Diane Ravitch's recent columns about Ms. McLaughlin, one of the undeservingly employed terrible teachers of the Vergara trial, underlines one of the central problems of the whole teacher evaluation portion of the reformster dream.
Ms. McLaughlin won awards for teaching excellence not once, but twice in her career. And yet one of the plaintiffs found her to be grossly ineffective. Now, it's possible that there are factors at play here-- the plaintiff was reportedly recruited for the lawsuit by her only "effective" teacher, a teacher who was RIFed and whose job was then taken by Ms. McLaughlin. So, wheels within wheels.
But could it be possible that a teacher so many students found wonderful was a total dog for another teacher? Of course. Because as much as we think we get excellence in this country, excellence is still a mystery.
I don't imagine I'm God's gift to teaching, but I do okay. My feedback from students, both blind and personal, has been good over the years. But there have been years of my career when I was definitely less good, and there have been students who have been sure that I sucked hugely.
I had a colleague years ago whose students were sure they never did a damn thing in her class, that she was confused and disorganized and didn't know what she was doing. Yet those students came to me next, and invariably time after time I would ask a question about X, and they would answer it, and I would ask, "How did you know that?" and they would realize that Ms. McClueless had actually taught them a great deal.
And it's not just teaching. Every successful writer has devoted fans and an assortment of rabid haters. Every boss of a successful company has supporters and employees who would like to see him roasted slowly over a gas grill. And of course there has never been a political leader who was universally hailed as excellent.
How can someone be both excellent and terrible simultaneously? Mostly it comes down to different measures. If we measure strictly on writing skill, Stephenie Meyer is not awesome, but if we measure based on ability to generate revenue, Stephenie Meyer is a genius.
When measuring excellence, we use a wide variety of metrics. Some are irrelevant; my grandmother used to stop listening to any singer who was divorced, because a divorced person couldn't possibly sing well. Some not only accept bias, but embrace it-- if you are not on The Right Side, then everything you have to say must be horribly wrong. And some are just a matter of personal values. I may just want to hire somebody who gets the job done even if he's not very pleasant, while you may be as concerned about getting along with the person as getting the job done.
The problem with identifying teacher excellence has always been that we have a million ideas about what a teacher is supposed to do. Should Pat's kindergarten teacher make sure that Pat is happy and getting along well with others and maintaining a joyful attitude about life no matter how little Pat learns, or should Pat's teacher be making sure that Pat can master sight words even if it makes Pat miserable to do it? And if we're splitting the difference, where do we split it? And that's before we get to all the other expectations-- should my students learn traditional grammar (and how much) or should we spend more time on writing and what part of the canon (if any) should we read? Should my classroom be a free and open place where everything is filled with the spirit of free and open inquiry, or should it be like a tight, well-disciplined machine? And what's the proper balance of being teacher-directed and student directed?
We could play that game all day. You get the idea. We have a gazillion ideas of what an excellent teacher looks like.
Plenty of attempts have been made to use science-ish techniques to break down the traits of teacher excellence. People still disagree. Or rather, people still default to their own idea of what teacher excellence looks like.
The reformsters thought they had a solution. We'll just define an excellent teacher as one whose students get good scores on the Big Test. And now we're going to use Vergara-style lawsuits and new teacher-eval laws to cement that definition. You can have whatever definition of teacher excellence you like. The courts and the legislatures have the last word.
We could talk about why that definition of teacher excellence is small and narrow and not particularly good. But that's been covered. Let's talk about how it's reformsters shooting themselves in the feet again.
Remember how the whole Big Test thing worked:
Reformsters: We will give students a test to show exactly what they learned in the course of the year.
Parents:Well, that sounds like a good idea.
[Students actually take the test]
Parents: Damnl! I didn't realize that was how that was going to work. You want to do it some more?! Oh, hell no.
Reformsters can install new systems of determining teacher excellence, covered with a smoke screen about how this will "protect great teachers" and "guarantee a great teacher in every classroom." But when the random "ineffectives" start appearing and the public is seeing beloved Ms. Awesomesauce being canned because some system that nobody can really explain claims that she's no good, there will be noise. Particularly in smaller districts (we don't all teach in New York City, Chicago and LA) where teachers are well-known in their communities.
Reformsters keep making the same mistake. It's not enough to have a great sales pitch and convincing story about how well your super-duper plan is going to work. At some point, you have to deliver. From the promise of the Awesome Big Test (which was never going to work) to the promise of charter schools (which, operated for something other than profit, could have), reformsters have made promises they failed to keep.
The promise of evaluation-based staffing will be more of the same. When people see how badly it actually work, reformsters will feel the same kind of pushback that has them scurrying for cover on testing (umm... moratorium! yea, that's it!). The truly unfortunate part is that some large number of teaching careers will be derailed and uncountable could-have-been teachers chased away from the profession by the time that pushback happens. Reformsters are shooting themselves in the feet, but a lot of other people are going to get caught in the crossfire.
Monday, June 30, 2014
Sunday, June 29, 2014
The Uses of Small Data
Brian Kibby, the president of the Higher Education Group at McGraw-Hill, took to Huffington Post last week to praise Small Data.
"Big data" might be the most hollow, misused term in education. For all of the chest-pounding about how big data has come to education, how are colleges and instructors actually using it --now, in 2014?
Kibby notes that we've long heard that Big Data will change everything. But in fact "true big data does not exist in education today." Instead of cheering or fearing how Big Data will save us or bring on doomsday, Kibby suggests that we look at how it might actually be useful right now. Big Data could be awesome, and Kibby is a fan in theory, but in practice there are justifiable concerns about privacy as well as a lack of technology that can actually collect, crunch and process the data back to an instructor in any useful way.
Kibby would rather talk about what we can actually do today, and what we can do today are targetted analytics: "things like assignment scores, time spent on the material, progress in an adaptive learning environment."
What we're talking about is short term use, small picture stuff. "These tools aren't paying attention to whether the student had Frosted Flakes or Cheerios for breakfast the morning before a test, but they're looking at what matters most." (I'm guessing Kibby's familiar with the Knewton video) Instead, small data can monitor things like exactly how well the student did on the homework, or how long he worked on it.
What is the upside for McGraw-Hill in the moderately-courageous, slightly-new world?
Odd coincidence-- I just saw the Undercover Boss episode about the chancellor of the University of California at Riverside. He watched a class of 250 do lecture question response with a clicker which allowed the instructor to immediately gauge how well the class was getting it. It's cool stuff. I've seen it in action. I would use it.
What conclusion did the chancellor draw? This is really cool tech that would work well to scale up into other large classes. With this kind of tech, everybody could teach classes of five hundred.
I've always maintained that classroom teachers already do massive amounts of data collection, far more rich and varied than what reformsters have been pushing at us via testing etc. What a teacher collects by looking at, talking to, interacting with, giving small quizes, informal assessments-- we collect a ton of data every day that allows us to develop rich and valuable student assessments that help us make instructional choices and adapt teaching to the individual needs.
But there are limits to that. Beyond a certain number of students, I just can't collect all the data. I can't watch 100 faces to see reactions. I can't informally verbally assess 100 students.
With small data systems in place? Hmmm. Cyber schooling has turned out to be a bust for all but a small sector of the student population. But what about a hybrid, somewhere in between the two extremes. A few hundred students still in a classroom with a live, actual instructor, but interacting through computer tech that allows him to collect and save response data from all those students.
I'm not sure how well it would work. But if it worked well at all, McGraw-Hill could sell a lot of materials, and Anywhere University could cut 50% of that pesky adjunct staff.
"Big data" might be the most hollow, misused term in education. For all of the chest-pounding about how big data has come to education, how are colleges and instructors actually using it --now, in 2014?
