Professional Development Debate

I sometimes run into a debate about professional development for teachers that takes the form of content vs. pedagogy.  As with any debate, the lines are usually too sharply drawn and the arguments pro and con typically too simplistic.  Should schools spend time and money on helping teachers learn more about and stay up to date with content in their field?  The latest in genetics for biology teachers. Cutting edge social science for the social studies department.  Review and analysis of the latest and greatest in literature for those entrusted with teaching our students to read and write. Or would resources be better spent on teachers learning to deliver content they already know in ever more effective, more creative, and more 21st century modes?  I have known teachers who know everything there is to know about a particular field and are not that great at communicating what they know to young people.  I have also met creative, student-centered teachers who seem to barely grasp what they are teaching. With increasingly limited resources, how should schools spend their PD resources?

Clearly outstanding teaching involves both: compelling up to date content combined with effective teaching strategies. However, I do believe that the ground has shifted. Once content was king and pedagogy played a subservient role.  Good teachers could get away with engaging lectures, checking for understanding with Q &A, and ultimately testing to assess whether content had been mastered. But now that the latest content is generally accessible to anyone with an internet connection, do teachers really need to be the master's of content?

If the answer to that question is "no," PD priority should be given to pedagogy.  In other words, schools should spend what  available resources they have in time and money teaching all teachers a contemporary framework for learning--sound and, let's say, multi-media methods for educating (not just instructing) students.  Teachers should be in the vanguard of social networking, not breathlessly behind.  Schools should be on the cutting edge of mobile computing, app development, and cloud use not banning smart phones. PD time should be devoted to technologies that help teachers with podcasting, screen casting, video editing, etc. not to reviewing (yet again) test-prep strategies. Once content was everything, now it's everywhere. Have we taken that difference seriously in our classrooms?

There really is no debate.

On Tears and Tests

I spoke to a teacher recently and she told me this story:

One of the better students in her AP English class approached her desk teary-eyed and accompanied by a close friend. The girl said, "I am leaving school. My mother is moving us closer to the boyfriend"--the last two words dripping with distaste. The teacher admitted regrettably that her first words in response were: "But we need your test score!" She recovered with "I am so sorry to hear that" and other words of consolation and support. But she was shocked and dismayed at how co-opted she had become by a mindset that puts tests results ahead of students.

I firmly believe that no teacher ever got into teaching to raise standardized test scores--given once a year--as high as possible.  I firmly believe that teachers were and are called into this profession and remain in this profession for an incredibly rich constellation of factors that include everything from passion for a subject to love for young people and a desire to help them reach their full potential.  And I firmly believe that teachers, like the one with whom I spoke, recognizing that they have been co-opted can and will make choices in words and actions that express that calling.

Composting Lessons

How about this for a parent child exchange?  A friend of mine related a conversation he had with his fifth grade daughter after school.


Bill: What did you do in school?
Emily: Oh, we didn't do any work.
Bill: No work? What do you mean? What did you do?
Emily: Some friends and I spent most of the day learning how to compost. We built this compost box. And they gave us this list of everything you can compost.  We asked some middle school kids for help and got their ideas.  We wrote all these down on some paper and are starting to figure out how we can get more stuff to compost from maybe restaurants and stores. Then we had to go to the library and I checked out these books on composting.


So no "work" just a whole lot of learning. One key to student engagement is to blur the line between the work of learning and what creates Fun & Excitement for students.  Finding lessons and activities during which students lose track of time and consider the day to have been work-free helps develop a joy and passion for learning that can be lifelong.  

Nearly 7 out of 10 (69%) students on the recently released National My Voice survey agree that learning can be fun. While this is a clear majority of students, it should makes us wonder if the 31% of students who could not agree think learning is only work and drudgery. Learning does take effort, but that effort need not be a dull affair.  Learning that is hands on, interactive, has an everyday life application, and makes a difference engages students in a way that makes effort seem easy.  How can you compost lessons you know need recycling into something rich, useful, and nurturing for your students? 


By the way, my friend Bill reports they are now saving egg shells and coffee grinds.

Study Period Period

I can't tell you the number of study periods I have observed in which studying was scarce. I have seen study periods held in traditional classrooms, in cafeterias, in libraries, and in the bleachers of a gymnasium while phys. ed. class was in session. I have seen study periods with 6 students and a few with over 50.  Inevitably one or two students seem to be studying, another couple are doing homework, and the majority are sleeping, listening to an iPod, or quietly chatting.  The adult at the front of the room rarely seems to mind. In one study period the teacher and some likeminded students were watching a video about dirt bikes that the teacher had brought in (I am not at all against teachers and students sharing common interests in this way!) In one urban high school, we were told that some seniors had 3 study periods a day because they only need a few classes to graduate. Disruptions seem to be the only unallowable.

I want to make a bold recommendation: Study Period full stop. Let's get rid of it. Let's start by being honest and admit that in most schools it has decayed into a glorified teenager-sitting session (I really can't use "baby-sitting"). The students who are "studying" are either doing homework (which I suppose is fine; that's when my 2 kids said they did their homework) or cramming for a test they have later that day. So much for "home" work and "studying" for tests. But for most kids it is the idlest part of the day. And if kids need idle time let's keep it, but let's not pretend it's anything other than recess for high school students.

