Author Archives: Stephen Seyfer

Rigor and Productive Struggle – “Kind of Hard” Causes Leaning

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Teaching for learning often resembles the Goldilocks story. If things are not just right, Goldilocks is not happy. Her sampling of chairs, porridge, and beds showed some chairs and beds to be too soft or too hard and some bowls of porridge to be too cold or too hot. By experimenting, she found her “just right” spot.

When children find lessons that are too easy to too hard, and I add, not interesting or of no perceived value to them, they also are not happy. They express their unhappiness by wandering off into boredom, distractive behaviors, and absenteeism. The “just right” lesson can catch each child’s attention and positively challenge their emerging skills sets. Such is a teacher’s constant dilemma – designing lessons with enough rigor and interest, not too little nor too much, to cause learning.

The sweet spot.

In “Productive Struggle Is a Learner’s Sweet Spot” (ASCD, Vol 14, No. 11), Barbara Blackburn describes the tension in instructional design teachers face in creating lessons that are “just right” on the scales of interest and rigor. “Student success occurs when you create an instructional environment that sets high expectations for each student and provides scaffolding without offering excessive help. The key is to incorporate productive struggle.

Productive struggle is what I call the “sweet spot” in between scaffolding and support. Rather than immediately helping students at the first sign of trouble, we should allow them to work through struggles independently before we offer assistance. That may sound counterintuitive, since many of us assume that helping students learn means protecting them from negative feelings of frustration. But for students to become independent learners, they must learn to persist in the face of challenge.”

https://ascd.org/el/articles/productive-struggle-is-a-learners-sweet-spot

Blackburn speaks of two essential elements for teaching in the sweet spot. One is using the tension between the Goldilocks’ just right and too hard to provoke children to learn. Instruction that is too easy will not cause learning. It is the tension between what a student knows and can do now and what they need to know and do next that is the cutting edge for their learning. Teachers use the tension to motivate, instruct, and reinforce new learning.

Blackburn’s second element is scaffolding new learning so that all children incrementally secure their learning and developmentally grow their knowledge and skills through productive struggle. Blackburn does not allow Goldilocks to settle back into comfort but keeps pushing Goldilocks to learn to know and do what initially is too hard for her. For Goldilocks-like students, what is just right today will become too soft in the future

Blackburn locates that sweet spot by finding the critical attributes of the new or next learning in her curriculum. Madeline Hunter taught us to assess critical attributes by sorting the ideas, concepts, and generalizations of knowledge and the rigor of skill sets to identify what children need to learn “right now.” This creates the sequence and the rate and degree of what will be taught to cause learning. The scaffold ensures that children are prepared and ready to climb from one step of the learning sequence to the next. Children learn the facts and skills in the order required to create concepts and generalizations needed for new progressions of their curricular learning.

When an appropriately considered scaffold is absent, children easily drift into boredom and disinterest. “Over time, students who are continually and insufficiently challenged tend to become disengaged and complacent, exerting lower effort and gaining only superficial learning. As a result, some fail to develop resilience and perseverance with difficult tasks.”

https://ascd.org/el/articles/thriving-in-the-zone-of-productive-struggle

Lev Vygotsky added to our understanding of how children learn with “the Zone of Proximal Learning. “According to Vygotsky’s theory, the ZPD describes the area between a child’s current and future ability. The ZPD is a hypothesized construct that describes the range of children’s abilities from what they are capable of doing to what they are unable to do on their own. When teaching, teachers should encourage child learning by using activities and supporting strategies that enable a child to accomplish a task with the assistance of another peer or teacher. It is important while scaffolding that teachers ask questions and give tasks that target a child’s current developmental level. As children begin to master skills on their own, teachers adjust their teaching strategies accordingly so that children continue to advance.”

Vygotsky

Just right is “kind of hard.”

There is an intersection where applications of productive struggle and proximal learning can be used to enhance student learning by finding the “just right” spot.

Does it make sense to make learning slightly harder?

Annie Murphy Paul wrote, “Yes, and the reason is twofold. The first reason to make learning harder is to make it interesting. Learning something new and complicated is hard in itself, as we saw above. Lightening the learner’s cognitive load will allow her to learn more effectively without becoming frustrated or confused.

But once the learner has attained some degree of mastery, ratcheting up the difficulty will help her stay in her “sweet spot” of engagement, where the task is not too hard as to be frustrating and not so easy as to be boring. This is also the place where learners can practice encountering adversity and challenge and overcoming them, a key experience in the development of grit.

