Advancing the Teaching Profession

New York Times Schools for Tomorrow Conference: A Teacher's Take

By John Holland

John Holland, a preschool teacher and co-author of TEACHING 2030, represented CTQ at the New York Times Schools for Tomorrow Conference last month. Below is his take on the experience.

I walked into the New York Times Schools for Tomorrow conference with some trepidation. The conference had been organized to energize stakeholders about integrating technology in our schools. I knew that many of the attendees would be from the private sector, including entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and online learning providers. I was surprised to find approximately 75 educators in the crowd of more than 300. Some, like Brian Crosby, were educational technology specialists. Brian is an elementary teacher in Reno who stepped onto the larger educational stage after Skype learned he’d used their services to teach a homebound student with leukemia. 

Brian secured his invite to the conference by emailing the New York Times to explain how wack it was the panels included no teachers. I got my invite easily enough, by filling out an online form.

But I was skeptical. I attended the conference so I could live by the advice I give my daughter about soccer. She often plays defense and has gotten quite good at the skill I call “being there.” To “be there” is to see the total field, the offensive positions, and your place in anticipating an attack. You can then get to where you need to be to stop the ball and turn the tide of the drive on the goal.

I went to the Schools for Tomorrow conference to “be there” as a teacher leader and passionate advocate for a hopeful vision for education. I wanted to meet the players, especially those who might consider technology a replacement for teachers.

The Spark

David Brooks, one of the most popular opinion columnists in America, opened with a surprising remark: “I want to start by expressing a note of skepticism about technology in education.” He continued:

My skepticism about the role of technology in the classroom is based on three arguments. The first is that people learn from people they love, they don’t learn from computers they love, and anything that gets in the way between the relationship between the teacher and the student is something I’m likely to be skeptical of. The second thing is that electronic communication is far inferior to personal communication…. And finally information processing. The tendency of technology is to make information processing easy. But the way you learn and remember is through processing information that is hard and challenging. You want to introduce trouble, not introduce ease.

Wow, I thought, David Brooks sounds like a teacher. Even though I consider myself a passionate advocate for the use of technology in schools, I still struggle with those same points. But if we can balance our enthusiasm about technology with our recognition of Brooks’s points, we can be the adaptive professionals that students deserve. 

From Defense to Offense

The first panel included a group of international experts on technology in schools. None of them were teachers. I decided to move from defense to offense—by asking a question: “What concrete action steps, from your various perspectives, can be taken to help teachers use technology to teach?” 

Here’s how Harri Skog, the permanent secretary of Finland's Ministry of Education, responded:

I think it helps a lot if a teacher has an autonomous way of having his own discretion at the level of the classroom....I think it is very important for teachers to be able to plan how they want to teach, but that needs to have this kind of trust situation. If I would be asked one thing to have, it would be more autonomy in schools.

I was sitting next to Diana Laufenberg, a powerful and visionary teacher from the Philadelphia Science Leadership Academy—we both started clapping.

Meeting the Players

Between attending panels and informally networking, I met many passionate advocates for 21st-century learning.

• Larry Berger, founder and president of Wireless Generation, spoke on a panel about technical tools for the classroom. He highlighted how technology could strengthen teachers’ formative assessment efforts.
• Jacqueline Botterill, director of social public good for Skype, shared news of Skype in the classroom, connecting teachers and learners across the globe.
• Scott Kinney, senior vice president at Discovery Education, described how the Discovery Educator Network enables public school teachers to leverage streaming media for student learning and professional development.
• Joel Arquillos is executive director of 826LA, a nonprofit writing and tutoring center that provides free writing programs for Los Angeles students, including after-school and in-school tutoring, field trips, workshops, and publishing resources.
• Erik Michielsen founded Capture Your Flag, a project that is conducting qualitative interviews with aspirational leaders, tracking them over time. Erik will apply tagging and coding techniques to these annual interviews, identifying themes that can drive an innovative approach to curriculum development for college and career readiness. 

What “Being There” Meant to Me

This conference confirmed one of my deepest held beliefs about teaching: there is a spark between human beings that is essential to the learning process. This fundamental spark in the engine of learning can never be replaced by technology. In fact, the best uses of technology in education will continue to involve person-to-person communication.

The human spark is also what will make a difference in important decisions about educational policy and practice. When teachers can “be there,” they can provide a much-needed window into how policies affect the learning of individual students. When teachers can “be there,” they can ask the questions that need to be answered. We will truly know this spark is alive when teachers (along with students and parents) are not just relegated to “being there,” but are sought-after panelists in important discussions about teaching and learning.