Kibby notes that we've long heard that Big Data will change everything. But in fact "true big data does not exist in education today." Instead of cheering or fearing how Big Data will save us or bring on doomsday, Kibby suggests that we look at how it might actually be useful right now. Big Data could be awesome, and Kibby is a fan in theory, but in practice there are justifiable concerns about privacy as well as a lack of technology that can actually collect, crunch and process the data back to an instructor in any useful way.
Kibby would rather talk about what we can actually do today, and what we can do today are targetted analytics: "things like assignment scores, time spent on the material, progress in an adaptive learning environment."
What we're talking about is short term use, small picture stuff. "These tools aren't paying attention to whether the student had Frosted Flakes or Cheerios for breakfast the morning before a test, but they're looking at what matters most." (I'm guessing Kibby's familiar with the Knewton video) Instead, small data can monitor things like exactly how well the student did on the homework, or how long he worked on it.
What is the upside for McGraw-Hill in the moderately-courageous, slightly-new world?
Odd coincidence-- I just saw the Undercover Boss episode about the chancellor of the University of California at Riverside. He watched a class of 250 do lecture question response with a clicker which allowed the instructor to immediately gauge how well the class was getting it. It's cool stuff. I've seen it in action. I would use it.
What conclusion did the chancellor draw? This is really cool tech that would work well to scale up into other large classes. With this kind of tech, everybody could teach classes of five hundred.
I've always maintained that classroom teachers already do massive amounts of data collection, far more rich and varied than what reformsters have been pushing at us via testing etc. What a teacher collects by looking at, talking to, interacting with, giving small quizes, informal assessments-- we collect a ton of data every day that allows us to develop rich and valuable student assessments that help us make instructional choices and adapt teaching to the individual needs.
But there are limits to that. Beyond a certain number of students, I just can't collect all the data. I can't watch 100 faces to see reactions. I can't informally verbally assess 100 students.
With small data systems in place? Hmmm. Cyber schooling has turned out to be a bust for all but a small sector of the student population. But what about a hybrid, somewhere in between the two extremes. A few hundred students still in a classroom with a live, actual instructor, but interacting through computer tech that allows him to collect and save response data from all those students.
I'm not sure how well it would work. But if it worked well at all, McGraw-Hill could sell a lot of materials, and Anywhere University could cut 50% of that pesky adjunct staff.
A Few Blog Recommendations
This will be post #400 on the blog, and I thought I'd use it to direct your attention to some other blogs. This is by no means an exhaustive and comprehensive list-- there are tons of people blogging about education these days, and I keep discovering new (to me) voices. I've put off writing this kind of post because I don't want to short-change someone, but I'm going to go ahead anyway, because better imperfectly than never on this.
@ the Chalk Face
One of several collective blogs, gathering together many of the major writers in the blogosphere, including Mercedes Schneider, Kris Nielsen, Shaun Johnson and Tim Slekar. Comes with a radio show on Blog Talk Radio
Network for Public Education News Briefs
Another anthology blog, with pieces from many members of the Network for Public Education.
Public School Shakedown
A blog from the Progressive that presents a fine roster of many great bloggers, collected with a progressive bent.
Jersey Jazzman
One of many regional bloggers who make it worth your while to read about places that you don't actually live. He's good with sass and sharp language, but the Jazzman is also a very capable cruncher of numbers and stalker of stats. And New Jersey is ground zero for many reformster initiatives, so it's worth your while to pay attention.
Crazy Crawfish's Blog
New Orleans is another petri dish in which strange and important things have been left to grow. This blog covers it with style.
Perdido Street Station
This blog covers all things New York. You'll notice that I have a soft spot for writers who bring a sharp edge and wit to their writing. Bonus points for the obscure-ish SF reference in the title.
Yinzercation
Pittsburgh based, but covering Pennsylvania, this blogger-activist has scored some major victories over the past few years.
Common Core
Out in Utah, three conservative moms got together to stand up against CCSS. These ladies have done their homework, and they are often a great source of facts.
Wait What?
Jonathan Pelto has kept the heat turned up in Connecticut, to the point that he is now running for governor against an incumbent not-very-education-friendly Democratic governor.
School Finance 101
With as many economists and business types are lined up against public education, it's nice to have someone who can count those beans honestly and clearly enough that laypeople can get it working on the side of the angels.
Teacher Under Construction
John Kuhn called Steph Rivera "a force of nature." Follow this young woman who has a powerful record as an activist and an impossible-to-ignore voice as a writer.
Wag the Dog
Freewheeling far-ranging discussion of many of the issues of the day in education.
VAM-boozled
Audrey Amrein-Beardsley brings a clear understanding of the data and fuzzy math behind the murkiest subject of the day-- VAM. She makes it easy to understand what the heck is going on, and why it should stop.
Russ on Reading
Russ Walsh came to blog about reading and reading instruction; he stayed to try to figure out what the heck is happening in our schools today. Often wry and witty, this teaching veteran belongs on your blogroll.
Edushyster
Edushyster brings legitimate journalist chops to her work, but she is also one of the funniest writers in the blogosphere. Real substance in a sweet candy coating.
The Becoming Radical
Reading Paul Thomas just makes me feel smarter. Well-read, deep-thinking, Thomas manages to connect the clear specifics of the education world to the Big Ideas underlying them. And he knows his comics, too, so bonus.
Susan Ohanian
Navigating Ohanian's blog can be daunting, but that's because she's been on line forever. Ohanian was sounding the alarm on the modern school reform movement while many of us were still snoozing. Hers is a voice that deserves attention.
Peg with Pen
She does not post often, but when she does, you want to pay attention.
Cloaking Inequity
Julian Vasquez Heilig is one of the most powerful important voices out there right now. The man appears to need neither sleep nor rest, and he has forced many people to take another look at what's happening to equity and equality in education.
Gatsby in L.A.
An unusual blog in that it's just about finished. Ellie Herman was a screenwriter/producer who dropped out of the biz to get into a classroom. Her adventure started last August, and you can read through her whole year. Smart and sensitive.
Honest Practicum
Erin Osborne working to find her way through the reformy morass, with a real gift for graphics.
Living in Dialogue
Anthony Cody is a founding member of the Network for Public Education and a great voice for the resistance. His EdWeek blog examines many of the important topics of the day.
Mercedes Schneider's Edublog
If you read here often, you already know I'm a fan. Indispensable research hound, this woman has ferreted out more raw information about what's really going on behind the curtain than any other single writer.
The Answer Key
At the Washington Post, Valerie Strauss is one of the best mainstream writers about education out there, and she features plenty of top-notch guest talent.
Diane Ravitch's Blog
If you read me, you undoubtedly read Ravitch, but just in case, know that in the edublogoverse, all roads lead to her. An insanely prolific poster, she provides a daily digest of what's being written, what news is breaking, and what we all need to know.
There are many, many, many, many more. Hunt through the links on the right side of the screen. I encourage you to read, follow links, and pass on what you like. You can help voices be heard by posting, tweeting and sharing the words that are powerful for you.
@ the Chalk Face
One of several collective blogs, gathering together many of the major writers in the blogosphere, including Mercedes Schneider, Kris Nielsen, Shaun Johnson and Tim Slekar. Comes with a radio show on Blog Talk Radio
Network for Public Education News Briefs
Another anthology blog, with pieces from many members of the Network for Public Education.
Public School Shakedown
A blog from the Progressive that presents a fine roster of many great bloggers, collected with a progressive bent.
Jersey Jazzman
One of many regional bloggers who make it worth your while to read about places that you don't actually live. He's good with sass and sharp language, but the Jazzman is also a very capable cruncher of numbers and stalker of stats. And New Jersey is ground zero for many reformster initiatives, so it's worth your while to pay attention.
Crazy Crawfish's Blog
New Orleans is another petri dish in which strange and important things have been left to grow. This blog covers it with style.