The second reason to make learning harder is that it makes learning work better. UCLA psychologist Robert Bjork has developed the idea of “desirable difficulties” — difficulties that we actually want to introduce into students’ learning to make it more effective. Bjork notes that many of the learning activities that make students feel competent and successful — like reading over a textbook passage several times so that it feels familiar — actually they do very little to help them learn. What they should do instead is something like this: close that textbook and ask themselves to recall from memory what they’ve just read.

It won’t feel as good. They’ll struggle to remember the words that were just in front of their eyes. But this activity, known as retrieval practice (or simply self-testing) is an example of a desirable difficulty that will dramatically increase students’ learning.”

https://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/making-learning-easier-harder-for-kids

Paul suggests that cognitive load is a factor in what makes learning new content and skills easy or hard. “Cognitive load refers to the amount of information our working memory can process at any given time. For educational purposes, cognitive load theory helps us to avoid overloading learners with more than they can effectively process into schemas for long-term memory storage and future recall.”

https://www.mcw.edu/-/media/MCW/Education/Academic-Affairs/OEI/Faculty-Quick-Guides/Cognitive-Load-Theory.pdf

How much is “just right?”

As we design lessons for cognitive load, we consider the number of pieces or chunks of new information the brain can process at once. “In a famous paper humorously describing “the magical number seven plus or minus two, “Miller claimed to be persecuted by an integer. He demonstrated that one can repeat back a list of no more than about seven randomly ordered, meaningful items or chunks (which could be letters, digits, or words). Other research has yielded different results, though. Young adults can recall only 3 or 4 longer verbal chunks, such as idioms or short sentences (Gilchrist, Cowan, & Naveh-Benjamin, 2008). Some have shrugged their shoulders, concluding that the limit “just depends” on details of the memory task. Recent research, however, indicates when and how the limit is predictable.

The recall limit is important because it measures what is termed working memory (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974; Miller, Galanter, & Pribram, 1960), the few temporarily active thoughts. Working memory is used in mental tasks, such as language comprehension (for example, retaining ideas from early in a sentence to be combined with ideas later on), problem solving (in arithmetic, carrying a digit from the ones to the tens column while remembering the numbers), and planning (determining the best order in which to visit the bank, library, and grocery). Many studies indicate that working memory capacity varies among people, predicts individual differences in intellectual ability, and changes across the life span (Cowan, 2005).

It has been difficult to determine the capacity limit of working memory because multiple mechanisms retain information. Considerable research suggests, for example, that one can retain about 2 seconds’ worth of speech through silent rehearsal (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974). Working memory cannot be limited this way alone, though; in running span procedures, only the last 3 to 5 digits can be recalled (less than 2 seconds’ worth). In these procedures, the participant does not know when a list will end and, when it does, must recall several items from the end of the list (Cowan, 2001).

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2864034

Once “just right” is taught, teach children how to remember/study.

One may think that Goldilocks was just goofing around in the three bears home. But she wasn’t. She tasted porridge to find something to eat and she tested chairs and beds for something to sit and sleep on. So, it is with lesson design. Learning must be focused on the right outcomes.

Paul also referred to Bjork’s “desirable outcomes” or expectancy theory. In his example of a study habit – re-reading – he shows that when a child re-reads material several times, the expected outcome is familiarity not memorization what was read. To memorize, a child must set the expectation of recall not familiarity. Hence, instead of re-reading, close the book and try to recall what was read. If not successful, read again, close the book, and try to recall. This is practicing the expectation that the child really wants – to remember what was read not just be familiar with it.

As we teach children new information and skills, we want them to internalize what they learn not just parrot it back to us. Early on in their school careers, children must be taught how to create memory and not just expect memorization to happen. The ability to memorize is just as important as content and skills. To do this, teach a small chunk of new information, then ask children to repeat it back to you. Have children read a paragraph, set the reading aside, and tell you what they read. Extend their listening and reading to larger chunks of information. And correct them when their repeating or telling is not correct. Practice this in class and tell them they need to do this when they study at home. We teachers assume children know this intuitively and they do not.

The Big Duh!

The design of good instructional lessons is not easy. Assess what children know now and what they need to know next. Assemble new information and skills that are at the hard edge of what would be relatively easy for them to learn. Set the motivational hooks of novelty, interest, and challenging material for children before they engage in new learning so they will choose to engage in learning. Don’t provide help too soon – productive struggle builds resiliency. Teach them to study and create short- then long-term memory of what they learned.

Then, do it again for their next lessons.

Teachers of Bygone and New Eras

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There is a cadre of career teachers in our local school who are on the brink of retirement. Each are nearing their 40-year anniversaries in teaching, several with careers in our local school only. Those in the lower grades are teaching the grandchildren of their first students. Experienced? Measured in decades. Talented? Unbelievable teaching skills. Dedicated? Consistently trying to be better. Passionate about teaching? They put a capital “T” in Teacher! They also are part of a dwindling breed of teachers – those who were called to be teachers not just employed as teachers.