Thank you, David Brooks, for calling on my raised hand. Let's hope that next time, my colleagues and I will be answering questions, not just asking them.

USDOE Sends Mixed Messages on Teacher Education

Just recently, the U.S. Department of Education released its plan for teacher-education reform, pointing out that too many university-based programs “do not provide teachers with a rigorous, clinical experience that prepares them for the schools in which they will work.”

In an ironic twist, however, the Department’s Race to the Top guidelines have promoted the proliferation of alternative certification programs that shortcut pre-service training for new recruits. These programs give recruits limited or non-existent opportunities for “rigorous, clinical” preparation prior to teaching independently. Not only must university-based teacher education be improved, but we also need to think about what supports teachers are given while they're teaching. There is no reason to believe that school districts are sufficiently suited to prepare teachers for the schools of today — or tomorrow, for that matter.

A recent study has shown that few teachers receive the “intensive, sustained, and content-focused professional development” that matters for student achievement. For example, as reported in the same study, over the course of a year only 9 percent of elementary math teachers had more than 24 hours of content-specific professional development in math. Many school-district officials just don’t value the kind of high-quality professional development that teachers (and their students) deserve. Instead, as seen in this stark display below (from a local news report on how school districts view teacher learning), archaic district-driven professional development prevails.

From the Jackson (MS) Clarion-Ledger, Oct. 17, 2011

I wonder why USDOE officials, in pushing for much-needed changes in teacher education, don’t push school districts to transform their systems of professional development. The plan does indeed call for all teachers — including veteran teachers and recent graduates of preparation programs — to “receive professional development and career advancement opportunities that are aligned with their identified strengths and needs.”

However, USDOE does not call for scrutiny of school districts’ professional development programs. Maybe districts should be held accountable for the quality of support they provide to recently minted teacher-education graduates. Maybe if the USDOE called for such scrutiny, our nation would get a bit closer to creating the kind of comprehensive teacher-development system needed for the schools of today and tomorrow. 

Building a Wall of Teacher Voices

By Mermuda Wilson

Mermuda Wilson, a policy assistant at CTQ, has been using her video-editing expertise to share teacher voices in an online video series. In this guest post, she describes her experience working with these teacher-submitted videos.

Relationships. AP scores. Graduation stoles. “Fast food” learners. Empowerment. Community partnerships. 

These are a few of the topics broached by teacher leaders highlighted in our CTQTube series. The series, which runs until mid-November, features Teacher Wall submissions from teachers in CTQ's Teacher Leaders Network (TLN).

The Teacher Wall Project is a virtual teacher town square where educators can share video clips and comments. It was built by Scholastic, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and DonorsChoose.org as a way to elevate teacher leaders' perspectives on their profession. The CTQTube series is a microcosm of the Teacher Wall, which has received hundreds of video responses.

The breadth of responses has been amazing. One aspect of the CTQTube submissions that has really stood out to me is that not a single teacher has listed a formal award as their “greatest succcess as a teacher” (a question the teachers were asked to respond to in their videos). These are Teachers of the Year, National Board Certified Teachers, Presidential Award recipients, and National Education Association Teachers of Excellence finalists.

Shannon C'de Baca talks about the value of student-teacher relationships.

Instead, they all chose student-centered measures as their shining moments. This reinforces what teacher Shannon C’de Baca says in her video: the relationships teachers have with students are more important than any specific program.

Building relationships is a common theme that arises in some form or another for all the teachers featured in our CTQTube series. A very clear example is Karen Van Duyn’s submission. In a creative twist on the assignment, Karen’s students put together their perspectives on why she teaches. It’s a fun video that sheds some light on her philosophy of student empowerment. The students seem to have really enjoyed the production process and looked critically at how their perspectives on their teachers shape how they learn. 

Putting this series together has reminded me that while every classroom and every educator is different, the top educators do share one commonality: the genuine desire to foster relationships that allow students to tap into their unknown potential.

Karen Van Duyn and her students share reasons why she teaches.

Our nation has so many of these accomplished classroom practitioners who have so much untapped potential to lead school improvement efforts. Now is the time to make these expert teachers more visible to policymakers and the public. They can and must lead the way. There are only 18 years, 2 months, and 12 days until 2030. We have a lot more work to do to "blur the lines of distinction between those who teach in schools and those who lead them." 

The Difference Between a Teacherpreneur and an Education Entrepreneur

By Kristoffer Kohl 

Kristoffer Kohl is a former classroom teacher working currently as a policy associate at CTQ to further the vision of TEACHING 2030. He previously collaborated with a team of accomplished teachers to produce the report “Transforming School Conditions: Building Bridges to the Education System that Students and Teachers Deserve.” 

