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Johnny Was In 9th Grade Once; Then He Grew Up

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“I am so glad to see you,” a smiling, tall, thin-haired man said to me holding out his hand in greeting. Beside him stood an attractive woman with a similar, warm smile. “You were our 8th grade American History teacher,” she said. “We saw your name on the guest list and had to talk with you.” The grade and the subject narrowed my memory to several hundred names. However, when she said their names and that they were married, I whispered “1971, fifth period. You sat in the second desk in the row nearest the door and you sat halfway back in the middle row.” They smiled and nodded. “How is your twin brother?” I asked him. “Your smile still lights up the room,” I told her. “Married,” I commented, “Everyone at school knew you would be one day, even when you were in 8th grade.” And we moved to a corner of the room and talked about their lives since junior high school.

There is a moment in the movie Dead Poets Society when actor Robin Williams walks his class down the hall to look at pictures of past students. Behind the showcase windows are class pictures of students from 10, 20 and 30 years ago. Some are pictures individual actors and athletes posed and in action. Some are photos of students in science labs and art and music studios. “Who are these people? What dreams of life did they hope for? What became of them?”

These two former students instantly morphed from photos from the 70s to flesh and blood people today. She is a retired elementary teacher in a neighboring school district. He is a retired, decorated police officer. How wonderful! And how exceptional is this occurrence.

They grow up but our memories do not.

Teachers and their students share moments in time. For the span of a school year, sometimes two or three years, they share the space together, a classroom or a gym or a stage or a playing field. Teachers teach and students learn. Lessons are planed and acted out in class with these students in mind. Each student’s “school personality” is exposed to the teacher incrementally over 180 school days: likewise, the teacher’s school persona is exposed to students. School personalities are curated for school purposes and seldom show the person’s real characteristics. So, we take them for what they are.

Some students and some teachers are so guarded about their personalities that they present one dimensional, flat image of themselves. They could be cardboard sitting in desks and propped behind a desk. Their school life and non-school life never intersect. Others are highly animated, and, like a glaring headlight, it is difficult to get out of their beam. We know what they did Saturday night though we would just as soon not know. For most, however, their school personality is exactly who they are at this stage of their adolescent and adult life.

I have a scrapbook of class photos and a collection of yearbooks spanning five decades. I can name many of the faces with immediate recall of incidents from the school year(s) we shared. Some faces require a glance at the cut line below the photo to attach a name. With that clue, a memory may return. For too many faces, not even reading the name retrieves a clue about that person. The “Dead Poets” students and I share this perspective – we see faces captured in time, faces of one-time students who graduated and lived lives beyond their brief time in school. And we do not know anything about those lives.

At class reunions, I play a game with fellow Class of 66 mates. “Can you name every one of your K-12 teachers?” I can all my teachers and most classmates name about 80% of theirs. This is not unusual, I think. Teachers are memorable. A different question is, “How many teachers did you stay in touch with after graduation?” For most classmates, the answer is “zero.” With a smile, I explain, “I taught with several of our teachers and several others were on the faculty in schools where I was their principal.” Unusual, and my stories about these career intersections stay very professional.

Teachers and students grow their degrees of separation

There are many reasons that explain the transitory nature of teacher and student acquaintanceship. For one, it is how the “conveyor belt” structure of school runs. Students move annually through a schoolhouse spending one year in each grade level and one school year in a teacher’s assignment of children to teach. There is no stopping the conveyor belt. A second reason is the professional distance kept between teachers and children. Knowing a child as a student is to know their educational likes and dislikes just enough to be able to engage the child in learning. Professionally, a teacher wants to know the intellectual, socio-emotional, and psycho-motor characteristics of a child that will help the child/student to be a successful student without knowing any of the personal intimacies of the child. It is a proper balancing and distancing that works both ways.

Mobility also causes separation. Just as students move through K-12 education from school to school, teachers change teaching assignments, schools, and school districts. Since teaching my former 8th grade students, I changed from teacher to principal to superintendent to school board member and served in three other school districts in three different states.