Perdido Street Station
This blog covers all things New York. You'll notice that I have a soft spot for writers who bring a sharp edge and wit to their writing. Bonus points for the obscure-ish SF reference in the title.
Yinzercation
Pittsburgh based, but covering Pennsylvania, this blogger-activist has scored some major victories over the past few years.
Common Core
Out in Utah, three conservative moms got together to stand up against CCSS. These ladies have done their homework, and they are often a great source of facts.
Wait What?
Jonathan Pelto has kept the heat turned up in Connecticut, to the point that he is now running for governor against an incumbent not-very-education-friendly Democratic governor.
School Finance 101
With as many economists and business types are lined up against public education, it's nice to have someone who can count those beans honestly and clearly enough that laypeople can get it working on the side of the angels.
Teacher Under Construction
John Kuhn called Steph Rivera "a force of nature." Follow this young woman who has a powerful record as an activist and an impossible-to-ignore voice as a writer.
Wag the Dog
Freewheeling far-ranging discussion of many of the issues of the day in education.
VAM-boozled
Audrey Amrein-Beardsley brings a clear understanding of the data and fuzzy math behind the murkiest subject of the day-- VAM. She makes it easy to understand what the heck is going on, and why it should stop.
Russ on Reading
Russ Walsh came to blog about reading and reading instruction; he stayed to try to figure out what the heck is happening in our schools today. Often wry and witty, this teaching veteran belongs on your blogroll.
Edushyster
Edushyster brings legitimate journalist chops to her work, but she is also one of the funniest writers in the blogosphere. Real substance in a sweet candy coating.
The Becoming Radical
Reading Paul Thomas just makes me feel smarter. Well-read, deep-thinking, Thomas manages to connect the clear specifics of the education world to the Big Ideas underlying them. And he knows his comics, too, so bonus.
Susan Ohanian
Navigating Ohanian's blog can be daunting, but that's because she's been on line forever. Ohanian was sounding the alarm on the modern school reform movement while many of us were still snoozing. Hers is a voice that deserves attention.
Peg with Pen
She does not post often, but when she does, you want to pay attention.
Cloaking Inequity
Julian Vasquez Heilig is one of the most powerful important voices out there right now. The man appears to need neither sleep nor rest, and he has forced many people to take another look at what's happening to equity and equality in education.
Gatsby in L.A.
An unusual blog in that it's just about finished. Ellie Herman was a screenwriter/producer who dropped out of the biz to get into a classroom. Her adventure started last August, and you can read through her whole year. Smart and sensitive.
Honest Practicum
Erin Osborne working to find her way through the reformy morass, with a real gift for graphics.
Living in Dialogue
Anthony Cody is a founding member of the Network for Public Education and a great voice for the resistance. His EdWeek blog examines many of the important topics of the day.
Mercedes Schneider's Edublog
If you read here often, you already know I'm a fan. Indispensable research hound, this woman has ferreted out more raw information about what's really going on behind the curtain than any other single writer.
The Answer Key
At the Washington Post, Valerie Strauss is one of the best mainstream writers about education out there, and she features plenty of top-notch guest talent.
Diane Ravitch's Blog
If you read me, you undoubtedly read Ravitch, but just in case, know that in the edublogoverse, all roads lead to her. An insanely prolific poster, she provides a daily digest of what's being written, what news is breaking, and what we all need to know.
There are many, many, many, many more. Hunt through the links on the right side of the screen. I encourage you to read, follow links, and pass on what you like. You can help voices be heard by posting, tweeting and sharing the words that are powerful for you.
John King's Story
Listening to people tell their story often gives us a clue what they are thinking about, how they do the connecting of certain dots. That was my reaction to watching this video from a Manhattan Institute appearance by John King. Sometimes people who are sincere about wanting to fix education in this country (I do not assume all reformsters are cynical profiteering greedhounds) make connections between things that simply don't make sense. But by looking at their stories, sometimes we can see what The Dream is for education.
The whole business is introed by Charles Sahm, a deputy director at the Institute with whom I've had some entirely pleasant email correspondence, and his intro contains one notable nugget-- apparently the Manhattan Institute is planning to release rankings of every school in the country next year. Swell.
Norman Atkins Leads Off
But next up, to introduce John King, is Norman Atkins of the Relay Graduate School of Education and Uncommon Schools. Between his intro and the beginning of John King's speech, we get a full version of the John King Story.
Atkins opens by observing that "teacher training" is now a "politically incorrect" phrase. "So we have to be careful with our language." He's just saying, I guess.
Atkins sets up an analogy by referring to the group that launched Uncommon Schools as a dream team, and John King was Michael Jordan. But he's going to tell a story.
Labor Day, 1999. John King (who would have been about 24) and Evan Ruttle (sp?) were getting ready to open Roxberry Prep, one of the country's most swell charter schools. John had worked for two or three years (my sources say two) at City on the Hill Charter School. So it's been a long day, but late in the day, they noticed that the student name stickers on the lockers were "put up in a really sloppy fashion." King declared that unacceptable, so in the wee hours, they were fixing the stickers on the lockers. And while they were doing that, King was describing the vision for teaching each of the core subjects at Roxberry, based on all the work they had done preparing the school. In Atkins telling, this involved scouring the international standards and national standards "such as they were" and Massachusetts standards. King had figured out the arc of lessons and units and "was narrating this with tremendous energy and detail." And at that moment, Roxberry Prep was born.
So here's one piece of The Dream-- a school that is squeaky-perfect, completely planned and controlled by the people who run it. Also note-- given all the illustrative stories Atkins could pick to show how King injected greatness into Roxberry, he picks a story without any teachers or students in it.
Classroom Is Key
Atkins quotes Sol Stern to Sol Stern, saying "the primal scene of all education reform is in the classsroom." One of the reasons we're in so much trouble in American education, says Atkins, is many of the people in charge of education haven't spent time in the classroom." But we are blessed in New York to have a leader "who knows instruction and what goes on in the classroom better than anybody."
Someday I'll have a chance to send out a reformster questionnaire, and one of the questions I'll ask is "How do you think people best acquire knowledge of how to do classroom instruction?" Because on the one hand reformsters think teachers (particularly experienced ones) have no knowledge worth consulting. On the other hand, John King, who taught in a public classroom a grand total ONE year, and only two more in a charter classroom, somehow knows more about classroom instruction than God.
Atkins says that one of the reasons that King is beloved is that he would plan down to every small detail the instruction for the entire year in his school and our schools. He would do this with high standards, and plan the entire year in detail for the students to achieve that.
Well, one can certainly see how that might lead to an education commissioner who likes the idea of canned online day-by-day lessons on engageNY. But what reason do we have to believe that this is good teaching? Certainly I should not walk into the classroom and pull today's lesson out of my butt, but if know exactly what I'm doing on the 150th day of school before I have even met my students on the first, I am NOT a great teacher. I am a content delivery specialist, and my students are little cogs who are supposed to mold themselves to fit my program. I have already built my square hole; all you pegs had better shape up, no matter what shape you started out as.
Educational Rock Star
Also, according to Atkins, King was out and about in his schools a great deal, popping into every classroom on a daily basis, "managing instruction." He continues to do this as commissioner. He isn't just watching teachers, but his eye is on the students, seeing what they're learning and if they're learning. He's asking would this class be good enough for my kids. He is also a master at giving feedback; his visits are not evaluative with your career on the line, but a way to get better. Imagine having someone "so brilliant" come into your room and give you "incredible" feedback.
This is another part of The Dream. A necessary ingredient for excellent schools is rock star leaders, educational geniuses who can lead all the lesser beings. Reformsters like to talk about teams, but what they invariably describe is a benevolent monarchy. A brilliant creates and directs a vision, and the rest of the plebes fall in line and implement it.
