Category Archives: Blog

Finding A Teacher

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Teacher.  A noun.  The word means “a person who educates.”  Synonyms for the word teacher include these nouns: abecedary, advisor, coach, disciplinarian, educator, faculty member, guide, instructor, lecturer, mentor, pedagogue, scholar, trainer, and tutor.

Teach.  A verb.  The word means “to educate or instill knowledge.”  Synonyms for teach include these verbs: advise, break in, brief, catechize, coach, communicate, demonstrate, develop, direct, discipline, drill, edify, enlighten, exercise, explain, expound, form, give instruction, ground, guide, illustrate, imbue, impart, implant, improve mind, inculcate, indoctrinate, inform, initiate, instruct, interpret, lecture, nurture, open eyes, pound into, prepare, profess, read, sharpen, show, train, tutor.

Today there is a shortage of people who want to be teachers.  There is even a more critical shortage of people who can teach.

“Currently, there are not enough qualified teachers applying for teaching jobs to meet the demand in all locations and fields,” said the Learning Policy Institute, a national education think tank, in a research brief in September (2017).  The institute estimated last year that if trends continue, there could be a nationwide shortfall of 112,000 teachers by 2018.

https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/21/health/teacher-shortage-data-trnd/index.html

The scarcity of teachers has caused a variety of responses by school district and state educational leaders.  Substitute teachers are the first local school district response.  When a licensed teacher cannot be found for a classroom assignment in September, substitute teachers become classroom teachers.  Daily subs are hired to be short-term subs, short-term subs are stretched into long-term subs and long-term subs become year-long teachers.  Another local response is to drop courses.  If the course is elective and and not required by statute or local promotion or graduation requirements and there is no teacher, then the course is removed from the daily schedule of classes.  Or, classes without teachers are combined with classes with teachers.  Class sizes are increased with the apology that “at least the course is not dropped.”  These are local responses.  They do not address the underlying issue that there are not enough qualified, trained, licensed teachers.  These responses only meet the daily needs when the school bell rings.

State educational leaders take a different tack.  In Wisconsin, the legislature is liberalizing the professional preparation requirements for classroom teachers.  Traditional teacher preparation is part of a baccalaureate degree program, often in the liberal arts.  A baccalaureate teacher prep program requires an academic major, statutory courses in human relations, cultural sensitivity, conflict resolution, and working with students challenged with disability or disadvantage, teaching methodology and instructional design courses, and a semester of student teaching. A baccalaureate typically is a four-year endeavor.  For a variety of reasons, including low career salary status and decreasing esteem for public employees, fewer college students select education as their career choice.

The Wisconsin legislature has created alternative “pathways” to classroom teaching. A new pathway, for example, connects academic-based vocations to public education teaching.  The connection:  schools teach math and science and technologies and there are non-educational careers that significantly apply math, science and technologies.  The concept is that a person trained as an engineer, almost any field of “engineering,” applies concepts of mathematics and science.  Hence, this person can be a math or a science teacher.  A person trained and working in laboratory or field sciences can become a science teacher.  A degree in computer science is a pathway to teaching mathematics and computer applications instruction.

Pathway requirements include a baccalaureate degree in a math or science-related field, five years of verified work experience in a math or science related job, and 100 hours of training in “modern curricular applications” in math or science.  With the exception of the 100 hours of training, a would-be-teacher does not not need any further education or preparation to be a teacher.

Liberalization assures several important attributes of teaching and reduces others.  Specifically, liberalization values content knowledge and disciplinary skills sets and devalues trained teaching skills.

The issue is this:  We are improving the quantity of people willing to be the noun “teacher,” but not giving equal attention to the quality of the verb “to teach.”