Staying in touch

A best friend and fellow teacher from the 70s is the opposite of me. He lives in the city where he taught, moved from the feeder junior high school to the high school where students matriculated and knew many children/students for six years of their school lives. And they knew him. He was a teacher/coach who relished his relationships with classroom students and football players and can, at the drop of a hat, retell their exploits 50 years later. My friend, now in his 80s and a few of his former student/players, now in their 70s, see, phone, and text each other just to “stay in touch.” They relive stories as well as update each other.

Several of his former students are now teachers in their own classrooms. My friend is their career-long mentor. Although his real-time classroom experience ended with retirement in the early 2000s, they value his insights and instincts about good teaching.

The Big Duh!

The iconic “Johnny” of school stories grows up. Years ago, Johnny was a student in our classroom and a team or club or cast member under our tutelage. For a brief period, we were engaged, teacher and student, in teaching and learning. We shared our “school personalities” to optimize student learning and in those learning activities created memories, many that last over time. However, Johnny does grow up and life after our classroom is what Johnny’s life is about; not the memories of our class-time together.

At the same time, Johnny’s teacher also evolves within professional experiences. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Johnny faces become part of a teacher’s memory bank of students. Often there “a” Johnny that really sticks out in a teacher’s memory, but even that face is a photo in time and does not resemble the adult Johnny who grew up. I was in a checkout line at a local grocery market two years ago. The tall man pushing a cart in front me turned, took a hard look at my face, and said, “I know you. You were…” In that instance, I was vulnerable to our shared past. I wondered, “Who is this and what did I do that was memorable for him?” You never know when former teachers and students will cross paths.

Betterment Is A Teacher’s Constant PD

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Maya Angelou taught us to “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” Her words are more than appropriate for schoolteachers whose calling to teach requires constant professional development. A teaching license is just the beginning of many emerging threads of career-long self-improvement. A teaching career is a pathway for constant learning of how to do better.

Betterment

I like the concept of betterment. Betterment is defined as the act or process of making something “better.” Better, as the comparative of good, means that the act or process creates something that is improved to be more than good. Betterment of teaching, then, is a constant ratcheting upward of a teacher’s proficiency in the capacities that characterize better teaching.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/betterment

We begin at “good enough.” Our educator preparation programs, as outlined in state statutes, license teachers who have obtained the status of good enough to be licensed. Teacher candidates must demonstrate the minimal requirements to earn institutional endorsement for a teacher license. In Wisconsin, these requirements are prescribed in PI 34 legislation. The same license is issued to candidates who superbly meet the endorsement criteria and to those who meet the minimal criteria. Good enough earns a license.

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/code/admin_code/pi/34

An employing school board can assume that a newly licensed teacher’s preparation is “good enough” to teach the school district’s children and curriculum. Further, in today’s shortage of people seeking employment as classroom teachers, a licensed teacher often is good enough to match children in a classroom with a teacher. Good enough is far better than no teacher.

Shifting responsibility for professional development

The impetus for professional development changed in 2019 for teachers in Wisconsin. Prior to 2019 teachers had to complete six credits of PD every five years to renew their teaching licenses. Beginning in 2019 teachers with six semesters of teaching under their Tier 1 licenses are eligible for a lifetime license. A lifetime license means a teacher does not need to do anything other than be employed in a teaching position requiring the issued license to be fully licensed for the rest of the teacher’s career. Professional development shifted from license renewal to the employing school board’s requirement for contract renewal.

Money makes professional development happen. Parallel to school board responsibility for teacher professional development has been the loss of federal and state funding for public education. Legislators used the distribution of federal funding during and after the COVID pandemic as a reason to diminish state funding. When federal money expired, legislators did not increase state funding but left school allocations at their diminished levels. The result is that most school boards must fund professional development for teachers from local tax revenues or not invest in teacher professional development. It is a fact that when school board revenues are scarce, professional development gives way to the many other needs of the school district.

Yet the need for PD for teachers has never been greater. The challenges of pandemic learning loss, the post-pandemic socio-emotional needs of children, and the increasing challenges of artificial intelligence in daily and school life require teachers to upgrade their professional abilities. The responsibility that shifted from state licensing requirements to school board contract requirements now shifts to teachers’ personal requirements for professional integrity. In the absence of district-led professional development, betterment is up to each teacher.