I expect this is why King has spent his whole career gravitating to charters-- because in a charter, the ability to control everything, every detail, every teacher, every student, is so much greater. You can teach exactly the kind of students you want with exactly the teachers you want teaching exactly as you want.
Boosting Common Core
John asks questions, and the core question is "Is this good enough?" Always positive, but never satisfied. And always told the truth. Being the "captain" for education is hard, but we need a truth teller because we are lying to ourselves. 80% think other people's schools are failing, but our own schools are great. "There's something not right about that." By plugging CCSS, King is exposing that what we're doing isn't good enough.
Why is that a good idea? Again, I'm no fan of building educational camels in committee, but what if there aren't enough geniuses to go around? What if the genius isn't right all of the time? What if somebody passes themselves off as a genius but is actually a gigantic tool? And doesn't this tend to result in schools that are organized around the genius and not the students?
Atkins now attaches King to the tradition of Horace Mann. Mann wanted common schools for everyone; King wants Common Core for everyone. Atkins defines Common Core as "highest possible standards for all our children." Atkins name-checks Steiner and Cerf who both suggested that John's intro include a reference to his courage. When other states are ducking away from CCSS, King has the courage to stay the course.
King Tells His Story
The Dream is always of high standards, and we continue to cling to the unexamined (by reformsters) assumption that CCSS represent high standards, not to mention the unexamined assumption that such a thing as a single set of standards that will fit our entire nation of children is even do-able, or could even bring about results. None of those assumptions have been proven correct. Repeatedly pushing them forward is not the same as proving them.
King leads off with his story. And make no mistake-- King's story is a hell of a story. Mother passed away when he was eight, leaving King with a father who was dying of Alazheimers, King credits public school teachers with saving him. And he doesn't do it in a vague, general way-- he routinely names the guy. Mr. Osterweil was challenging and exciting and King says that in his class, they had the Common Core before it was the Common Core. They studied Shakespeare. They would read the New York Times every day and summarize the articles, and King benefited forever after from the academic work and the discipline. They had a classroom that was stable, challenging, and nurturing.
It is a great story, even if usually skips over the part where he was thrown out of Phillips Andover ivy league prep school. And the fact that King equates Common Core with Mr. Osterweil's class shows yet another disconnect in the CCSS love-fest. Because, of course, Mr. Osterweil's class was like that because Mr. Osterweil was free to do what he judged best for his roomful of students.
What I wish King would ask himself is, what would happen to Mr. Osterweil today? How many of those lessons that King cherishes would be put aside for test prep. How much time would he have to spend teaching the required lessons from the state; would Principal King let Mr. Osterweil set his own program, or would King have the lessons all planned out in detail, first day through last, before Mr. Osterweil even came back from summer break? How stable and nurturing would the class be when Mr. Osterweil had to guide his charges through this week's punishing and demoralizing test. I'd bet that King is confident that Mr. Osterweil would be found highly effective on his modern evaluation, but I'm not so confident. If Mr. Osterweil had the wrong assortment of students, or was unable to use his most effective techniques because Principal King's program didn't allow for them, would it turn out that King's favorite life-saving teacher was rated ineffective?
Just how many more Mr. Osterweil's are out there, and what is Commissioner King doing to make sure that they be the best classroom teachers they can be?
The whole business is introed by Charles Sahm, a deputy director at the Institute with whom I've had some entirely pleasant email correspondence, and his intro contains one notable nugget-- apparently the Manhattan Institute is planning to release rankings of every school in the country next year. Swell.
Norman Atkins Leads Off
But next up, to introduce John King, is Norman Atkins of the Relay Graduate School of Education and Uncommon Schools. Between his intro and the beginning of John King's speech, we get a full version of the John King Story.
Atkins opens by observing that "teacher training" is now a "politically incorrect" phrase. "So we have to be careful with our language." He's just saying, I guess.
Atkins sets up an analogy by referring to the group that launched Uncommon Schools as a dream team, and John King was Michael Jordan. But he's going to tell a story.
Labor Day, 1999. John King (who would have been about 24) and Evan Ruttle (sp?) were getting ready to open Roxberry Prep, one of the country's most swell charter schools. John had worked for two or three years (my sources say two) at City on the Hill Charter School. So it's been a long day, but late in the day, they noticed that the student name stickers on the lockers were "put up in a really sloppy fashion." King declared that unacceptable, so in the wee hours, they were fixing the stickers on the lockers. And while they were doing that, King was describing the vision for teaching each of the core subjects at Roxberry, based on all the work they had done preparing the school. In Atkins telling, this involved scouring the international standards and national standards "such as they were" and Massachusetts standards. King had figured out the arc of lessons and units and "was narrating this with tremendous energy and detail." And at that moment, Roxberry Prep was born.
So here's one piece of The Dream-- a school that is squeaky-perfect, completely planned and controlled by the people who run it. Also note-- given all the illustrative stories Atkins could pick to show how King injected greatness into Roxberry, he picks a story without any teachers or students in it.
Classroom Is Key
Atkins quotes Sol Stern to Sol Stern, saying "the primal scene of all education reform is in the classsroom." One of the reasons we're in so much trouble in American education, says Atkins, is many of the people in charge of education haven't spent time in the classroom." But we are blessed in New York to have a leader "who knows instruction and what goes on in the classroom better than anybody."
Someday I'll have a chance to send out a reformster questionnaire, and one of the questions I'll ask is "How do you think people best acquire knowledge of how to do classroom instruction?" Because on the one hand reformsters think teachers (particularly experienced ones) have no knowledge worth consulting. On the other hand, John King, who taught in a public classroom a grand total ONE year, and only two more in a charter classroom, somehow knows more about classroom instruction than God.
Atkins says that one of the reasons that King is beloved is that he would plan down to every small detail the instruction for the entire year in his school and our schools. He would do this with high standards, and plan the entire year in detail for the students to achieve that.
Well, one can certainly see how that might lead to an education commissioner who likes the idea of canned online day-by-day lessons on engageNY. But what reason do we have to believe that this is good teaching? Certainly I should not walk into the classroom and pull today's lesson out of my butt, but if know exactly what I'm doing on the 150th day of school before I have even met my students on the first, I am NOT a great teacher. I am a content delivery specialist, and my students are little cogs who are supposed to mold themselves to fit my program. I have already built my square hole; all you pegs had better shape up, no matter what shape you started out as.
Educational Rock Star
Also, according to Atkins, King was out and about in his schools a great deal, popping into every classroom on a daily basis, "managing instruction." He continues to do this as commissioner. He isn't just watching teachers, but his eye is on the students, seeing what they're learning and if they're learning. He's asking would this class be good enough for my kids. He is also a master at giving feedback; his visits are not evaluative with your career on the line, but a way to get better. Imagine having someone "so brilliant" come into your room and give you "incredible" feedback.
This is another part of The Dream. A necessary ingredient for excellent schools is rock star leaders, educational geniuses who can lead all the lesser beings. Reformsters like to talk about teams, but what they invariably describe is a benevolent monarchy. A brilliant creates and directs a vision, and the rest of the plebes fall in line and implement it.
I expect this is why King has spent his whole career gravitating to charters-- because in a charter, the ability to control everything, every detail, every teacher, every student, is so much greater. You can teach exactly the kind of students you want with exactly the teachers you want teaching exactly as you want.
Boosting Common Core
John asks questions, and the core question is "Is this good enough?" Always positive, but never satisfied. And always told the truth. Being the "captain" for education is hard, but we need a truth teller because we are lying to ourselves. 80% think other people's schools are failing, but our own schools are great. "There's something not right about that." By plugging CCSS, King is exposing that what we're doing isn't good enough.