It is a fact that schools say good-bye to veteran teachers every year. In our school we have watched this natural cycle; distinguished teachers retire, and new teachers assume their classrooms However, in past years there was still a remnant of the cadre of the passionate left to carry on. Next year that may not be true.

Differences Matter.

When interviewing candidates for employment, I often asked, “Is teaching your calling or your vocation?”  Some candidates stumbled. They did not understand the question nor the concept of “calling.” Some tried for middle ground saying “both.”  A few either smiled or frowned, either was an appropriate face, saying, “calling.” From an early age, they knew they wanted to be teachers. In school, they selectively considered their teachers as role models. In college, they declared their education majors early and their course work developed necessary academic background. Intuitively, they knew they were meant to be teachers; it was their calling. Not surprisingly, these few formed the cadre of dedicated, talented, veteran teachers who constantly exude their passion for teaching children. They are the backbone of their faculty.

There is no set-in-stone, boilerplate descriptor for a passionate teacher. They exist female and male, of all ethnicities and languages, and teaching all disciplines. Often labeled toward the middle and latter years of their careers as master teachers, they know pedagogy and the content and skills of their subjects. They know how to adjust their teaching to meet their students’ learning challenges. More than anything else, they know how to relate to children and cause all children to learn.

Therein lies a significant difference between those who are called and those who are just employed. The passionate do not teach for teaching’s sake; they teach for learning’s sake.

Walking into a classroom while a teacher works causes a variety of responses from both teacher and students. In some classrooms, the air takes on a new tension because someone is watching. The tension increases when that someone is a principal or superintendent. Teaching and learning become business-like. The visitor is treated as a visitor. In contrast, when entering the classroom of one of the passionate, a visitor is welcomed with a “Hey, look at what we are doing today!” The teacher smiles but does not stop or adjust teaching because someone is watching. Children do not hesitate to explain what they are learning and often ask quiz the visitor showing how smart they are.

There is a difference in classrooms that celebrate learning and those who conduct learning.

Locating a teacher in their classroom also is tell-tale difference. When welcoming and starting a class and providing and modeling initial instruction, the teacher often is front and center before students. Location changes and matters when children are engaged in dependent and independent work and individual and small group work. The passionate are kneeling beside student desks and chairs, sitting, and huddling with a child or small group to help children to clarify or correct their understanding or skills. They listen more than they talk. They suggest more than they tell. They personalize the reality that when a child learns learning a very individual development. The employed teachers retreat to their desks to watch and monitor students and do teacher things. They wait for children to come to them rather than intuitively moving among children to aid, confirm, and clarify their learning.

There is a difference in teaching a classroom of children and teaching for each child in a classroom.

Burning the midnight oil is not just a student’s plight, but also a teacher’s. It refers to doing what needs to be done in preparation for what comes next no matter of the hour. When the school day begins, all teachers are in their classrooms awaiting the first bell. For the employed, a class day begins and ends with contractual bells. For the passionate, the teaching day begins and ends with readiness for what the children need next. As a rule, the first cars in the parking lot in the morning and the last to leave after school are the passionate’s. They also are seen at school on weekends and vacation days. No one asks a teacher to be a slave to their job, but what is slavery to some is being professional to others.

The commitment to teaching is greater than the teaching contract.

When a passionate teacher retires, there is a loss of talent in the school. Their talent is the aggregate of their experience and their professional knowledge and abilities. All teachers begin based upon their baccalaureate and teaching preparation. I have known some to make a career based solely on those credentials; they do only what is necessary to sustain their contract and license. I also have celebrated the awarding of advanced degrees and training for teachers who know that teaching requires lifelong learning and continuous new training. When I clipped and shared professional articles and books with the faculty, some squandered the opportunity while the cadre were eager to talk about what they read and learned.

The cadre is not just passionate about their students’ learning but also about their own continuous development as professional teachers.

It is a new era.

Each year in Wisconsin the number of licenses for baccalaureate-prepared teachers is equal to the number of emergency licenses issued to people who are fully prepared but will achieve their license through on-the-job training. Several years ago, new teachers with emergency licenses only were rare but soon they will be the majority of new hires. Most of the emergency-licensed are second career teachers who come to teaching for a variety of reasons. Few, if any, are called. The shortage of people who want to be classroom teachers is real and many students are taught by not-yet-licensed or prepared teachers. Teaching is a job and there will be no cadre.

The profession of teaching has entered a new era. Most new teachers will be as professional as the business of teaching requires them to be. They will work their contracts. Life for them sets aside the eight hours each day and nine months needed for their teaching job so that they can live their non-job lives.