How do you create space for innovation when a system is already in motion? In education especially, it often feels like we're trying to build the plane as we’re flying.

What would our schools look like if we solicited the expertise of teachers and recognized classroom problems as opportunities for innovation? How might learning outcomes be transformed if teachers were equipped to investigate and design solutions?

Given that most teachers aren’t afforded such opportunities, the education-reform world has been captivated in recent years by other another model of innovation: the incredible efforts of education entrepreneurs. Their accomplishments engage and inspire the public with seemingly endless possibilities for our schools. New Tech Network, Harlem Children's Zone, School of One, and Khan Academy have rocked the foundations of the education establishment by transforming the identities of school and classroom.

Though these schools have been successful, their ideas have proven difficult to scale and sustain in a way that benefits all communities. Fortunately, there is an untapped reservoir of expertise that can generate even more profound change in our nation's schools. 

Enter the teacherpreneur.

As defined by the authors of TEACHING 2030, a teacherpreneur is a teacher leader of proven accomplishment possessing a deep knowledge of how to teach, a clear understanding of what strategies must be in play to keep schools highly successful, and the skills and commitment necessary to spread their expertise to others — all while keeping at least one foot firmly in the classroom. 

Entrepreneurs may have brilliant ideas that often require venture capital and years of planning, but teacherpreneurs’ innovation is grounded in their daily experience in schools and classrooms. While education entrepreneurs experiment with novel theories for student learning, teacherpreneurs serve as action researchers by hypothesizing, implementing, troubleshooting, and learning from their daily interactions in the classroom. 

Prioritizing their responsibilities to students, teacherpreneurs are making a name for themselves by creatively packaging and delivering instruction. Some are 'flipping' their classrooms by allowing students to watch lessons online and using class time to complete work traditionally reserved for home. Others are using social media tools to develop a more modern take on classroom discussion, effective writing, and community action. 

The prevailing form of teacherpreneurship occurring regularly in schools across the nation is teacher leadership. Running everything from their departments and grade levels to professional learning communities, teachers are cropping up as managers, directors, mentors, and guides. Outside their buildings, teacher leaders are transforming unions, community organizations, after-school programs, and online professional-development communities.

CTQ works directly with three teacherpreneurs: Jessica Keigan and Dana Nardello in Denver, and Noah Zeichner in Seattle. In addition to their primary roles as teachers, all three are involved with education policy work for the New Millennium Initiative. Jessica and Dana also work alongside the Colorado Legacy Foundation, and Noah collaborates with Seattle Public Schools and the Seattle Education Association to increase teacher leadership opportunities. These teacherpreneurs will ideally serve as models for other organizations and districts that want to support similar hybrid positions.

Both teacherpreneurs and entrepreneurs play valuable roles in advancing the development of a 21^st-century school system. While entrepreneurs inspire a vision of what schools can become, teacherpreneurs demonstrate the caliber of individuals we need in schools to realize that vision. Teacherpreneurs elevate the entire profession by ensuring that colleagues, policymakers, and the public know what works best for students.  

To participate in a discussion about teacher career paths and hybrid teaching positions, join our Twitter chat on Thursday, October 20, from 8:30-9:30 p.m. ET, hashtag #teaching2030.

Using Teacher Expertise to Improve Policy

By Bill Farmer

The Illinois New Millennium Initiative has been doing some terrific work in response to the state’s recent efforts to reform its teacher evaluation systems. I’ve asked Bill Farmer, an Illinois NMI member and high school science teacher in Evanston, Illinois, to share his thoughts about the team’s recent report and interactions with state policymakers.
–-Barnett Berry

Like many other financially strained states, Illinois is engaged in significant educational policy reform propelled by the carrot of Race to the Top federal funds. One of the primary products of this reform is Senate Bill 315, passed in January 2010. SB 315, more commonly known as the Performance Evaluation Reform Act (PERA), provides the framework for a major overhaul of teacher and principal evaluation systems, using student growth as a significant component of evaluations. 

Illinois teachers have long recognized the flaws in current evaluation systems and have been advocating for an improved model that provides useful, timely feedback and professional support that can enhance classroom practice. In fact, in 1984 Art Wise and Linda Darling-Hammond, both then at the RAND Corporation, identified many of the same evaluation problems reformers and teachers are concerned about today.* Almost 30 years ago Wise and Darling-Hammond pointed out that we need clearly defined standards of professional excellence, well-trained and pre-qualified evaluators, and more frequent feedback. And today PERA is calling for similar guidelines for a teacher evaluation system.