Why is that a good idea? Again, I'm no fan of building educational camels in committee, but what if there aren't enough geniuses to go around? What if the genius isn't right all of the time? What if somebody passes themselves off as a genius but is actually a gigantic tool? And doesn't this tend to result in schools that are organized around the genius and not the students?
Atkins now attaches King to the tradition of Horace Mann. Mann wanted common schools for everyone; King wants Common Core for everyone. Atkins defines Common Core as "highest possible standards for all our children." Atkins name-checks Steiner and Cerf who both suggested that John's intro include a reference to his courage. When other states are ducking away from CCSS, King has the courage to stay the course.
King Tells His Story
The Dream is always of high standards, and we continue to cling to the unexamined (by reformsters) assumption that CCSS represent high standards, not to mention the unexamined assumption that such a thing as a single set of standards that will fit our entire nation of children is even do-able, or could even bring about results. None of those assumptions have been proven correct. Repeatedly pushing them forward is not the same as proving them.
King leads off with his story. And make no mistake-- King's story is a hell of a story. Mother passed away when he was eight, leaving King with a father who was dying of Alazheimers, King credits public school teachers with saving him. And he doesn't do it in a vague, general way-- he routinely names the guy. Mr. Osterweil was challenging and exciting and King says that in his class, they had the Common Core before it was the Common Core. They studied Shakespeare. They would read the New York Times every day and summarize the articles, and King benefited forever after from the academic work and the discipline. They had a classroom that was stable, challenging, and nurturing.
It is a great story, even if usually skips over the part where he was thrown out of Phillips Andover ivy league prep school. And the fact that King equates Common Core with Mr. Osterweil's class shows yet another disconnect in the CCSS love-fest. Because, of course, Mr. Osterweil's class was like that because Mr. Osterweil was free to do what he judged best for his roomful of students.
What I wish King would ask himself is, what would happen to Mr. Osterweil today? How many of those lessons that King cherishes would be put aside for test prep. How much time would he have to spend teaching the required lessons from the state; would Principal King let Mr. Osterweil set his own program, or would King have the lessons all planned out in detail, first day through last, before Mr. Osterweil even came back from summer break? How stable and nurturing would the class be when Mr. Osterweil had to guide his charges through this week's punishing and demoralizing test. I'd bet that King is confident that Mr. Osterweil would be found highly effective on his modern evaluation, but I'm not so confident. If Mr. Osterweil had the wrong assortment of students, or was unable to use his most effective techniques because Principal King's program didn't allow for them, would it turn out that King's favorite life-saving teacher was rated ineffective?
Just how many more Mr. Osterweil's are out there, and what is Commissioner King doing to make sure that they be the best classroom teachers they can be?
Being White Guys
I'm going to write this companion piece to last night's post about race and gender and then I'm going to set this topic aside (until I don't).
Preamble and Disclaimer
Let me make two points before I start this exercise in gross generalization. These apply to the previous post as well.
1) I cannot possibly speak for everybody in any category and to every person's experience. If you want to point out to me that you know of experiences or persons who don't fit what I'm saying, all I have to say is, "Of course."
2) I am trying to describe how people see, hear or experience certain stuff. I am not trying to evaluate the correctness of those beliefs. In my experience, when you want to talk with someone, it's useful to understand how they see things, period.
Why Are White Guys So Bad At This Conversation
The "privilege" conversation degenerates rapidly every time it comes up in this culture. Why don't we white guys just admit we live in privilege and move the conversation forward?
Because most of us don't feel privileged.
Tell a working class guy who is pulling fifty-sixty hours a week because he wants to grapple with the frustration of not being able to give his children nice things, and who spends those fifty-sixty hours having is every move dictated by the many people who have power over him at work-- tell that guy about his white guy privilege, and he will think you're making a bad joke.
In a school setting, we may feel that we've got the same size classroom, work for the same people, teach the same material.
For some of us, it's not that we want to defend "privilege," or justify it, but that we literally cannot see what the heck you are talking about. And when someone starts talking about "privilege," we hear an accusation, a charge that we somehow cheated by being born white and male, which we feel is unfair because we worked hard to get where we are.
Suck It Up
When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Walk it off. Grab life by the balls. Make it happen. No excuses. The buck stops here.
If life is a mountain to climb, then women and minorities are told that there are certain paths for them to take, areas they are barred from, obstacles they cannot surmount. White guys are shown the mountain and told, "There is no excuse for you not to get to the top. If you don't climb the mountain, it's because you aren't strong enough, focused enough, good enough." For some men, that is exhilarating, and for some it is terrifying.
The flip side of the assumption that women are helpless is the assumption that men, real men, never are. I know more than a couple of strong, capable women who still believe that the procedure for solving problems is
1) Tell a man about it
2) Wait
In schools, this is the staff meeting where the women turn to the man for answers. It's the female teachers who want to get that guy from the union to come fix this problem.
To someone else, it may look as if a white guy lives without an extra set of invisible obstacles, but he may experience that as huge pressure, as a situation where his success or failure all rests on him, and meeting the challenge is a straight-up measure of his worth as a person. And we've raised to think that's how the world works (not how the world works just for white guys). So when other groups start explaining the kinds of cultural obstacles and differences they face, what white guys hear is a list of excuses.
Yes, the no excuses schools, along with much of the reformster movement, are straight out of the white guy world view.
Our Big Blind Spot
White guys overcome obstacles all the time. All the time. Things do not come easily for us, and the success that we experience comes, as near as we can tell, from the exertion of our strength and smarts and willpower and hard work and grit.
And we literally cannot imagine how it would not be possible for any human being to exert their own strength and smarts and willpower and hard work and grit. We do not see that any sort of privilege is involved in being able to use all those tools to create our success. We are kind of like the person who can't understand why clinically depressed people don't just cheer themselves up. Or the teacher who stands in front of a class saying, "Well, just understand it. You're not trying."
Not a Contest
My intent is not to say "Waa! White guys have it tough, too." It's never useful when these conversations devolve into Who Gets Pissed On More contests. But if we're going to have these conversations, we're going to have to stop talking past each other, and that gets easier if we understand where the other person is coming from.
That's particularly true as teachers. As both the teaching pool and the student population diversify, and as American culture itself spreads out into a gazillion subcultures, our ability to reach across those lines becomes critical to our success and the success of our students.
Preamble and Disclaimer
Let me make two points before I start this exercise in gross generalization. These apply to the previous post as well.
1) I cannot possibly speak for everybody in any category and to every person's experience. If you want to point out to me that you know of experiences or persons who don't fit what I'm saying, all I have to say is, "Of course."
2) I am trying to describe how people see, hear or experience certain stuff. I am not trying to evaluate the correctness of those beliefs. In my experience, when you want to talk with someone, it's useful to understand how they see things, period.
Why Are White Guys So Bad At This Conversation
The "privilege" conversation degenerates rapidly every time it comes up in this culture. Why don't we white guys just admit we live in privilege and move the conversation forward?
Because most of us don't feel privileged.
Tell a working class guy who is pulling fifty-sixty hours a week because he wants to grapple with the frustration of not being able to give his children nice things, and who spends those fifty-sixty hours having is every move dictated by the many people who have power over him at work-- tell that guy about his white guy privilege, and he will think you're making a bad joke.
In a school setting, we may feel that we've got the same size classroom, work for the same people, teach the same material.
For some of us, it's not that we want to defend "privilege," or justify it, but that we literally cannot see what the heck you are talking about. And when someone starts talking about "privilege," we hear an accusation, a charge that we somehow cheated by being born white and male, which we feel is unfair because we worked hard to get where we are.
Suck It Up
When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Walk it off. Grab life by the balls. Make it happen. No excuses. The buck stops here.