Years ago, a child seeing a teacher in the grocery store was bewildered because the child only thought of the teacher in a classroom. That was the teacher’s entity. No more. And that is not necessarily a bad thing. To repeat, no one should be a slave to their employment. On the other hand, to swipe a phrase, a presence or absence of a teacher’s “fire in the belly” is clearly discernible. “Fire in the belly” is a critical attribute for master teaching and makes me wonder if we are saying our final farewell to our local Mr./Ms. Chips.

Burying a Myth About Rigor – It Is Too Easy If Every Student Gets a Good Grade

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As a younger associate principal in a larger 1970s high school, I commented at a district-wide AP’s meeting that I was concerned that so many students consistently earned D and F grades, and our school would be working to improve student achievement and diminish the number of Ds and Fs. Our director of secondary education halted me with this guidance. “If every student gets good grades, the instruction has lost its rigor.” End of discussion and I fought the urge to throw my pen at him.

Bell-curved thinking consigned some students to low grades on every assessment.

One of the tools taught in my teacher preparation was how to create a normal distribution of student test scores. It was not difficult, just tedious. The result was a plotting of scores on the bell curve to achieve 2.35% of grades as As, 13.5% as Bs, 68% as Cs, 13.5% as Ds, and 2.35% as Fs. This tool was consistent. On every test, I and my students were assured that almost 16% of the class would receive a grade of D or F – every time. Voila! Rigor was ensured.

Further investigation at the time confirmed for me that bell curving was not just standard practice in our school and school district, it was Gospel. Every teacher I worked with did the math and created a normal distribution to curve student grading. Tedious work but it was the expected practice. It did not matter if the assessment or assignment was 100-item multiple choice test, a 10-item true-false quiz, a five-part essay, a speech, or a term paper, the bell curved normal distribution ruled.

Sadly, students and parents accepted this alignment of grades because that is way things were done. If a student studied harder and improved their performance the next time, their grade always was a comparison to all other students not of what they learned and 15% of students received Ds or Fs.

In that high school, I could not convince the principal or my fellow APs that we should buck the system and drop the bell curve.

Autonomy can change practices.

Time passed. As a high school principal, it was much easier to implement changes. Autonomy has its privileges. In the mid-80s I found a group of faculty who were interested in changing their usual practices to achieve different outcomes. Not all faculty were of this mind, but enough to start a new beginning. We attended conferences with Bill Spady on outcome-based education (OBE) and quickly appreciated his dictum that “you get what you settle for.” We were no longer willing to accept that rigorous instruction and learning required some students to fail. Accordingly, we adopted A, B, C, I grading. Grades of Incomplete (I) were assigned instead of Ds or Fs.

This led to a second outcome-based change in our teaching. In a traditional classroom, when a grade of D or F is assigned, learning stops. Teachers and students go on to the next lesson and what was not learned completely or was learned with errors becomes permanent. In contrast, teachers using a grade of Incomplete told themselves and students that both teaching and learning are not complete and will not be until the I becomes an A, B, or C grade. Our cadre of OBE teachers were committed to adjusting their teaching or what would later be labeled as Tier 2 teaching so that all students would achieve an acceptable level of learning.

Change does not happen easily in schools. Traditional faculty in our school held to their traditional grading practices and a cadre of teachers began using OBE concepts of teaching and learning. The cadre studied Grant Wiggins’ and Jay McTighe’s Understanding by Design. Curricular units were reconstructed so that the curricular outcomes teachers wanted students to achieve drove lesson planning and daily teaching.

Cadre members represented most of the school’s curricular departments and grade levels. When the cadre met, they discussed pedagogy not departmental our grade level issues. They discussed student experiences across subject lines not just within a vertical curriculum. The cadre became increasingly student-focused, especially about the challenges that got in the way of student learning. Some of these challenges were institutional and some were student specific.

Things never came to blows but the contrasting practices were noticed by all faculty, students, and parents. An OBE characteristic that became painfully real was that success begets success. Students in cadre-taught were not failing courses. In successive semesters, and student course registrations trended toward cadre-taught courses. Increased student engagement meant fewer disciplinary referrals. Students and parents wanted out of traditional practices.

Rigor redefined.

After several semesters of cadre work, I asked these teachers to define academic rigor in teaching and learning. They quickly responded with these three points.

  • Rigor is setting high quality curricular standards for student learning of content knowledge, academic skills, and dispositions.
  • Rigor is designing teaching that causes all students to succeed in achieving these standards. Time is not a limited variable. Adjustment of initial teaching is expected.
  • Rigor is accepting multiple ways in which a diverse student group can show the learning of the required outcomes.