I have observed persons who love mathematics and are very successful students of mathematics.  They thrive on the challenge of understanding mathematical concepts, solving math problems and frequently choose to extend their math learning beyond a high school math curricula.  When the rest of use “hit the math wall” in Pre-Calc, these math wizards breezed on through.  They major in mathematics in college, because they are mathematicians.  However, these same persons frequently are fully incapable of teaching another person to understand math concepts and solve math problems.  They frown when a person they are trying to teach says, “I don’t understand.”  When mathematics comes so easily to a mathematician, they often cannot comprehend why it is difficult for others.

I hear mathematicians telling non-mathematicians, “Let’s do it again.”  “Do these problems tonight for your homework.”  “Do what I do.”  “Copy this down.”  “Memorize this.”

I hear science majors explaining the scientific method to science-shy students who do not reason deductively.

Mathematicians, lab and field scientists, and computer scientists achieved their degrees and employment based upon their learned knowledge and skill sets, not their ability to teach others to be mathematicians or scientists.

This said, 100 hours of “modern curricular applications” may provide the label of teacher but will not prepare a person to teach.  Pedagogy did not achieve “-ogy” status because it could be learned in two and a half weeks time.  It is an “-ogy” because it is based upon the theories and practices that influence a person to learn.  Pedagogy that works for one student may not work for another.  Pedagogy that works for unchallenged students may not work for challenged students.  Pedagogy that works for motivated students may not work for unmotivated students.  Teaching methodologies and instructional designs are learned and developed over time and they are the heart of the verb teach.

It is very likely that a shortage of teachers will be the new status quo.  It will take solutions far beyond licensing pathways to make teaching a career of choice.  A shortage of numbers however is not a reason for accepting teachers who cannot teach.

The focus of finding teachers must be on finding people who can teach.

Bring Your Cell Phones To Class, Please

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“I read this morning that the 2018 hurricane season will bring one of the strongest cycles of storms in the last 50 years to the east coast. This caused me to wonder what I should tell my family who live on Hilton Head Island, an island on the coast of South Carolina. Should they be worried about hurricanes this summer, especially if the storm surge is more than six feet?”

So said a middle school teacher to her class on a Tuesday morning. Her query suggests a need for children to understand weather, geography, data and predictions in order to formulate an informed answer. The question about a storm surge is more detailed. What is a storm surge and how significant is a six-foot surge to a coastal island?

But, to what extent are children in Wisconsin concerned with a hypothetical question about hurricanes and storm surges in South Carolina? Students obviously listened intently because the teacher was talking to them; some let their attention slip when she mentioned South Carolina. This was not their problem.

What the teacher said next, however, caused all students to become interested.

“Take out your cell phones. Use your cell phone and only your cell phone to get all of the information you need to answer my question. No laptops, IPads or reference books. Please feel free to share any information you find with another student in class, but only do so using a social media app.

Use your note taking app on your cell phone to record all of the data you collect or share. When you and your network of classmates have enough data to answer my question, attach your data record to a text message and send it to me.

Finally, write a letter to my family on Hilton Head. Summarize the most important data you have collected. Make a prediction about how hurricanes may affect Hilton Head Island this year. Suggest what they need to do to “survive” this year’s hurricane season. And, specifically tell them how a storm surge of more than six feet will affect Hilton Head Island given its elevation and local tides.

Write this letter on your laptop. Edit the letter to make it as informative and data-based as you can, and then e-mail your final draft to me.

Now, let’s talk about your initial ideas of how you will accomplish this assignment.”

What made the children in her class become interested in hurricanes and South Carolina is the requirement that they use their cell phones as their only tool for seeking information, recording the information they find, sharing their data with other children, and submitting a final data set to their teacher. Additionally, they are encouraged to use social media to share data with others.

The conceptualization of this assignment is classic school work. The teacher raises a question and sets a parameter for how children are to resolve the question. The difference that marks this assignment is that, instead of keeping their cell phones in their pockets or backpacks and prohibited from using social media in school, they are required to use these everyday technologies to complete a school assignment.

And, why not? When we prepare all children for success in college and career, that preparation needs to be real world and the real world uses everyday technology. Instead of forbidding cell phone and social media in school, this teacher is instructing children how to use these to achieve important learning objectives.