If life is a mountain to climb, then women and minorities are told that there are certain paths for them to take, areas they are barred from, obstacles they cannot surmount. White guys are shown the mountain and told, "There is no excuse for you not to get to the top. If you don't climb the mountain, it's because you aren't strong enough, focused enough, good enough." For some men, that is exhilarating, and for some it is terrifying.
The flip side of the assumption that women are helpless is the assumption that men, real men, never are. I know more than a couple of strong, capable women who still believe that the procedure for solving problems is
1) Tell a man about it
2) Wait
In schools, this is the staff meeting where the women turn to the man for answers. It's the female teachers who want to get that guy from the union to come fix this problem.
To someone else, it may look as if a white guy lives without an extra set of invisible obstacles, but he may experience that as huge pressure, as a situation where his success or failure all rests on him, and meeting the challenge is a straight-up measure of his worth as a person. And we've raised to think that's how the world works (not how the world works just for white guys). So when other groups start explaining the kinds of cultural obstacles and differences they face, what white guys hear is a list of excuses.
Yes, the no excuses schools, along with much of the reformster movement, are straight out of the white guy world view.
Our Big Blind Spot
White guys overcome obstacles all the time. All the time. Things do not come easily for us, and the success that we experience comes, as near as we can tell, from the exertion of our strength and smarts and willpower and hard work and grit.
And we literally cannot imagine how it would not be possible for any human being to exert their own strength and smarts and willpower and hard work and grit. We do not see that any sort of privilege is involved in being able to use all those tools to create our success. We are kind of like the person who can't understand why clinically depressed people don't just cheer themselves up. Or the teacher who stands in front of a class saying, "Well, just understand it. You're not trying."
Not a Contest
My intent is not to say "Waa! White guys have it tough, too." It's never useful when these conversations devolve into Who Gets Pissed On More contests. But if we're going to have these conversations, we're going to have to stop talking past each other, and that gets easier if we understand where the other person is coming from.
That's particularly true as teachers. As both the teaching pool and the student population diversify, and as American culture itself spreads out into a gazillion subcultures, our ability to reach across those lines becomes critical to our success and the success of our students.
Saturday, June 28, 2014
For White Guys
A few days back, I reported on a study that noted seven trends in the teacher workforce. Two of those trends noted were 1) the teacher workforce is getting more female and 2) the teacher workforce is getting less white. Whether it is synchronicity, or just heightened awareness, I've seen both of those topics flare up in various discussions about the interwebs.
While very aware of these topics, I have avoided addressing them because I am a white guy. And when it comes to issues of gender and race, I've always assumed two things.
1) There are things that I really don't get.
2) I have no idea what all the items under #1 are.
I am also painfully aware of the tendency that white guys have to turn discussions of gender in race into conversations about being a white guy.
But I am going to take some of my own advice and venture outside of my comfort zone. I will try not to presume to speak people of other races or genders about what they should know or do about being female or black or brown. Instead, I'm going to try to speak to my people-- white guys.
Gender
Guys, there are many things we don't get about being a woman. And I don't mean in a ha-ha women are so wacky with their crazy mysterious thinky parts. I mean like the degree to what it must be challenging to have to always associate intimacy and love with making yourself physically vulnerable to someone who is usually larger and stronger than you, and who, in the early stages of a relationship, you don't know if you can trust.
What do we guys do when we find ourselves in a situation where we're around people who can physically dominate us? We make nice. We even have a special pseudo-psychological term for little guys who insist on being aggressive instead of sensibly making nice (Napoleon complex). Women are in that situation pretty much all the time. Being nice isn't just the socially acceptable thing to do-- it's a survival skill.
At the same time, niceness is socially preferred in women. Society tells them constantly to play nice, be nice. If you are going to deal with women, particularly in a work situation, you need to check yourself. If you are going to ding a woman for being too nice and not sticking up for herself, you also cannot ding her for being uppity and pushy.
Keep that double ding in mind, because as I mentioned above, teaching is a mostly-female profession, and in some areas, that means we male teachers are being approached as if we are women-- play nice, don't talk out of turn. On top of that, we are going to find ourselves surrounded by lots of women who are not necessarily ready to step out of that mold and fight beside you. You can't fix that by yelling, "What the hell is the matter with you!" and you can't fix it by saying, "That's okay honey. You sit down and I'll take care of it."
If you're of my generation (high school class of '75), you grew up with some confusing and ultimately incomplete messages. You will also encounter young women who act like what we would have called feminists who insist they aren't feminists (as near as I can tell, the current definition of "feminist" is "woman who demands unreasonable things." women who advocate things like equal pay are just using common sense, and aren't feminists at all). But my experience is that if you treat them like individual human beings-- listen to them, hear what they want, help them see how to get it, offer advice when they want it and shut the hell up when they don't-- that all seems to work.
We guys are supposed to approach conflict like it's no big deal. Just whale the tar out of each other, then get a drink. Everybody's buds. No blood, no foul. But for women conflict is a more threatening thing. The good news is that that is mostly trained into them, not hardwired, and they can learn to leave it behind. Just not the same way we do. Be a coach, but not a mansplainer, and recognize when to step back and get out of the way.
And (and this is huge) if you are in a mostly-female building, recognize that you need to adjust to the culture of the building, and not insist that it get all manned up. In teaching, we are more likely to find ourselves in that position in the years ahead.
I've heard the complaints. How are little boys supposed to grow up when they are surrounded by women in school all day? Won't they get all infected with the womenny stuff? Shouldn't there be more men around so they have male role models?
Well, hold that thought.
Race
My ignorance runs deep here. I'm a really white guy who lives in a small town setting where most of out black population belongs to one of the same five families that have lived here for generations.
Teaching is becoming blacker and browner, but-- and this is huge-- minority teachers are also leaving the profession at a higher rate than white teachers. So there's something wrong there, and I honestly have no idea what. Somebody really needs to figure it out, and soon. Because we need more minority teachers.
We need more minority teachers because we are going to have increasingly more minority students. Why? Remember a few graphs ago when you were worried about little boys not seeing anybody they could identify with at school? Same thing. Same. Thing.
Look, I know we were raised to think of ourselves as colorblind. There's a place for that, but there's also a way in which it can go horribly wrong.
As I try to explain to my students, racism is not just "Black people are all stupid and inferior." Racism is also, "Normal people are just like me. Everybody else is abnormal to whatever degree they are not like me."
"Black folks are just like me," sounds generous, but it's not, because it implies, "Like me. You know, normal. Oh, I know they look or act like they're not normal, but I'm willing to overlook those abnormalities, so they're really just a white guy like me." One of the privileges we enjoy as white guys is that we never have to explain any part of ourselves away. Even a term like "non-white" reinforces that-- we're defining race by whether it's normal whiteness or not. We are "normal" by default.
With that in mind, teaching needs to be a place where being black or brown is normal, and that is doubly, triply true in schools with predominantly minority populations. Yes, we white guys can do great work in those schools, be great teachers, even be great models of what it means to be a man. But we will never be somebody that a black seven year old can look at and imagine growing up to be. That's a valuable quality, and we will never have it.
Individual
I'm a big believer in individual situations. The chances of something working can be one in a million, but if you're the one, it doesn't matter. General rules of thumb, general tendencies, general ways to be and understand-- none of those matter in the face of particular specific situation. But you know what makes it easy for me to think that? I'm a white guy, and the general circumstances of being a white guy rarely ever get in the way of anything for us.
It would be enormously useful for us, when dealing with our female and minority colleagues, if we listen, and listen particularly with an understanding that other people on this planet navigate a series of barriers and obstacles that we pretty much never see. The fact that we don't see doesn't mean they aren't there, and -- hardest for us to accept -- the fact that we don't see them also doesn't mean that we don't have a hand in keeping them in place.