Today, several decades of working with other cadre groups, rigor in many classrooms and schools is looking more like an OBE definition than my 1970s director of secondary education. However, Madeline Hunter taught us that in every faculty there will be Ernies. An Ernie, not gender-specific, is a teacher who leans back in a chair saying to self and others “this new discussion of rigor (fill in any other change initiative) will come and go. I do not need to change what I do in my classroom, and no one can make me.” She was right. There are Ernies in every faculty, but the cadres of higher quality teaching and learning are gaining on them.

Getting rigor right is a continuous struggle.

I always hope that lessons learned create new practices. But practices made permanent require little change in the teaching faculty. That is never the case. Forty years later and a new generation of teachers we still battle with the definition of rigor. Too many students receive permanent grades of D or F as educators continue to use D and F grades as a method of labeling student learning. Ds and Fs once again are permanent grades, even with RtI practices.

We have work to do.

Good Classroom Management is Not Easy; It is a Learned and Practiced Skill and Art

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Teacher preparation in the United States is in crisis mode. There are not enough new teachers each year to replace teachers who leave the classroom. The cold fact is that four in every ten young teachers leave classroom teaching for other employment in their first five years of teaching. “Multiple reasons rise to the top of the list. Student behavior is a leading complaint Long hears from teachers who contemplate or leave teaching, and one he believes is among the hardest to address. ‘I don’t think anyone has the answer,’ said Long, referring to accounts of extreme student behavior targeting teachers that has resulted in physical or emotional harm.” Zachary Long quit teaching and with his wife co-founded Life After Teaching. He helps teachers who want to quit teaching to quit.

https://www.edweek.org/leadership/behind-the-stats-3-former-teachers-talk-about-why-they-left/2023/04

Student behavior runs teachers out of teaching. It is a fact, but it need not be a continuing fact. When we know teachers quit teaching because of unsuccessful classroom management, we need to aggressively improve how we prepare teachers.

When your boat is taking on water, you can abandon the ship, or you can fix the hole in the hull. We tolerate and accommodate the abandonment of classrooms even though we know a huge “hole” in teacher preparation is classroom management.

A review of teacher preparation curriculum in local colleges of education tells the story. Our local university, for example, provides teacher candidates with 72 credits of college course work toward a major in K-9 education. But there is only one three-credit course that teaches classroom management, and it combines learning theories with student behavior. When we know that an inability to manage children in a classroom setting is one of the leading causes of teacher attrition, is this adequate?

EDUC 340. Supporting Learning and Behavior in the Classroom. 3 Credits.

Course provides pre-service teachers with an understanding of how students learn in educational contexts. Learning theories reviewed, & learning strategies to enhance learning and prevent/manage behaviors are introduced and applied in direct interaction with a learner. Course may be repeated 2 times for a total of 6 credits.
Fall and Spring.

No Longer Is It a Hit Them Hard and Often Response

How to organize and manage groups of students is an age-old problem. The first Normal Schools (state teacher prep schools) endorsed corporal punishment for misbehaving students. Students went to the proverbial woodshed where their teacher administered discipline with a paddle. Teachers taught children to behave by fearing physical punishment. Although some schools began banning corporal punishment as early as 1914 it continued as a disciplinary practice in many states in the late 1990s.

https://www.nea.org/nea-today/all-news-articles/corporal-punishment-schools-still-legal-many-states#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20Department%20of%20Education,dropped%20over%20the%20past%20decade.

When a wooden paddle was considered too harsh, teachers used a gym shoe. I saw the well-known design of a Converse gym shoe on the backsides of my male classmates in the 60s.

On the first day of my first teaching assignment my principal gave me a well-worn wooden paddle and told me to use it. When I asked what a teacher should do if a child’s behavior did not improve, he implied I should hit them harder and more often. I put my paddle in a closet.

Student Discipline as Pedagogy

As often as we talked about paddling back in the day, we clearly understood most of our teachers would never raise a hand to a student. They created patterns of good student behavior through good teaching. It was not a matter of experience, however. We knew veteran teachers whose classrooms were unruly and undisciplined and novice teachers whose students focused on learning not misbehaving. Even before I began my teacher preparation, it was clear that good teaching and good student discipline are linked.

Our task in teacher preparation today is to create highly qualified teachers of both curriculum and student discipline. A teacher who will stay in the profession needs to learn both.

Toolbox Preparation for every Teacher

Classroom management is as important as teaching methods. If a teacher cannot focus children’s attention on the curriculum, how can a teacher teach the curriculum? It is a what to do first dilemma – teach teachers how to teach or teach teachers how to manage children as learners. Both are equally important, and each needs equally strong emphasis.

