Teacher Leadership Today
The latest TLN blogger to post commentary on the new MetLife Survey of the American Teacher is frankly outraged by a survey finding that "Only 36% of teachers and 51% of principals believe that all of
their students have the ability to succeed academically."
Renee Moore, who blogs at TeachMoore, is a former Mississippi Teacher of the Year and Milken Award winner who leaves and teaches in the Delta. She writes in part:
Not only do a lower percentage of secondary teachers believe setting
high expectations for all students would help improve their
performance, but distressingly few (62%) believed that addressing
individual needs of diverse learners would help; and even fewer (57%)
saw the value of collaboration among teachers and school leaders.
...if fully 64% of us think at least some (maybe quite a few) of the students for whom we are responsible don't even have the ability
to succeed, then we have just excused ourselves from anything close to
our best efforts on their behalf. Sadly, I've had more than a few
conversations with teachers who feel exactly that way....
I've been dying to attend the WNET Teaching & Learning gala since I first heard about it and checked out the rich agendas offered at this "Not Your Mother's Ed Acronym Conference." I still haven't made it, but the next best thing this year has been the live blog coverage by Anthony Rebora, managing editor of Teacher Magazine. There was lots of content, lots of kids, lots of Notable Persons. Bobby McFerrin, Arne Duncan, and Queen Latifah. Now there's a sandwich.
There was also much-needed celebration of teaching at a time when some leaders seem ready to throw up guillotines
in schoolyards. Anthony backgrounds the annual conference and this year's highlights in this post.
From a recent interview with teacher-author and popular blogger Larry Ferlazzo about his recent book Building Parent Engagement in Schools:
"As a teacher in a challenging inner-city high school, I can understand
how many teachers and administrators feel that engaging with parents in
a substantial way is just one more thing that they might not have time
to do. I wrote the book to illustrate that, in fact, it can be done
with less time that they think and get a bigger "pay-off" — for the
parents, teachers, and students — than they could imagine."
Read the complete interview and find out why Larry, a member of the Teacher Leaders Network, favors parent "engagement" over parent "involvement.
At the invitation of the MetLife Foundation, several bloggers in the Teacher Leaders Network community are using the recently released 2009 MetLife Survey of the American Teacher, "Collaborating for Student Success," as a springboard to
develop posts about teacher collaboration.
Here are the Survey-related posts I've seen so far:
Renee Moore - Miscommunication?
Dan Brown - Collaboration among Educators is Not Optional
Larry Ferlazzo - The Saddest School-Related Statistic I've Heard in Awhile…
Heather Wolpert-Gawron - When the Aliens Attack Will Earth Unite?
Bill Ferriter - Learning from The Met: Collaboration Killers
Anthony Cody - Competition Can't Beat Collaboration
Cindi Rigsbee - Teacher Collaboration, Past and Present...
Ariel Sacks - Understanding Why So Few American Teachers Observe Each Other
The MetLife Survey is being released in three installments. These posts were all based on Part 1, "Effective Teaching & Leadership." Part 2, "Student Achievement," will appear in early March.
In this 9-minute Edutopia video clip, teaching scholar Linda Darling Hammond sorts though all the international student assessment data and makes the case that education policymakers in the U.S. need to shift their focus to actions that support the teaching of higher order thinking and problem-solving, if we expect to compete in the global economy. And she does this without bashing teachers, principals or parents. That's refreshing indeed.
In her new book The Flat World and Education, Darling Hammond describes a system of teacher development and support that recognizes the central role of the highly trained teacher in success for all students. “This is very eye-opening,” wrote one teacher-commenter after viewing the video. “She is very clear and is not presenting some new trendy reform for improvement but excellent observations…relying on the foundation of data.”
TLN blogger Bill Ferriter, a.k.a. The Tempered Radical, stirred up a sort of "Emperor has no clothes" debate with his Teacher Magazine article of January 27, titled "Why I Hate Interactive Whiteboards." When we last peeked in the room (it's rowdy in there), there were over 40 comments, many of them long, some of them passionate. Several folks with a natural urge to mediate suggested that IWBs, in wise hands, can deepen lessons and increase student engagement. But Ferriter's not having any of it, as you'll see in the comments he's sprinkled throughout the dialogue. What about you?
That’s the important theme of Educational Leadership magazine’s February issue. As always, EL offers a mix of "public" and "member-only" articles at their website. Some titles accessible to all include: “Start Where Your Students Are”; “The Latino Education Crisis”; and the appropos "Meeting Teachers Where They Are." Abtracts are available for other articles.
One 'free' read that caught our attention -- "When Students Don't Play the Game" -- is written by an experienced teacher who shifted from a middle-class to urban high school setting in Seattle and discovered to her surprise that “most of the students did not have skill deficits; what they had was a level of disengagement and even anger toward school that I had never before encountered on such a wide scale.” There was, Jessica Towbin found, no “culture of compliance” like that which typically prevailed in suburban schools.
There’s general agreement among members of the Teacher Leaders Network that “cultural competency” must be an essential piece of the preparation for teaching in high-needs schools. This article — indeed, this entire issue of EL — speaks to that.
(Tip: If you follow/subscribe to the ASCD Inservice blog, you may be able to gain free access to other articles from this issue during the month of February, as they are highlighted there.)
The Teacher Leaders Network recently celebrated the third anniversary of our partnership with Teacher Magazine and Editorial Projects in Education, the publisher of Education Week, to bring more expert teacher voice to the national conversation about our public schools. Nearly 160 individual essays and excerpts from our daily TLN Forum conversations have appeared in the online magazine and been spread throughout the Web by the power of social media and through large-scale e-newsletters like ASCD SmartBrief.
