I know I'm "just" a teacher, but...

...can I squeeze my way into this whole "Education Nation" debacle and offer my two cents' worth about what's right and wrong with our schools? I mean, I realize I'm no Oprah Winfrey, and I haven't sold nearly as many albums as John Legend, but since this is my blog and all, I guess I'll go ahead and weigh in on what I think the school system needs:

1) Prepare us, then empower us...
We need to do what research has proven to be effective...not necessarily what textbook companies sell to our districts in tidy packages. How about making teacher prep programs more rigorous (and practical), treating and paying teachers like professionals, then allowing us to plan and deliver instruction rather than read from scripts?

One of my teacher's manuals actually has a recurring sidebar feature entitled "Corrective Feedback," where it gives helpful scripts such as, "If a student reads the word through as thought, say, 'The word is thought. Please re-read the sentence." To quote the great Dave Barry, I am not making this up. Someone actually thinks teachers are incompetent enough to need this script. I love the mental image of a teacher searching frantically through the teacher's manual to figure out what to say when a student misreads a word. Who is using this feature??

If you ask me, when using novels in the classroom is discouraged, or even forbidden, because authentic reading experiences have been replaced with watered-down basal readers and dull companion workbooks, something is WRONG. Be very afraid.

2) ...but don't empower us TOO much.

I'm a pro-union kind of girl, but I've seen and heard about plenty of administrators who feel their hands are tied when it comes to correcting, disciplining, or dismissing teachers, and so they don't even bother trying. Is it so unreasonable to expect that a principal have the authority and the willingness to say, "Hey, Mr. X, I know you love to teach this month-long unit on Garbage Pail Kids, but it doesn't relate to your grade-level standards...and no, jotting down a Listening and Speaking standard under each lesson does not count"? Shouldn't an administrator feel comfortable saying, "Mrs. Y, showing Disney movies/playing Heads Up Seven Up/reading a Danielle Steele novel during instructional time is not acceptable"?

Teachers are all about unity, and no one wants to be in the position of judging or condemning a colleague, but we all know that a few truly lousy teachers are out there, and they're making the entire profession look bad. Granting us tenure after a year or two and making it nearly impossible to fire us may seem like a gift horse I shouldn't be looking in the mouth, but it's not doing us any favors in the court of public opinion.

3) Teachers need to be really, honestly evaluated by people who are experts at effective teaching.

My district and union recently agreed on a contract that includes giving veteran teachers the option to only be evaluated every five years. In what other profession are you given a job and then allowed to walk into your "office," close the door behind you, and not have your performance observed or evaluated for five years?? Even every two years, which is more the norm, seems ridiculous to me, especially considering that these observations are almost always scheduled and are therefore not necessarily a fair representation of how our classrooms run on a regular basis. (How many of us give the "The principal is coming to observe YOU today, so please be on your best behavior" speech to our classes beforehand? Or teach a lesson we never even would've done otherwise because we think it'll show the boss what s/he wants to see?) My opinion is this: teachers who either are already effective, or care about becoming effective, want to be observed and evaluated in a meaningful, constructive way. And they deserve to be.

Also, I've been lucky in the principal department so far in my career, but there are plenty of them who spend about ten minutes teaching before they're put in the position of supervising and evaluating teachers; and regardless of how much teaching experience they have, most administrators simply don't have the time to do extensive, useful evaluations of every teacher several times a year. How do we fix this? *shrug* No idea. Hey, I've never won a Grammy--what do I know about fixing education?? I'm sure Kanye West or Lady Gaga have some great suggestions, though!

4) Watch and learn.

This may be my reality TV addiction coming through again, but I'm all for transparency--put cameras in my classroom, I say! Watch what I'm doing and tell me what's working and what could be improved...and then show me how. (Plus, when parent conference time comes around, it would be awesome to be able to say, "Really? So Joey said he doesn't know why he got a poor behavior grade? Let's go to the tapes." Oh, the "Daily Show" style montages I would love to make!)

Teachers need to watch each other teach as often as possible. That video cameras in classrooms idea would come in handy for this part, too. All the theory and buzzword-filled staff development seminars in the world are meaningless compared to an hour spent watching a masterful teacher at work--and I know this from personal experience. What's that old proverb? "Tell me and I'll forget. Show me and I might remember. Involve me and I'll understand." Right now, teachers are being told plenty, shown little, and involved hardly at all when it comes to fixing our schools, while celebrities and politicians with zero expertise in the area are pontificating left and right. How about we defer to the experts--experienced, effective teachers--and let them show us the way?

5) Which begs the question...

...how do we know who the best teachers are?

Here's one answer: after 20 years, Teach for America recently released its data on teacher effectiveness. They found that great teachers all tend to

• have high expectations of students


• constantly re-evaluate and modify their teaching methods


• actively seek out student and parent involvement


• use all classroom time to promote learning


• plan backward from desired outcomes


• refuse to use bureaucracy, poverty, lack of funding, etc. as excuses


• make decisions based on data

And how did they know which teachers were great in the first place? They used--you guessed it!--standardized test scores. Now, I realize that I'm supposed to be all up in arms over the idea of test scores being used to evaluate teachers, and in some ways, I am. I'll let this article and this research speak for me on that subject. However, when students consistently, year after year, leave a particular teacher's classroom with scores far higher (or lower) than when they arrived, I'd venture to say it's fair to assume it has something to do with that teacher's effectiveness. Should teachers' pay or job security be based solely on these numbers? No more than students' grades should be based on the results of one test or assignment. But put test scores together with frequent, effective evaluations, and I think it's possible to get a fair idea of how well individual teachers are performing.

6) Also?

Yeah, that about covers it.