Be not afraid of growing slowly; be afraid of standing still – Chinese Proverb

Getting started on a self-help regimen is easier when a person adopts a proven strategy. A strategy is like holding a checklist in one hand and a mirror in the other as asking “What is my capacity to enact each of the ideas on this check list?”  I offer SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) as a proven strategy. It works like this. Set aside some quiet time for personal, professional reflection. Hold up each concept in your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats list and ask, “What is my status here?” Be kind but be critical and make an honest appraisal.

Consider typical teacher strengths and assess your positive skills, understandings, and disposition for these. What can you do to sustain or even strengthen these?

  • Classroom management skills
  • Subject matter expertise
  • Building a rapport with all children.
  • Differentiating instruction
  • Creative lesson planning
  • Patience and empathy
  • Communicating with parents
  • Celebrating success

Consider areas where many teachers display weaker skills, understandings, and dispositions. What can you do to strengthen these?

  • Time management
  • Active listening skills – not just hearing
  • Using a variety of teaching methods – problem-based, inquiry-based, project-based
  • Incorporating new technologies
  • Getting overwhelmed with paperwork
  • Working with disagreeable peers
  • Accepting criticism
  • Managing paraprofessionals and aides
  • Adaptability – engaging every child every day
  • Resilience – teaching is hard work; keeping a positive attitude
  • Addressing bias
  • Maintaining a growth mindset
  • Cross disciplinary teaching

Consider the opportunities of professional growth, usual and novel.

  • District in-service
  • Professional organizations
  • Higher education
  • Conventions
  • Reading groups
  • Personal investigation

Consider typical threats to teacher stability.

  • Changes to school policies
  • Budget cuts
  • Increased workload
  • Ambiguity
  • New administrators
  • Lack of parental involvement/support

Set targets – what are you prepared to do?

My first pass at SWOT seemed disastrous as I created a lengthy list in each SWOT category. I was overly proud of my strengths, overly critical of my weaknesses, uninformed about my opportunities, and naïve about my threats. I set the lists aside for two weeks. My return to SWOT was more introspective and measured. What was my real status and how did I know this? And which S, W, O, and T did I prioritize as requiring my direct attention.

The result was a concise list of professional development professional understandings, skills, and dispositions that clearly needed strengthening, clarifying, and/or eliminating. Having the personality of an outcome-based teacher, I stated each goal as the outcome I wanted to achieve and strategized how to achieve that outcome. My Occam’s Razor question in creating my personal, professional development program is “What am I prepared to do?” Reality was that although I held something as a personal goal, I really was not prepared at that time to engage in that goal. Finally, I had two strengths to strengthen, two weaknesses to improve, one opportunity to pursue, and one threat to address.

The Big Duh! Betterment is continuous.

Do not SWOT yourself every day. Give target achievement plan time to unfold. Then, do not be afraid to SWOT yourself again. My outcome-based guru, Bill Spady, taught me that “success begets future success.” Betterment is a long-term process achieved with commitment over time.

Teaching Is Methodical

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Causing children to learn is hard and complicated work. We use the word “teaching” to generalize how a teacher does the work of causing learning. Teaching, though, infers the one doing the teaching understands and uses a method of instruction that is chosen and honed to cause children to learn specific educational outcomes. If there is no teaching method applied, then a child could learn anything from anyone with the same likelihood of learning success. Or a child could be fully self-taught, who needs a teacher. Teaching methods matter and teachers need to understand their methods.

I teach in the manner I was taught.

Teacher preparation curriculum includes courses in teaching methods. Check the curriculum of any college, university, or other approved teacher prep program and one or more courses in “methods” are needed for program completion. Candidates for a teaching license must do student or supervised teaching to confirm their ability to teach students in the subject or grade levels of their license. However, once a licensed teacher is employed as a teacher, most find that their baseline of teaching reflects how they were taught when they were a student in K-12 schools. Predominantly, this method is labeled traditional teaching.

Traditional teaching is teacher-centered, emphasizes rote memorization and recall of information. It is structured within class time, uses textbook and publisher materials, and assigns children to work independently. Children read/watch/listen, do practice assignments based on the information presented, and take a quiz. The teacher is the source of information and skills children learn.