Field experience tells us that fitting a student management philosophy to a teacher is like fitting shoes. One will feel better, wear better, and be more satisfying than all others. Therefore, teacher prep programs must teach teachers a variety of philosophies and strategies so that a teacher can find a personal plan that refines student behavior and enhances student learning.

The CESA 7 (WI) Teacher Development Center treats Instructional Methods and Classroom Management as toolbox courses that every teacher candidate, regardless of the license sought, must master. In Classroom Management, candidates study several behavioral management philosophies and strategies that allow the candidate to develop a personal and philosophical “fit” to their classroom management plans.

Candidates study and are assessed for their knowledge and understanding of five philosophies and strategies. They know the basis and background of each, their authors, and field studies of their applications. Candidates must know the following:

  • Choice/Logical Consequences
  • Discipline with Dignity
  • Assertive Discipline
  • Social Justice
  • PBIS

As an “apprentice” teacher development program, teacher candidates are employed by a school district and enrolled in the TDC. From day one they are classroom teachers under the supervision of school principals, mentors, and CESA 7 supervisors. CESA 7 enrolls candidates from districts throughout Wisconsin; districts that know CESA 7’s reputation for quality instruction and personal support given to of its apprentice teachers. The TDC licensing program requires four semesters of teacher prep coursework, daily teaching, and synthesis of TDC instruction into classroom applications.

Classroom Management and Instructional Methods are the first courses candidates must complete in their licensing program. The CESA 7 candidate supervisor emphasizes and guides apprentices to engage their students in the teacher’s learned classroom management design. This “guided” implementation sets up the relationship between learning and behavior and expectations for both the teacher’s and all students’ commitment to both.

Support of Novice Teachers is Critical

A second most common reason for teachers to leave teaching is their perceived lack of professional support. It starts with a principal and administrative structure that is hard pressed to meet daily crisis demands and leaves new teacher support as a low priority.

The Learning Policy Institute says, “New teachers who do not receive mentoring and other supports leave at more than two times the rate of those who do.”

https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/sites/default/files/Teacher_Exodus_Infographic.pdf

The CESA 7 TDC answers this dilemma with constant support from its classroom-visiting supervisors, a 24-7 online project specialist, and a curriculum and instruction consultant. TDC experience shows that its staff often understands and responds to candidate classroom problems before the school principal is aware of a problem.

Unlike IHEs that supervise student teachers during a clinical semester only, the TDC conducts supervisory observations and counseling throughout the candidate’s enrollment. Through this process, principals and TDC supervisors see, critique, and guide the development of each candidate’s classroom management practices. TDC teachers do not guess at student behavioral management. Candidates apply the methods they studied, use informed supervision, and refine strategies that work. And, they have ongoing professional feedback on the effectiveness of their classroom management.

The Big Duh!

We know that good teaching and good classroom management go together. We know that positive professional and administrative support is essential for novice teachers. We know that too many teachers leave their chosen profession too early because of problems with student discipline and a perceived lack of professional support. We know that novice teachers who learn and implement good teaching and good student discipline programs are more likely to continue their careers as classroom teachers.

When we know these things as true, teacher preparation programs must fix the hole in our teacher development programs that lead to teacher resignations. We can fix these problems and children can have the prepared teachers they deserve.

Improve How We Treat Our Rookies to Resolve Teacher Attrition

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The first year a teacher is in a classroom is monumental. During that year, one of three things happens. A teacher is successful and starts a career growing every year in her teaching abilities. A teacher is unhappy, decides teaching is not a good career choice, and begins to drift toward a career change. Or a teacher does the minimal needed from a first-year teacher, enough to earn a continuing contract, and begins a career repeating novice teaching skills. The first is great but the second and third are not.

How many promising teachers leave the profession too early. Too many teachers. How many years do we allow a teacher to be a first-year teacher? Too many years. These two truths are connected. The first years of teaching are critical for those who stay and for those who leave. We need to improve how we work with rookie educators.

First year once or first year forever.

Every teacher experiences a first year as a classroom teacher. It is a birthing process. Most teachers grow through their accumulated professional experiences and the quality of their teaching matures and improves over time. It is common to hear a veteran teacher speak of her beginnings. “In my first year I tried to do too much and did not do very much very well. It took experience to know what was essential to cause children to learn.”  Or “I stayed up past midnight every night working on lesson plans. I thought, ‘If I have a perfect lesson plan, I will have a perfect day of teaching.’ I learned that good teaching is what I do once the plan is in motion.” Equally we hear from principals about how a teacher matures over time and her teaching gets better and better.

But this is not true of every teacher; some teach like a first-year teacher repeatedly. They do not advance their pedagogy or ability to connect with children beyond what they did as a first-year teacher. They are not reflective in considering how a lesson might be improved, and they file every lesson for teaching again next year. They consider student achievement data a reflection of the children they teach not the teaching the children receive. They talk at children rather than listening and engaging with them. There are many descriptors for how a teacher is an habitual first-year teacher.

