humane from the top down. That takes a lot of effort and some frustration, but it's worth it.
Joe
Posted by: Joe Bellacero | December 03, 2005 at 09:53 AM