Teachers learn multiple methods in their prep programs.

An AI-study (Gemini and Chat GPT) says that teacher preparation programs today stress student-centered teaching methods with the key characteristic being learner-centered teaching. These methods include include strategies that

  • are tailored to student needs, abilities, and interests,
  • encourage active participation,
  • use the teacher as a facilitator of learning not the source of information,
  • are culturally responsive and inclusive of student background, and
  • use differentiated strategies that meet the needs of all children in the class.

As students, teacher candidates learn the theory and best practices for engaging children in their own learning. They can try these theories and practices in their student or supervised teaching. Teachers are academically trained to be student-centered.

Realities of the classroom are not academic.

Even after working in classrooms as a student-teacher, the realities of being THE TEACHER are overwhelming. I do not diminish the student-teaching experience, because it is essential for building confidence in oneself and learned teaching practices in a safe and controlled environment. Without student teaching or other forms of pre-licensing practice teaching, too many children would experience shaky instruction from untried first-year teachers. In student teaching there always is the presence of a hovering veteran teacher who will correct, fill-in, and polish instruction that a student-teacher left unsatisfied. Not for an employed teacher.

The first days and weeks in a classroom of your own is momentous for most first-year teachers. While a handful of rookie teachers claim to be wonderfully fulfilled by the challenges they face, many rookies spend sleepless nights and tear-filled morning drives to school worried about their ability to teach. The reality is that dozens of children sit and wait to be taught while a rookie teacher finds their way. A first-year teacher is alone in a classroom with a tremendous responsibility that feels like a burden.

Reality brings the rookie teacher to traditional teaching methods for several reasons. Creating learner-centered instruction is complicated. At the get-go, it requires time, trust, and confidence in a method. A teacher does not just announce “Today, children, we are going to use an inquiry method to discover why ancient and modern people migrate around the world.” It takes time to “set the table” for discovery-type methods of teaching. A series of lesson plans that model how children will “inquire” are necessary. The teacher needs to assure that all children are confident in the background knowledge necessary for inquiry into unfamiliar information. Children need to be prepared for collaborative learning. Student-centered methods become richer over time but every first experience with student-based learning requires thorough preparation, or it will flop. On the other hand, traditional teaching is very concise, straightforward, and teacher controlled.

When a teacher chooses an inquiry or discovery method, the teacher explains or demonstrates what the children will do to discover the unfamiliar information they are about to learn BUT the teacher does not provide conclusions about their new learning. The teacher helps children in drawing and confirming their own conclusions about their new learning. Facilitation skills are honed over time and can be a little messy as students drive the timeline. On the other hand, traditional teaching is concise and straightforward.

If the teacher chooses to use problem-based teaching, children must be pre-taught how to suspend elements of reality to make a teacher-contrived problem worthy of their time and effort. Once children learn what it means to suspend reality, PBL opens them to a multitude of learning situations – but it takes training and time.

If the teacher chooses project-based or outcome-based teaching, teacher and children must set up rubrics they will use to assure their student-centered learning meets grade level or course curricular standards.

Using non-traditional teaching methods puts a lot of planning, preparation, and facilitation pressure on a first-year teacher. To compound that pressure, children in student-centered methods are given responsibility for their individual and group learning. In the gradual release of responsibility from teacher to student there are inherent fears that children will not learn as much as they would have with teacher-controlled learning.

Lastly, traditional teaching aligns with rule-based classroom management systems. It is part of the “control feature.” Children abide by the rules or are disciplined. When principals make spot visits to classrooms, seeing all children seated and “working” fits traditional views of good teaching. Seeing children milling about, talking to each other, doing different things in the same classroom requires the principal to dig deeper into the teacher’s lesson planning and teaching methods.

The Big Duh!

Teaching methods matter. As methods, they are methodical in how specific strategies in each method cause different learner outcomes. These are outcomes beyond tested knowledge. We should expect and encourage rookie teachers to appropriately use methods of direct and explicit teacher-led teaching AND a variety of student-centered methods in their first year(s) of teaching. If they are not expected and encouraged to do so, it is too easy for a young teacher to become a traditional, single-method teacher.