But if we are ever going to see them or understand them, we are going to have to listen and try to understand. And then, I think there's a question we are actually well-placed to help answer-- "If you didn't have to deal with obstacle X, what would you do?" Because if we could help remove the obstacles, people could do for themselves, and living in a world without those obstacles is a subject we're actually well-qualified to talk about-- not why you shouldn't be held back or why you shouldn't care about the obstacle or how we can do for you, but how much you could enjoy that world, if we could help make it.
Look, this is a hugely complicated set of issues, and that's before we throw in delineators such as socio-economics and sexual orientation. But I'm beginning to think that we white guys need to spend less time mansplaining to everyone else, start actually listening, and start talking to each other about what part we can play in making a better world for everyone.
While very aware of these topics, I have avoided addressing them because I am a white guy. And when it comes to issues of gender and race, I've always assumed two things.
1) There are things that I really don't get.
2) I have no idea what all the items under #1 are.
I am also painfully aware of the tendency that white guys have to turn discussions of gender in race into conversations about being a white guy.
But I am going to take some of my own advice and venture outside of my comfort zone. I will try not to presume to speak people of other races or genders about what they should know or do about being female or black or brown. Instead, I'm going to try to speak to my people-- white guys.
Gender
Guys, there are many things we don't get about being a woman. And I don't mean in a ha-ha women are so wacky with their crazy mysterious thinky parts. I mean like the degree to what it must be challenging to have to always associate intimacy and love with making yourself physically vulnerable to someone who is usually larger and stronger than you, and who, in the early stages of a relationship, you don't know if you can trust.
What do we guys do when we find ourselves in a situation where we're around people who can physically dominate us? We make nice. We even have a special pseudo-psychological term for little guys who insist on being aggressive instead of sensibly making nice (Napoleon complex). Women are in that situation pretty much all the time. Being nice isn't just the socially acceptable thing to do-- it's a survival skill.
At the same time, niceness is socially preferred in women. Society tells them constantly to play nice, be nice. If you are going to deal with women, particularly in a work situation, you need to check yourself. If you are going to ding a woman for being too nice and not sticking up for herself, you also cannot ding her for being uppity and pushy.
Keep that double ding in mind, because as I mentioned above, teaching is a mostly-female profession, and in some areas, that means we male teachers are being approached as if we are women-- play nice, don't talk out of turn. On top of that, we are going to find ourselves surrounded by lots of women who are not necessarily ready to step out of that mold and fight beside you. You can't fix that by yelling, "What the hell is the matter with you!" and you can't fix it by saying, "That's okay honey. You sit down and I'll take care of it."
If you're of my generation (high school class of '75), you grew up with some confusing and ultimately incomplete messages. You will also encounter young women who act like what we would have called feminists who insist they aren't feminists (as near as I can tell, the current definition of "feminist" is "woman who demands unreasonable things." women who advocate things like equal pay are just using common sense, and aren't feminists at all). But my experience is that if you treat them like individual human beings-- listen to them, hear what they want, help them see how to get it, offer advice when they want it and shut the hell up when they don't-- that all seems to work.
We guys are supposed to approach conflict like it's no big deal. Just whale the tar out of each other, then get a drink. Everybody's buds. No blood, no foul. But for women conflict is a more threatening thing. The good news is that that is mostly trained into them, not hardwired, and they can learn to leave it behind. Just not the same way we do. Be a coach, but not a mansplainer, and recognize when to step back and get out of the way.
And (and this is huge) if you are in a mostly-female building, recognize that you need to adjust to the culture of the building, and not insist that it get all manned up. In teaching, we are more likely to find ourselves in that position in the years ahead.
I've heard the complaints. How are little boys supposed to grow up when they are surrounded by women in school all day? Won't they get all infected with the womenny stuff? Shouldn't there be more men around so they have male role models?
Well, hold that thought.
Race
My ignorance runs deep here. I'm a really white guy who lives in a small town setting where most of out black population belongs to one of the same five families that have lived here for generations.
Teaching is becoming blacker and browner, but-- and this is huge-- minority teachers are also leaving the profession at a higher rate than white teachers. So there's something wrong there, and I honestly have no idea what. Somebody really needs to figure it out, and soon. Because we need more minority teachers.
We need more minority teachers because we are going to have increasingly more minority students. Why? Remember a few graphs ago when you were worried about little boys not seeing anybody they could identify with at school? Same thing. Same. Thing.
Look, I know we were raised to think of ourselves as colorblind. There's a place for that, but there's also a way in which it can go horribly wrong.
As I try to explain to my students, racism is not just "Black people are all stupid and inferior." Racism is also, "Normal people are just like me. Everybody else is abnormal to whatever degree they are not like me."
"Black folks are just like me," sounds generous, but it's not, because it implies, "Like me. You know, normal. Oh, I know they look or act like they're not normal, but I'm willing to overlook those abnormalities, so they're really just a white guy like me." One of the privileges we enjoy as white guys is that we never have to explain any part of ourselves away. Even a term like "non-white" reinforces that-- we're defining race by whether it's normal whiteness or not. We are "normal" by default.
With that in mind, teaching needs to be a place where being black or brown is normal, and that is doubly, triply true in schools with predominantly minority populations. Yes, we white guys can do great work in those schools, be great teachers, even be great models of what it means to be a man. But we will never be somebody that a black seven year old can look at and imagine growing up to be. That's a valuable quality, and we will never have it.
Individual
I'm a big believer in individual situations. The chances of something working can be one in a million, but if you're the one, it doesn't matter. General rules of thumb, general tendencies, general ways to be and understand-- none of those matter in the face of particular specific situation. But you know what makes it easy for me to think that? I'm a white guy, and the general circumstances of being a white guy rarely ever get in the way of anything for us.
It would be enormously useful for us, when dealing with our female and minority colleagues, if we listen, and listen particularly with an understanding that other people on this planet navigate a series of barriers and obstacles that we pretty much never see. The fact that we don't see doesn't mean they aren't there, and -- hardest for us to accept -- the fact that we don't see them also doesn't mean that we don't have a hand in keeping them in place.
But if we are ever going to see them or understand them, we are going to have to listen and try to understand. And then, I think there's a question we are actually well-placed to help answer-- "If you didn't have to deal with obstacle X, what would you do?" Because if we could help remove the obstacles, people could do for themselves, and living in a world without those obstacles is a subject we're actually well-qualified to talk about-- not why you shouldn't be held back or why you shouldn't care about the obstacle or how we can do for you, but how much you could enjoy that world, if we could help make it.
Look, this is a hugely complicated set of issues, and that's before we throw in delineators such as socio-economics and sexual orientation. But I'm beginning to think that we white guys need to spend less time mansplaining to everyone else, start actually listening, and start talking to each other about what part we can play in making a better world for everyone.
We Need Fewer Nice Teachers
A colleague tells the story of taking an on-line graduate course and being chastised for calling out fellow students for some fairly low-information posts on the topic. Could my colleague please be more polite, reword the posts so they were less "offensive." So he did, and the original posts were erased. The punchline, of course, is that the topic was censorship.
For some reason, it is often a problem in our profession that teachers value niceness over truth.
We sit in a professional development session and listen to a presenter give instructions that we know are questionable at best and just plain dead wrong at worst, but we nod and smile and politely avoid asking any questions or making any comments. After all, we don't want to be rude. We wouldn't like to make anybody uncomfortable. So the presenter leaves thinking he's hit a home run and we go back to our rooms and tell each other how terrible it was (but we don't tell our principal, because that would be rude).
When I was president of a striking union, I had many members who simply didn't want to do anything that might make anybody uncomfortable. Some members were pretty sure that the board and their attorney would be more giving and conciliatory if we were just nicer.