What if we trusted kids? What if we said: You are going to have this free period every once in awhile in your schedule and here are some options: You can go to the library to study or read. You can go to the media center to watch an educational video (TED talks!) or look up something you are struggling with in a class (Kahn Academy!). You can go to the computer lab and do anything educational online. You can go to a teacher for extra help. You can form a club. You can help out a secretary, or the librarian, or the media center coordinator, or the cafeteria staff, or the bookstore staff, or the custodian.  No; you don't get paid; it's your school, too. You can take a nap. You can listen to music.

What if instead of pretend study periods we had IEP (Individualized Education Plan) Periods for every student? Every student makes a plan for something they want to learn during that time and are held accountable to learning it.  What if instead of mock study periods we had Portfolio Periods during which each and every student and to work with an advisor on building a portfolio on interests and skills that could be used as part of a college or job entry process?

What if we stopped pretending and ended study periods period?

Akron to Sidney

Last week I was in schools in Akron, Ohio (population 199,000) and this week I was in a school in Sidney, Montana (population 5100).  Whether inner city or rural as they come, we seem to be facing the same puzzle.  Teachers who care and students who don't perceive that care.  Teachers wanting to engage students and students who are not engaged. Teachers who believe education is the key to the future and students who don't quite get the connection between what they are doing in school today and what they will be doing in the real world tomorrow.

The more I see and study our country's schools the more I believe that those who see either teachers (lazy, inadequately trained, etc.) or students (lazy, over stimulated, ill-mannered, etc.) as the problem are misguided.  I suppose if one only looked at test scores and saw them stagnate or falling, one would be inclined to blame one of the two parties involved in producing those scores. And if the whole system is set up with those test scores as the only indicator of success and it was becoming clear "success" was unattainable, you would have to grant waivers or else admit you had set schools up for failure.

But if you talk to teachers and to students, it becomes clear quickly that the very rules of the game are a cause of its own inability to produce a successful outcome.  Imagine a baseball game that required touchdowns from each team to declare a winner.  Who would you blame for a baseball team's inability to produce touchdowns?  The players?  The coaches? The umpires? Or the one's who set up the game that way?

Teachers seem not to care when students think they care more about them as students (i.e., test takers) than they do about them as persons. Teachers find it impossible to be engaging when pacing guides keep them relentlessly driving toward various pre-test markers.  And when schools have become nothing more than test taking factories, it's no wonder students don't see the connection between being successful test takers and the real world in their future.  So let me ask (a rhetorical question): Are students more likely to succeed academically in a school they believe is caring, engaging, and relevant or one that is so "ridiculously focused on the state test"--as one student put it--so as to inspire only effective test taking?

Role and Goal Confusion

One thing I have noticed in schools is something referred to as "Role and Goal Confusion."  The more I talk with school staff, the more I see it as a cause of tension and even disrespect.  Consider this thought experiment (or try it for real):  Have teachers write a job description for themselves, including their goals as professionals.  Have administrators write a job description for themselves, including their professional goals.  Now have the teachers write a job description for and the goals of administrators.  And have the administrators write the job description for and goals of a teacher.  Finally, compare notes.

One thing I see frequently is that the lists do not match.  Sometimes the differences are dramatic.  "No wonder I don't think you are doing your job!" What do we do when a cause of tension or disrespect is my thinking you are not doing what I think your job is? Or when you think I am not doing what you think my job is?

This confusion is not limited to those in different positions (e.g., teachers and administrators, support staff and teachers, etc.).  It can creep in among teachers themselves. Sometimes it breaks down along department lines (in high schools) or grade level lines (in middle schools still struggling between junior high and middle school philosophies) or even along "old school" "new school" lines.  We can converse with trusted colleagues in the parking lot about how other people are not doing their job. Or we can clear up the confusion face to face, colleague to colleague, and learn how we are each doing our job as we understand it to the best of our ability.

Silent Voices

"They're never this quiet!" --a first ring Cleveland teacher commenting on the behavior of the 220 students sitting in an auditorium taking a My Voice survey.

The set up was the same as in Akron a few weeks ago.  More arm wrestling.  More encouragement to think win-win in school with teachers.  Only this time instead of sharing My Voice results with students, we were administering the My Voice survey.  This school had opted for the paper version and the silent seriousness with which students took the survey was impressive. All 1500 of them in 200+ installments. No one had to shush them.  No one had to ask them to be respectful to the guests.  No one had to pull a student out for horsing around.  We simply showed up, told the students we wanted to hear from them, and their desire to be heard, paradoxically, kept them quiet for the fifteen minutes it takes to complete the survey.

I am more and more convinced that this is how we must move forward in improving our schools.  Not in conference rooms with committees of overworked teachers and administrators trying to decide what is best for the students, but with students themselves as our partners.  In these assemblies I keep saying teachers and students want the same thing:  Students don't want to be bored and teachers don't want to be boring, students do not enter high school so they can drop out and no teacher wants students to drop out, students do not want to be ignorant and teachers do not want their students to be ignorant.  Why then have we been stuck for the past ten years with the same amount of students saying they are bored, the same dropout rate, the same amount of ignorance and, by the way, fairly stagnant test scores?

I don't know the answer.  I do know that if we start listening to students more they will help us find them. I know that if we ask the right questions in all seriousness they will answer in all seriousness. I know the way forward is with the students, not simply on our own, even if on their behalf.