It is possible to imagine a grade level K-5 and a subject course teacher in grades 6-12 being only a traditional method teacher. It is more difficult to imagine children sitting through their K-12 years experiencing only traditional teaching. It is even more difficult to imagine how a traditionally taught curriculum prepares children for this 21st century.

Principals and curriculum directors, please hire and nurture teachers who are prepared to use a variety of teaching methods. Coach them along their way. Your students and our future will thank you.

Teaching in the Upside Down

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In the 1640s a song titled “The World Turned Upside Down” was popularized in England. Citizens sang it as a protest of the government’s ban on Christmas practices. Oliver Cromwell dictated that the historic celebrations of Christmas did not fit with his Puritan principles and values. By decree, the display of Christmas trees, ornamentations, and engagement in festivities were crimes. The tune fit the occasion.

In 1781 British troops reportedly marched out of Yorktown as their band played “The World Turned Upside Down”. The concept that a British army would surrender to colonials made those soldiers think the world order had been upended. The tune fit the occasion.

In our most recent past, federal, and state legislation that supports banning books in classrooms, narrowing the scope of our national history by banning minority stories and personalities, requiring the display of religious documents, and culling immigrant children, and condemning diversity of thought bring to mind “The World Turned Upside Down.” The tune fits the occasion.

I was prepared to be an English and social studies teacher decades ago. My baccalaureate and university training for classroom teaching fit my early life fascination with the stories of humankind. Stories that illuminate who we are, what we do, and why we do it are golden to me. Literature and history intertwined in my brain as I tried to make sense of people, the world, and issues.

There is a line in the Wisconsin state statutes that has supported a teacher’s mission to cause children to be educated and informed thinkers. Stat. 118.01(2)(a)2 reads as follows:  “Educational Goals – Analytical skills, including the ability to think rationally, solve problems, use various learning methods, gather and analyze information, make critical and independent judgments and argue persuasively. This goal, supported by others, gives teachers license to present children with diverse resources, information, and data for their consideration and to support their conclusions.”

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/119

Now, there are books and stories we are not to teach to children and Cromwellian stories and dictates we are to teach. There are things teachers are not to talk about. A revised version of the old song is in order: Teaching in an America Turned Upside Down.

Lessons That Cause Learning Are Like Cookie Recipes That Must Be Perfected Over Time

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“I really nailed that lesson!” A teacher can have that feeling at the end of a lesson or school day and the smile of success feels wonderful. A “nailed” lesson is like eating a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie in which all the ingredients come together for a completely satisfying bite of life. And like a favorite cookie eaten and enjoyed, a teacher knows that all lessons are not created equally, so she savors the moment.

We cause children to learn with the lessons we teach. Our curriculum provides a continuum of learning targets that achieve larger educational goals for children’s education. Teachers make those targets into lessons that teach content knowledge, skills, and/or contexts for how students use knowledge and skills. Lessons are episodic because they fit into a singular place and time in a curriculum. We teach lesson in a unit once each school year and do not teach that lesson again until the next group of children are ready for that episodic lesson. Therein lies a rub.

Lessons, as clinical tools designed to cause specific learning, must be analyzed for their effectiveness after each time they are taught. It is like eating a hot just from the oven cookie – we bite into it, chew it, and taste it to verify that it satisfies. If we do not analyze lesson effectiveness, we do not know if lessons really cause the learning desired. Analyzing a lesson is biting into it and chewing with student learning as the taste that matters. Without analysis for effectiveness any old lesson will do, and instead of causing learning teachers are daycare providers.

What do we know?

Teaching and learning are cause and effect. We do not know the effect of the teaching until we assess for learning. After teaching a lesson, the teacher formatively assesses student learning with a test or performance or demonstration of learning. That assessment creates data about how well each child learned the educational objective of the lesson. The data is what decides if the lesson is a success, a failure, or if the lesson needs improvement. Every lesson a teacher teaches needs assessment and evaluation. If not, education stumbles around in the dark.