Cell Phone Use In School – Freedom and Responsibility

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A student walks into a high school classroom. A ringtone sounds on her cellphone and she answers as she walks to her desk.  Classmates take their seats and a bell rings signally class has started.  Should she finish her conversation or disconnect?

A student is working at a biology lab station.  His cellphone buzzes in his pocket informing him that he has received a text message.  All his classmates are busy with their lab assignments and his teacher is in deep conversation at a lab station across the classroom.  Should he check his message and perhaps respond?

The band is rehearsing for a concert scheduled for the following week.  The director has stopped play to help one of the alto sax players to hold a note for three beats when a cellphone rings in the percussion section.  Because everyone but the sax player has stopped playing, band members either look toward the sound of the phone or at the director.  Should the director confront the disturbance or ignore it?

The argument of whether students should bring cellphones into school classrooms has not been resolved.  Across the 20+ years that high school students have carried personal cellphones, the issue of how schools should address student cellphones in school has eluded a universal resolution.  Now that a cellphone also is an Internet connection to a world of information, a networking tool, and a productivity tool, what are the parameters for the use of a cellphone in the classroom?  Is the cellphone an unwanted distraction to student learning?  Is a cellphone a learning tool connecting the isolated classroom to the greater world?  Is having access to a cellphone a right or a responsibility?

Historically, the closest we come to the cellphone dilemma may be chewing gum.  Does a teacher’s view of cellphones mirror the historical view of chewing gum?  For decades students were forbidden to visibly chew gum in class for no other real reason than teacher “say so.”  After introspection, chewing gum in class posed no real distractions to teaching and learning.  In fact, chewing may have calmed student anxiety.  It also is true that some “bratty” students may have made smacking sounds as they chewed.  But, the bottom line was “You can or cannot chew gum in my class.  It is my rule.”  Teacher rules prevailed.

In each representative scenario above, the current practice in most classrooms is the same as chewing gum.  The use of a cellphone, even the presence of a cellphone in class, is that classroom teacher’s rule.  But, is teacher’s choice a satisfactory resolution?  Why would a student walking into class keep talking after the bell or a student engage in text messaging in a lab class or a band director not respond to a phone ringing during rehearsal?  Time and place make these intrusions unacceptable.  We need to teach children to understand and exercise the freedom and responsibility of cellphone use.  And, we, parents and educators, need to integrate cellphone technology into contemporary living/teaching/learning design.  Leaving the use of cellphone technology to a teacher’s rule is a very weak resolution.  The exercise of a common standard of behavior based upon sensitivity to time and place is much better.

In 1908, John Dewey, a formative educational leader, wrote the following.

RESPONSIBILITY AND FREEDOM

“The more comprehensive and diversified the social order, the greater the responsibility and the freedom of the individual. His freedom is the greater, because the more numerous are the effective stimuli to action, and the more varied and the more certain the ways in which he may fulfill his powers. His responsibility is greater because there are more demands for considering the consequences of his acts; and more agencies for bringing home to him the recognition of consequences which affect not merely more persons individually, but which also influence the more remote and hidden social ties.

http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/responsibility-and-freedom/

Dewey certainly did not foresee the advent of cellphones.  But, he understood the dynamics of how the individual interacts in society and those insights speak to the personal use of cellphones in school today.  The lead sentence – “The more comprehensive and diversified the social order, the greater the responsibility and the freedom of the individual” – gets directly at the problem. The purpose of the classroom as a place for teaching and learning requires that a student’s responsibility to that purpose transcends the freedom of instantaneous cellphone activity. As a slight exaggeration, imagine a classroom where the opposite view holds. At any moment when a student’s cellphone rings the student immediately engages in a phone conversation or a series of texts or activates music or video of choice. Or, initiates a phone call to a friend. Or, engages in an interactive game on a cellphone. All the while, a teacher is expected to teach as if the distraction did not occur. If the classroom was lackadaisical daycare, this chaos may be acceptable. The classroom is a place for teaching and learning and such chaos is fully unacceptable.

