It is late August and teachers are returning to school. Classrooms look like tornado zones as teachers unpack supplies and reorganize learning centers. Opened boxes, books, and bins are strewn around the floor. Within days and after much attention, teachers and classrooms will be ready to cause new learning for children assigned to them.
My observations are not entirely casual. I am looking for teachers who know what they are doing and why they are doing it. I am looking for teachers who are restocking their tool boxes of teaching competence. Without my stopping what they are doing, as if I could, we engage in the annual conversations of getting ready for school.
Two distinct impressions rise from these observations and conversations. Two distinctly different teacher-types emerge. I have talked with teachers who confidently know what they are doing and are doing it. And, I have talked with teachers who think they know what they are doing and are trying to do it. On the first day of school, their classrooms may look similar, but on the second day of school what these two teacher-types do in the teaching of children will be dissimilar.
In the school gym, parents are engaged in the annual chore of school registration. They are updating demographic data about their children, paying school fees, and, most importantly, receiving their children’s classroom assignments for the new school year. The last item lists the names of the persons each child will have as her and his teachers this year. Some parents smile, some frown, and some don’t know enough to do either.
Why is this thus?
Frommers, Fodor’s, Concierge and Lonely Planet do not publish a travel guide for how to best traverse K-12 classrooms, but local parents know the best pathways. The knowledge of which teachers are best at causing children to learn their grade level and course curricula is an unwritten document, but in the parking lot on registration day there will be many conversations about which children will have the best travel guides or teachers this school year. This knowledge is performance-based and data-documented. It is not just preferential. As the mothers of children in the parking lot tell me, “Look it up. Some teachers always produce better test results than other teachers. And, the children they taught do better on tests the next school year. Some teachers send more children to the office for behavior problems; they don’t know how to keep kids learning so kids get distracted and misbehave. I want my child to have the teachers that know how to teach and produce the best learning results.” Parents, especially mothers, know.
Each teacher in the school is licensed by the DPI to teach their assigned classes and courses. Each teacher has earned a baccalaureate degree or added a post-grad degree as preparation for their professional work. Most teachers in the school are veteran teachers with several to many years of on-site experience. Yet, differences exist.
• There is a difference between having teaching tools and having sharp teaching tools.
Some teachers sit with children in a reading group, listen to children read, and smile or frown. Children take turns reading and demonstrating their ability to sound out new words, read fluently, and follow along. Other teachers listen to children read. This teacher stops the reading to assist a child phonetically pronounce a new word, to ask children what new words mean to build vocabulary, and to ask children to explain what they understand from their reading. This teacher has individual children read, children read aloud together, and has children listen to the teacher model reading a sentence or paragraph before a child is asked to read the same sentence or paragraph. One teacher uses the tool of reading groups while another teacher exercises the sharper tools of teaching reading in a group.
• There is a difference between teaching and knowing how to teach to teach to each child.
From the doorway, daily teaching can look the same in most classrooms. From a seat in the classroom, it is apparent that some teachers make a lesson plan, walk through the steps of their lesson plan calling on some children, asking children to “show their work”, moving from one subject to the next, and tomorrow they will do the same. From a seat in another classroom, it is apparent that this teacher works their lesson plan, engaging every child, asking children to demonstrate and explain their thinking, and staying with the lesson until satisfied that every child is ready for a next lesson. It is apparent that when a teacher kneels next to a child’s chair, one teacher encourages a child to finish the assignment and another teacher provokes the child to do learn from the assignment.
• There is a difference between teaching and knowing when and how to continue teaching and to teach differently.
Every teacher sets a curricular calendar. With approximately 180 days of school, a schedule must be maintained to assure that all the curriculum is taught. Some teachers are driven by the curricular calendar while some teachers are driven by the curriculum on the calendar. The first teacher will move to the next lesson and the next chapter because time is important. Another teacher will stay with a lesson until all children have learned its objectives before moving to a next lesson. This teacher will teach and re-teach and her re-teaching purposefully will be different than her first teaching. If a child did not learn from the first teaching, it is unlikely a repeat of the same teaching will cause a different result. A sharper teaching tool is differentiated teaching to meet the needs of the child and the time and place of the child’s learning.
• There is a difference between giving tests of learning and using tests for learning.
A test may signify for a teacher that a chapter or unit has been completed. For this teacher, a test says it is time for children to move to the next chapter or unit of teaching. For another teacher, a test signifies how well the teacher has taught the chapter, unit or semester and if the teacher is ready to move to the next. This teacher looks at the results and, if the results are not good for all children, the teacher uses test data to selectively correct or strengthen what students did not learn “well enough”. A move to the next chapter or unit happens when learning not time indicates it is time for what comes next.
• There is a difference between looking like you are doing and actually doing. In other arenas, this is the difference between talking a good game and playing a good game.
Some teachers know the talk. They can tell you what is happening in their classroom. They hand you chapter books and point at learning centers and at posters on the wall. Other teachers can explain the talk. They can tell you why what is happening in their classroom is necessary for each child’s learning, how they will know that each child has learned from what is happening, and when it will be time to change what is happening in the classroom and what that change will look like.
• There is a difference between being liked as a teacher and being esteemed as a teacher.
If this difference needs explaining, a reader will not understand the difference.
Parents in the parking lot know these things. They know that some teachers are expert teachers with sharp teaching tools. They want these teachers to be their child’s teachers. Sadly, some children will have other teachers. Teaching tools really matter.