The Complex Task of Measuring Student Growth

In the political and public realms, linking evaluations to student growth seems like common sense. Research consistently indicates that teachers are the most important school-based variable in a student’s educational growth. But somehow the school-based segment of that conclusion is frequently omitted. In reality, innumerable factors both inside and outside schools affect student growth.

And although many of us educators are already frequently monitoring student growth in our individual classrooms, systematizing such a complex measurement is an infinitely challenging task. This is particularly the case when trying to quantify an individual teacher’s contribution to student learning. Teachers often teach multiple grade levels and courses, spend varying amounts of time with students, and are aided by specialist teachers. Team teaching, which is much needed, can confound efforts to identify which teacher is responsible for student learning gains.

Involving Teachers in the Implementation Process

Implementing PERA is the responsibility of a joint committee called the Performance Evaluation Advisory Council (PEAC). Of this group of roughly 30 education stakeholders, only one is a current K-12 teacher. 

Around the same time PEAC was organizing, the Illinois New Millennium Initiative was assembling a dynamic group of early-career and veteran teachers to do the exact same thing. With such a huge transformation under way in Illinois, our goal was – and is – to bring teacher voice to the forefront of the conversation around the implementation of PERA.

Our NMI team’s virtual community provided a way for teachers to share research on teacher evaluation systems, helping us better understand the complicated matrix of educational policy in Illinois and around the country.

We then combined this knowledge with our own teaching experiences to write our report, “Measuring Learning, Supporting Teaching: Classroom Experts’ Recommendations for an Effective Educator Evaluation System.” 

Making Our Teacher Voices Heard

Since the report's release, key stakeholders and educators have taken notice.  

The NMI team has hosted webinars with members of PEAC to share our recommendations and provide feedback on PEAC’s work. NMI teachers have also attended monthly PEAC meetings to make connections and share perspectives from the classroom. These experiences have made us feel like our teacher voices are being heard and considered.

This month, we plan to attend regional teacher forums PEAC is sponsoring to present its progress and solicit teacher feedback. We’re eager to engage in (and maybe even help initiate) the next layers of policy reform that will strengthen our professional practice and produce better student outcomes. Evaluation reforms of 30 years ago never bore much fruit because teachers weren’t involved in implementing them. NMI teachers are ready to help lead the way.

*Wise, A. E., Darling-Hammond, L., McLaughlin, M. W. & Bernstein, H. T. (1984). Teacher Evaluation: A study of effective practices. Santa Monica, CA. RAND.

Six Ways to Improve Teacher Prep Programs

Below is a blog post I wrote as part of an online discussion for Learning Matters, a nonprofit media production company that has produced many education-focused reports and documentaries for PBS. Along with several experts in the education field, I was asked to write about teacher quality and teacher training. I encourage you to read the other participants' responses and leave comments on the full Learning Matters discussion — it's absolutely worth the read.

 

Recently, I collaborated with twelve expert teachers to write TEACHING 2030: What We Must Do For Our Students and Our Public Schools … Now and in the Future. We argue that universities’ teacher education programs — and highly-touted alternative certification programs like Teach for America — perpetuate out-of-date models of teaching and learning.

Teacher recruits need a very different kind of preparation to teach the diverse, tech-savvy learners of today and to ready those learners for the 21st-century global marketplace. To make this happen, we must move far beyond reform rhetoric — and we must do so quickly. Here are six big strategies that can help teacher preparation programs break the mold:

1. Ensure that recruits are being prepared for the roles that are most needed in area schools: School districts should develop “labor market” reports, allowing universities to carefully consider how many recruits should be prepared and for what.

2. Jettison traditional three-hour course credits in favor of performance-based pedagogical modules and assessments: This nimble, practical approach will help recruits to develop specific teaching skills and will better identify who is ready to teach, when, and under what conditions.

3. Split the time: Work with school districts to create hybrid roles for the most effective teachers to spend half their time teaching and half their time as lead teacher educators.

4. Understand the community: Require recruits to complete a substantial internship in a community-based organization, developing deep knowledge of how and where students and their families live.

5. Embrace online: Engage recruits in a virtual network of teachers, preparing them to teach effectively online and to collaborate virtually with teaching colleagues.

6. Emergent Tech: Work with school districts to expose recruits to live and digitally recorded “lesson studies,” in which teams of candidates learn to critique teaching and assess student learning using emerging technologies.