We also know that schools do not provide teacher time for lesson analysis. Nada! Schools treat lessons as “contracted line work” – one lesson follows another until a week of lessons and a semester of lessons and a year of lessons have been taught. There is no institutional time set aside for lesson analysis when lessons are line work.

After teaching a lesson, a teacher helps students with their independent practice, homework or other assignments stemming from this lesson, collect assignments and prepares to teach the next lesson. There is no school time nor expectation that a teacher will or should pause other work to evaluate the assessments of lessons taught.

We know that schools do give nominal time for teacher preparation of lessons. Daily prep time however is when principals, counselors, and parents talk with a teacher, or a teacher responds to their communications. Prep time is a teacher’s “bio” break time. And prep time is when a teacher actually takes a break in an otherwise fully packed school day of line work.

Schools also expect a teacher to “prep” on her own time. This may be before or after the school, but “own time” most often is at home wedged into a teacher’s family and personal time. Schools do not keep track of how much “own time” a teacher spends on schoolwork; it is assumed to be part of the job. Own time at home is not truly focused time for lesson evaluation. This assumption fails tests of best educational practice and contributes to teacher burn out and dissatisfaction with teaching as a career.

A better idea!

At first blush, providing teacher time for lesson evaluation really is a “no brainer.” Every artist stands back from their work to study what they have done, consider its form, function, and beauty, and returns with ideas of how to make it better. Why wouldn’t school leaders provide time for teachers to step back and conduct lesson analysis? Time is a logistical problem. How do we provide time for lesson study with children in school? Simple – dismiss the children. Teachers cannot give their mind and effort to lesson analysis during a school day with children in the schoolhouse. Also, few teachers can walk out of a classroom straight into lesson analysis knowing that they still have lessons to prepare for the next day.

Provide protected and dedicated time for lesson analysis to assure the teachers can give their best attention and efforts at lesson improvement. Add paid days to each teacher’s annual contract for this professional work. A month of days should suffice.

Second, collaboration and collegiality are needed for objective lesson analysis. Getting the cook’s thumbs up on freshly baked cookies is one person’s subjective opinion: most cook’s like their own baked goods. Getting opinions from other bakers provides objectivity and validation.

Within the protected and dedicated time, create small teams for lesson studies. Team members must have commonality in their grade level (child development) or subject area content or their comments are without evidentiary substance. At the same time, there can be no competition within a lesson study. In our era of “choice” – parents choosing teachers – teachers in the same grade level cannot be using lesson study to gain advantage over their peers. Best practice is “what is said in lesson analysis stays in lesson analysis,” the benefit of study shows in the next iteration of lessons.

Third, lesson analysis is data and evidence driven. When a teacher presents her lesson she also presents the formative and summative data related to the lesson. She talks of the cause and effect of teaching and learning so that she can improve the “cause” to get better “effect” next time. A lesson analysis without data is just anecdotal – there is no evidence of learning.

Fourth, all the rules of collaborative group work apply. This is professional work at its highest level and requires respect, integrity, and good will. After presenting a lesson and its data, the group pauses for each member to consider the presentation and make notes for their comments. Then the presenter becomes a listener, recording comments that make sense for the perfection of the lesson. There is no tacit agreement that a presenter will take all comments to heart. As a professional, she considers group comments as objective insights. In truth, if she uses only one comment to improve the lesson, the lesson analysis was beneficial.

Fifth, principals and curriculum directors have a place in lesson analysis. While some may feel that administrative presence discourages peer comments, it sanctions all comments. There is no teacher evaluation in a lesson analysis – neither of the presenter or of the commenters. An administrator is not a referee in the process but a contributor to and reporter of the process. Principals and directors can add larger data perspectives to the analysis of a lesson’s specific learner objectives. As importantly, they can report to district and board leadership on the tangible benefits of district commitment to lesson studies. Without their reporting up the chain of command, lesson studies happen in the dark and things that live there do not last long when district resources are limited.

The Big Duh!

Very few school leaders reading this or any other writing about the value of lesson analysis will support this work unless they believe that every lesson taught to children matters. If leadership is into the business of “line work” and daycare, lesson analysis is not their thing. But, if they believe that lessons cause children to learn and teaching is all about causing learning, then new conversations can begin.