Sometimes this conflict avoidance turns teachers into institutional enablers. A principal creates a new policy that causes some problems, but rather than confront him with the problems, some classroom teachers go out of their way to fix the problem. In the worst version of this scenario, they then sulk because fixing the problem makes them sad, and they think the administration should see their sadness and feel compelled to address it. "Why don't they see the problem and fix it?" they ask. The answer-- because you fixed the problem already. The fact that you are now sad is not his problem. It is no more motivational than telling an alcoholic that you had to lie to cover up for him again.
This is not to say that we should not be team players and do our best for our schools. It is also not to say that we should be contentious shrews who pick a fight over every picayune peccadillo (how long have I waited for an excuse to stick those two words together).
Sometimes conflict happens, and you can only deal with it by dealing with it.
Trust me on this. It's one of the lessons I learned at Divorce School (or "Top Ten Ways I Blew Up My First Marriage") In ALL relationships in life, Rule #1 is You Must Show Up. When you run away or hide to avoid conflict, you break relationship rule #1.
People often blast Laziness as the big enemy of virtue; I think Comfort is far worse. We will go to amazing lengths to avoid being uncomfortable. Like a nice girl being pawed by a grade-A lout, we will allow ourselves to be victims of inexcusable indignities because we don't want to "be mean" or "cause a scene" or "make anyone uncomfortable."
Teachers do this way too much. Way too much. We avoid confronting or speaking out or just standing up and saying "I think that's wrong." We don't tell the truth, or we wrap it in comfortable layers of cotton until it is muffled and all its sharp edges are hidden.
But if you won't tell the truth, you can't be surprised that nobody hears it.
Given the choice between Being Nice and Telling the Truth (and we don't always have to choose between the two), pick Telling the Truth. Pick telling the truth. Show up. You cannot fix what's wrong in your relationship, whether it's with your spouse, your child, your students, your colleagues, your bosses, your profession-- you can't fix ANY of those relationships until you follow Rule #1 and Show Up. And you can't run away from an uncomfortable truth AND show up both at the same time.
Yes, sometimes conflict arrives when you wish it wouldn't. Sometimes we don't get to choose, just like the times that some student in a classroom does something so obvious and unmistakable that you sigh and think, "Well, dammit, now I have to do something." It's like your hungry crying baby or your parent with newly-diagnosed cancer or the spouse who announces they can't take it (whatever it is) one more minute-- you don't choose the fight, but to walk away from the fight is to walk away from the relationship. Sometimes you don't get to choose.
That's why it's generally no kindness to lie to people. And truthfully (and I say this as someone who used to, believe it or not, love Being Nice), Being Nice is basically a selfish impulse. It's not about making life easier for other people; it's about making life nicer, more comfy, for ourselves. Being Nice is not a virtue, particularly when it excuses running away from the truth.
The usual teacher niceness, our compliance, our love of rules, our belief in the hierarchy of schools, has been used against too often. Too many people feel they can kick us knowing that we will not complain, that we will in fact turn on any of our own number who do complain.
We don't have to be mean. We don't have to be unkind ("kind" and "nice" are not the same at all, but this post is already too long). But we do have to speak our truth. We do have to stop sitting silently when people say things in our hearing that are just not so. We have to stop taking attacks and slander on our profession because we don't want anyone to feel uncomfortable.
Believe it or not, I am not really a fighter. And one of my guiding principles is that life produces enough pain and challenge on its own, so it's a sin to make more pain and challenge in the world when you don't have to. Bu I also believe it's wrong to sit silent so that someone else can commit a wrong unnoticed and unchallenged. You can't just talk; you must also listen (also a whole other post). But you have to speak up. You have to value the truth over niceness.
For some reason, it is often a problem in our profession that teachers value niceness over truth.
We sit in a professional development session and listen to a presenter give instructions that we know are questionable at best and just plain dead wrong at worst, but we nod and smile and politely avoid asking any questions or making any comments. After all, we don't want to be rude. We wouldn't like to make anybody uncomfortable. So the presenter leaves thinking he's hit a home run and we go back to our rooms and tell each other how terrible it was (but we don't tell our principal, because that would be rude).
When I was president of a striking union, I had many members who simply didn't want to do anything that might make anybody uncomfortable. Some members were pretty sure that the board and their attorney would be more giving and conciliatory if we were just nicer.
Sometimes this conflict avoidance turns teachers into institutional enablers. A principal creates a new policy that causes some problems, but rather than confront him with the problems, some classroom teachers go out of their way to fix the problem. In the worst version of this scenario, they then sulk because fixing the problem makes them sad, and they think the administration should see their sadness and feel compelled to address it. "Why don't they see the problem and fix it?" they ask. The answer-- because you fixed the problem already. The fact that you are now sad is not his problem. It is no more motivational than telling an alcoholic that you had to lie to cover up for him again.
This is not to say that we should not be team players and do our best for our schools. It is also not to say that we should be contentious shrews who pick a fight over every picayune peccadillo (how long have I waited for an excuse to stick those two words together).
Sometimes conflict happens, and you can only deal with it by dealing with it.
Trust me on this. It's one of the lessons I learned at Divorce School (or "Top Ten Ways I Blew Up My First Marriage") In ALL relationships in life, Rule #1 is You Must Show Up. When you run away or hide to avoid conflict, you break relationship rule #1.
People often blast Laziness as the big enemy of virtue; I think Comfort is far worse. We will go to amazing lengths to avoid being uncomfortable. Like a nice girl being pawed by a grade-A lout, we will allow ourselves to be victims of inexcusable indignities because we don't want to "be mean" or "cause a scene" or "make anyone uncomfortable."
Teachers do this way too much. Way too much. We avoid confronting or speaking out or just standing up and saying "I think that's wrong." We don't tell the truth, or we wrap it in comfortable layers of cotton until it is muffled and all its sharp edges are hidden.
But if you won't tell the truth, you can't be surprised that nobody hears it.
Given the choice between Being Nice and Telling the Truth (and we don't always have to choose between the two), pick Telling the Truth. Pick telling the truth. Show up. You cannot fix what's wrong in your relationship, whether it's with your spouse, your child, your students, your colleagues, your bosses, your profession-- you can't fix ANY of those relationships until you follow Rule #1 and Show Up. And you can't run away from an uncomfortable truth AND show up both at the same time.
Yes, sometimes conflict arrives when you wish it wouldn't. Sometimes we don't get to choose, just like the times that some student in a classroom does something so obvious and unmistakable that you sigh and think, "Well, dammit, now I have to do something." It's like your hungry crying baby or your parent with newly-diagnosed cancer or the spouse who announces they can't take it (whatever it is) one more minute-- you don't choose the fight, but to walk away from the fight is to walk away from the relationship. Sometimes you don't get to choose.
That's why it's generally no kindness to lie to people. And truthfully (and I say this as someone who used to, believe it or not, love Being Nice), Being Nice is basically a selfish impulse. It's not about making life easier for other people; it's about making life nicer, more comfy, for ourselves. Being Nice is not a virtue, particularly when it excuses running away from the truth.
The usual teacher niceness, our compliance, our love of rules, our belief in the hierarchy of schools, has been used against too often. Too many people feel they can kick us knowing that we will not complain, that we will in fact turn on any of our own number who do complain.
We don't have to be mean. We don't have to be unkind ("kind" and "nice" are not the same at all, but this post is already too long). But we do have to speak our truth. We do have to stop sitting silently when people say things in our hearing that are just not so. We have to stop taking attacks and slander on our profession because we don't want anyone to feel uncomfortable.
Believe it or not, I am not really a fighter. And one of my guiding principles is that life produces enough pain and challenge on its own, so it's a sin to make more pain and challenge in the world when you don't have to. Bu I also believe it's wrong to sit silent so that someone else can commit a wrong unnoticed and unchallenged. You can't just talk; you must also listen (also a whole other post). But you have to speak up. You have to value the truth over niceness.
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