Consider teachers as flowers. The beautiful perennials keep getting better and better as they cross-pollinate and bloom more colorfully year after year. The annuals bloom in their season and then wilt. Annuals are the same year after year. When I think of high-quality teaching and its impact on the lives of children, I know the teachers I want my grandchildren and their friends to have. Perennials, please; no annuals. So, what do we do to cultivate perennials and cull annuals? Begin with the concept of “first year.”

And, like flower seeds, some teachers do not grow into flowering plants or do grow but never blossom. They quit the garden all too early.

There are two kinds of “first.”

There are two events that define a first-year teacher. One is “this is my first year as a professional teacher” and the second is “this is my first-year teaching in this school.” Each is a valid “first” with a uniqueness that makes these events important in a teaching career. Each of these firsts is wrapped in facts and emotions of “never doing this/never been here before.” It is inarguable that the first day of a teacher’s first year is a huge “first.” By the same definition of first, a teacher who has moved to a different school several times experiences many of the feelings and treatments of a first-day educator. These two “firsts” are essential in teacher development, because they make or break a teacher’s persistence. Whether the first time in a classroom or the first time in a school, what happens then affects a teacher’s career.

First year ever teachers have two learning curves – classroom and institutional. While their pedagogical skills are getting their first, independent, away-from-college testing, their institutional learning curve is almost vertical. They teach by transferring their sheltered student teaching experience to their “you are on your own now” classroom. What seemed like confident teaching in student teaching becomes less confident as an employed teacher. Being singularly responsible for children and their learning is a huge undertaking and weighs heavily on a novice teacher.

For a first year ever teacher, onboarding of institutional procedures is a blur. Bell schedules, attendance taking, grading, office referrals, contact with parents, and calendars of in-school meetings are a piling on of information. It feels like boot camp. A novice does not want to run afoul of institutional procedures, but every novice does mess up on one or two. They get lost and can feel lost. It is the ability to rebound that carries them forward.

“First year in a new school” teachers face similar problems with institutional procedures. Not only do they need to learn new procedures, but they also need to forget the procedures of their former school. Even classroom teaching needs to be recalibrated to the curriculum and priorities of their new school. For example, elementary math is not always the same elementary math. Elementary math is the curricular series the school has adopted and when a teacher is handed a new curricular series her teaching of elementary math must be adapted to that series.

All “firsts” need our improved attention if we are to cultivate annually improving teachers.

First year survivors and leavers.

First-year teaching is a survival of the fittest contest. National statistics are not changing and 40% of classroom teachers leave teaching in their first five years in the profession. Stop and consider that fact for a moment. A teacher pays $80,000 or more for a baccalaureate degree and teaching license. Their move to a new town and investment in renting or buying a home is a huge emotional as well as financial commitment. Then they walk away from that effort and expense. The reasons must be ginormous.

Drilling into why this happens exposes a list of usual suspect reasons that have not changed much over time.

  • Inadequate Preparation -Beginning teachers with little or no preparation are 21⁄2 times more likely to leave the classroom after one year compared to their well-prepared peers.
  • Lack Of Support For New Teachers – New teachers who do not receive mentoring and other supports leave at more than two times the rate of those who do.
  • Challenging Working Conditions – Teachers often cite working conditions, such as the support of their principals and the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues, as the top reason for leaving.
  • Dissatisfaction With Compensation – Beginning teachers earn about 20% less than individuals with college degrees in other fields, a wage gap that can widen to 30% for mid-career educators.
  • Better Career Opportunities – More than 1 in 4 teachers who leave say they do so to pursue other career opportunities.
  • Personal Reasons – More than 1 in 3 teachers who leave cite personal reasons, including pregnancy and childcare, as extremely or very important in their decision.

https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/sites/default/files/Teacher_Exodus_Infographic.pdf

Concentrate on the first four reasons.

  1. Hiring teachers is not a game of horseshoes. When there is a shortage of qualified applicants, close to being a qualified applicant is not good enough. However, in too many schools close is good enough. It is wrong to infer that all schools hire unqualified persons as teachers. Yet the reality is that too many schools face too few applicants and our chances to hire a highly qualified teacher every time are becoming scarce.

The choices to not hiring a “good enough” teacher are not teaching the course(s) of that assignment, creating larger class sizes by eliminating a classroom without a teacher, or becoming creative with hybrid instruction that reduces the need for constant face-to-face teaching. Each of these can cause parental and faculty uproar that no principal wants to face. Hence, hiring a “good enough” teacher is too often good enough.

