Improve Teaching With This One Trick

We talk a fair amount about improving instruction in the classroom and providing students with high quality instruction. For a long time, reformsters focused on the notion that we could identify bad teachers and fire our way to excellence. I know one quick trick that can improve the quality of teaching without new trainings and without finding a magical tree that grows super teachers. My trick can be performed with the teaching force that we have right now.

Ready? Here it is.

Put better administration in place. 

The job of school and district administrators is to provide the environment, support, and resources need in order to do their best possible work. That's it. That's the whole job. 

But talk to many teachers and you can become rapidly discouraged by the vast number of school and district administrators who have lost the plot. There are a wide variety of bad administrators out there-- power-hungry, in over their head, focused on the wrong targets, etc-- and their ways of being bad are likewise varied-- shmoozy liars, blustering bullies, disconnected and disengaged-- but the bad administrators all have the effect of making their schools worse than they could be. The difference between a good teaching job and a bad one is very often the boss you have to work for.

Lack of useful support for dealing with student behavior? Administration. No chance to build and improve instructional content and strategies? Administration. Blocked on your pursuit of professional growth? Administration. Too much work and too little time? Administration. Feeling isolated and unrecognized (or even punished) for your professional achievements? Administration. Facing challenges and have no place to get help? Administration. Just plain tired of a daily flow of petty bullshit? Administration.

Can teachers deal with all of their professional issues on their own, using their own initiative and resources? Sure, and many teachers do, because they know they have to, and any teacher should be able to put on her big girl pants and Do The Work-- but why shouldn't they do it with administration support rather than in spite of administrative interference? Why should they have to fight upstream just to do the work?

Identifying problem administrators is actually pretty simple. Just ask staff one question--

Do you trust your administrators?

It is not a radical concept; renowned business leader W. Edwards Deming wrote extensively about the importance of creating an atmosphere of trust for running an effective organization. If you want to see those ideas applied specifically to schools, check out Andrea Gabor's After the Education Wars. 

Does your administration foster trust? Can a teacher believe that they will get the support and resources they need to do the best job they can? Can a teacher be certain that administration will deal with them honestly, with integrity, and holding to the words they say?

Trust does not require admins to be warm and fuzzy or mushy. It does not mean that admins won't call a Come To Jesus meeting with teachers who need it. It does not mean that the admins need to be masters of every aspect of teaching. It doesn't even mean that all of the staff needs to like them.

It does mean that they prioritize the work of teaching (it is amazing how many administrators think the main work of the district is what happens in their offices). It does mean that they are straight and honest and not given to bullshitting their staff. It does mean they have processes in place for finding, implementing, and supporting the best in instructional materials. It does mean that they find are always working to improve the environment, support, and resources for excellent teaching in the building.

The beauty of this is that it scales up really quickly. When one teacher gets better, that's one better teacher. When an administrator gets better, every teacher in the building improves. 

Are there bad teachers that may be hard to bring along? Sure, but I always go back to the Deming comment about deadwood. If there is deadwood in your organization, there are only two explanations-- either it was dead when you hired it, or once you hired it, you killed it. Either way, deadwood is a sign of a management problem.

Look, there's no question principal and superintendent jobs are rough-- long hours and, in some districts, a terrible power-to-responsibility ratio. Promoting from within can seem attractive, except in some districts (like my old one) moving from teacher at Assistant Principal can actually involve a pay cut. 

So the fix is not necessarily simple, but in terms of upgrades that can have a far-reaching effect on an entire system or building, improving your administration team yields plenty of broad improvement. Before you start trying to play whack-a-mole with a bunch of individual teachers, try looking at the bigger picture.