Here's a sample of our weekly postings from the last several months:
Giving Classrooms a Purpose
California author-educator Larry Ferlazzo explains why having a clear understanding of mission is the secret to classroom management and student success.
Teaching Secrets: Creating Positive Classroom Management
Rhode Island teacher-coach Marti Schwartz explains how helping students take pride in positive behaviors—and reflect on negative ones—can help change the classroom environment.
Does Grading Bias Apply to Education Reports?
A damning new report card on innovation in education relies on a selective view of the teaching profession, says math teacher Bob Williams, Alaska's 2009 teacher of the year.
Lessons in Democracy
A new book prompts Maryland's Ken Bernstein, a high school government teacher, to question how well schools teach—or even reflect upon—the art of democratic participation.
Should Teachers Sell Their Class Materials?
Members of the Teacher Leaders Network argue that teachers have a right to profit from their own intellectual work. (November 18, 2009)
The Experience Factor
Who said anything about retiring? Some Baby Boomer teachers find they're only now reaping the benefits of their hard-won knowledge and skills.
Making Professional Development an Inside Job
Anthony Cody, a science coach in Oakland CA, questions why districts insist on hiring outsiders to conduct PD when local classroom teachers have so much to offer.
All material at the Teacher Magazine website is free to visitors who establish a guest membership.
In the midst of a difficult teaching year, TLN member Mary Tedrow has found solace in Thomas Newkirk's Holding on to Good Ideas in a Time of Bad Ones, which she describes as "a manifesto on behalf of quality instruction."
In a new essay for Teacher Magazine (free registration), Tedrow welcomes Newkirk’s recounting of classroom-proven literacy teaching principles, but she’s most taken with Newkirk’s message about teacher failure: It’s built into the work.
Newkirk acknowledges that all teachers live with a deep insecurity that
we either learn to accept or ultimately ignore for self-preservation.
He argues that the profession needs to embrace an awareness that all
teachers struggle with regular failures: students they can't reach,
lessons that fall flat, explanations that are met by blank stares. He
eloquently describes the inevitable class where—because of the time of
day, or the season, or the odd mix of personalities—no one appears to
have the energy for learning, and the teacher feels mired in lethargy
as well. He reminds us that no one is a super-teacher 24/7. Some
failure is a natural consequence of the tremendous challenges we take
on.
One commenter at the Teacher website wrote: “This reflective piece should be emailed to every struggling or anxious teacher in America.” We agree.
TLN Forum member Anthony Cody authors the blog Living in Dialogue, hosted at the Teacher Magazine website. In early November, Cody used his bully pulpit to post an open letter to President Obama, in which he described himself as "one of the millions of teachers across the USA who actively supported your candidacy." Cody said he "took heart" when he read these words on then-Senator Obama's campaign website:
Obama believes teachers should not be forced to spend the academic year
preparing students to fill in bubbles on standardized tests. He will
improve the assessments used to track student progress to measure
readiness for college and the workplace and improve student learning in
a timely, individualized manner. Obama will also improve NCLB's
accountability system so that we are supporting schools that need
improvement, rather than punishing them.
Cody, a National Board Certified teacher who coaches science colleagues in Oakland CA, then challenged the President to compare these words with the announced plans for Race to the Top funding. The proposed reforms, he contended, "do not enact the vision you have put forward." He went on to make his case that the RttT proposals would leave teachers "demoralized and sidelined...We will remain the subjects of change rather than agents, and our creative vision will be missing." He concluded:
It does not have to be this way. Teachers are ready
for change, ready for mutual responsibility, ready for better
assessments of student learning that honor our classroom practice and
our students' capacity for critical thinking. We are ready, but we are
still waiting to see these things.
Cody then invited teacher-readers of his blog to join him by signing his letter or writing one of their own. Encouraged by the response, he soon established the Facebook page "Teachers' Letters to Obama," which garnered more than 500 members (and over 100 letters) in a month's time. Cody continued to build his viral campaign with cross-posts of sample letters at his TM blog, ultimately shipping nearly 100 letters to the White House. More have continued to flow in. In early December, Teacher Magazine editor Anthony Rebora opened a discussion group at the TM website to allow visitors to debate all sides of the issues raised by Cody.
Various signs point to the fact that Education Secretary Arne Duncan and others in the Administration are aware of the letter campaign. Education Week plans to publish a January 2010 op-ed article prepared by Cody which will include excerpts from a selection of teacher letters. And the Facebook community continues to grow.
Throughout this exercise in what web-trends expert Clay Shirky has termed "the new social media," Cody and many other letter writers have taken on the role of the "loyal opposition" — recalling Obama's vision of hope and asking the President and his education policy advisors to recognize the need to engage America's accomplished teachers as full partners in school reform — to listen more closely to the ideas of classroom professionals with a track record of quality teaching and student achievement.
Cody's ability to harness Web 2.0 tools to engage teacher colleagues across the nation in amplifying teacher voices on matters of great concern to their schools and students offers further proof — to paraphrase Shirky — that principled educators no longer have to settle for the role of consumers of change, they can be producers as well. In a world where the term mass communication has taken on an entirely new meaning, "the (networked) audience can talk directly to one another," says Shirky. "(T)he complexity of the network is actually the square of the number of participants. Meaning that the network, when it grows large, grows very very large."
Imagine that.