The problem is worsened by some legislation that tries to address teacher shortage by declaring teachers do not need a baccalaureate degree, or unlicensed substitute teachers can be hired as regular teachers, or any military veteran can be hired as a classroom teacher. When these reasonings are apllied, “good enough” really is good enough. Except when we consider child learning. And then unprepared still is unprepared and children suffer when their teacher is not prepared to teach them. Unprepared is never good and far from good enough.

The fix = do not hire “good enough” unprepared teachers. For student learning, unprepared teachers cause more problems than dropped courses and larger class sizes.

Another fix = assign highly qualified teachers to initial and tier 2 instruction only and lesser to unprepared teaches to classroom supervision. Assure that all children get their initial and adjusted instruction from the best teacher available.

  • Hiring is too often a one and done task. The problem with hiring a “close to good enough” teacher is that school principalship is a constant addressing of immediate problems. One hired the problem of a teacher placement is yesterday’s problem. Once the “close to good enough” teacher is hired, principals by necessity turn to the next immediate problem and do not give required attention to their problematic new hire(s).

Most school principals are “fire fighters” – every day is a matter of taking care of immediate and urgently hot problems of student discipline, student attendance, student transportation, building security and maintenance, finding sub teachers, supervising student activities, and resolving parent-school issues. Principals keep problems, like fires, from getting out of control. Professional development is not a September through December issue. It is further back on the fire line.  And observing teachers for professional evaluations waits until late winter and spring. Consequently, new teachers and “good enough” teachers do not see their principal unless the teacher is involved in a hot problem and then it seldom is a positive relationship.

As a generalization, first ever and first year in the school teachers get little personal and professional attention from their principal.

Fix = make principal engagement with each “first” teacher a weekly priority. Even checking in activities count when the “firsts” know the principal is personally interested in their daily teaching. Listening to a “first” is a proactive support.

Mentoring was a school priority du jour a decade ago but has slid back in priorities since. If a mentor is contractually or policy-required, mentor and “first’ relationships are typically on paper not in real time.

Fix = pay mentors, don’t make it volunteer or uncompensated duty.

Fix = require weekly, documented contacts.

Fix = “firsts” need procedural mentoring, and they need curricular mentoring. Do not think mentoring is a one size fits all. By the end of the first year, the curricular needs will outweigh the procedural.

  • Vestiges of seniority benefits are still in play when considering the assignments “firsts” are given. Veteran teachers most often have smaller class sizes, upper-level courses, recently renovated classrooms, even more windows than “firsts.” “Firsts” also are assigned to more supervisory duties than veterans. In my “first ever” year, I was assigned to boys’ restroom supervision during two passing periods every day. Instead of taking care of my needs or arranging for the next class of students, I was expected to stand in and “supervise” boys in their second-floor restroom. The fact that I remember this is testimony to its onerousness.

Fix = reduce the non-instructional assignments usually given to firsts. Not only do firsts not know the routines of these assignments, but it is just another boot camp feature for a first. Children tend to respond better to veteran teachers. Veterans know how to downplay student behavior that needs to be downplayed. Discontinue assigning every lowly duty to “firsts.”

  • Employment is comparative. Even though the average teacher salary in 2024 will be in the mid-$60,000s, “firsts” most often begin much lower. I work in a post-baccalaureate teacher preparation program and see “first year ever” teachers hired in the mid-$30,000s. With households of 2 or more, these “firsts” also qualify for food stamp-assistance in Wisconsin. When they compare their annual salary with other professions requiring a baccalaureate degree, they do not compare well. When they consider their school debts and how long it will take pay off their debt based on teacher pay as compared to other beginning professionals, they do not compare well. Too many novice teachers leave teaching because of inadequate compensation.

Fix = the professional work of a fourth-year teacher qualitatively compares well with a ten-year veteran. By the fourth year, after a “first” satisfies probationary status, pay them the same annual salary as a ten-year veteran. The costs of increasing their annual pay over the 4th thru 9th year is less than the costs for finding new “firsts” who are needed to replace young teachers who leave the profession early.

Cultivate the perennial; weed out the annuals.

The final fix for helping “firsts” who are highly-qualified-teachers-in-the-making is for principals to be more proactive in weeding out “first forever” teachers. One of the hardest smackdowns for “firsts” is their observation that mediocrity is rewarded in public education. An unprepared, “just good enough” teacher gets the same treatment and compensation as a well-prepared, sweating out the details “first.” Adding injury to insult, the “first” who cares is treated the same as the annual who does not care. And when that treatment includes a lack of mentoring, a lack of principal acknowledgement and support, and low levels of beginning and annual increases in pay, it is no wonder that promising “firsts” become “I’m out of here” firsts.