Changing the use of cellphones from ubiquitous to discrete begins with attitude.  The use of a cellphone is not a child’s entitlement.  I observe an attitude of entitlement when children engage with their cellphone anywhere and anytime with an air of “it is my right to do so.”  They quickly become irate when told to put away their cellphone.  This attitude comes from two cultural phenomena.  Today’s children have never known a world without cellphones, and, most have been raised with digital devices as pacifiers – parents provide devices to children to keep them happy and content – the 21st century “nuk.”

We replace the attitude of entitlement with an understanding of discrete time and place.  It is important for children to know there are times and places when a child must and should use a cellphone.  As we teach our children to exercise freedom and responsibility thinking to regulate their cellphone use, we must accentuate times and places where cellphone use is both necessary and warranted.

  • Calling 911 for an emergency.  No one should hesitate when health and safety are threatened.
  • Calling a parent for permission or guidance.  Children who follow parental restrictions need to seek parent permission or guidance when their daily activities contradict what they believe they are supposed to.
  • Capturing the moment.  Children know when something unusual is happening.  Using a cellphone camera or voice recording to make a record through a photo or sound recording is a wonderful use of cellphone technology.
  • Getting an answer.  As much as “Ask Siri” is an advertisement, it also is an active way of seeking information.  Googling is an accepted verb.  As an Internet device in your pocket or purse, a cellphone is an unbelievably wonderful tool for seeking information.
  • What’s happening?  News alerts help children to know the daily events of their world.  More than any generation of the past, children with cellphones can know local, state and world events as they unfold.  If they choose, children can know and study news and how it is reported on demand.
  • Finding yourself.  Mapping and location tracking apps help children to know exactly where they are.  “I am here” and “That is where I want to go” are easily displayed with keystrokes or voice commands.
  • Personal entertainment anywhere and anytime.  Music and video libraries stored on a cellphone provide children with their “go to” entertainment when they want it.

There are times when and places where a child should not use a cellphone.  Using freedom and responsibility thinking, we do not physically take cellphones away from children.  That is a losing strategy from the get-go.  Also, we do not make lists of times and places where cellphones should mot be used.  To do so, makes the list the argument.  Instead, we want the argument to be an intellectual, observational, reflective, and sensitive decision that the individual makes in certain times and places.  When freedom and responsibility thinking is at work, a child has the opportunity to consider if “this is a time when a cellphone must, can or should be used?  Is this a time when it is my decision to use a cellphone?  And, will use of my cellphone be a distraction or affront to people around me?”  The last condition demonstrates the sensitivity to time and place we want children to consider.

Freedom and responsibility thinking pertains to many things that people do in their daily living.  It is an essential way of thinking about how an individual can live well in the society of others.  Using freedom and responsibility thinking is a reasonable strategy for teaching children to prosper in their use of cellphone technology.

When Safe Is Impossible, Safer Is A Better Place To Be

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Safety is an illusive perception. When a person believes he is safe from danger, he remains vulnerable to the threat that he cannot conceive. When a person believes he is threatened by danger, while he is more sensitive to all potential threats, he is prisoner to each of the safety precautions constructed against every threat he can conceive. Yet, the danger lies in the threat that has not been conceived. Vulnerable and imprisoned is the current state of safety in our schools. If we cannot be safe, we must be safer.

We need to be honest when we deal with illusions. While no honest person would choose to do nothing in response to the murder taking place in and around school houses, no honest person should attach himself to “we must assure that this never happens again” action. There is no action that can be legislated by school boards, state houses or congresses that will assure that murder will never ever happen again. Never cannot be legislated. And, legislation, even responsive to tragic murder, remains political. Left to legislators, safety and school house safety, in particular, is a political action in the name of safety. Tragically, harm to people in school will happen again.

That said, we must work the margins of our illusions of how to make school houses safer. Safer is the operative word. Safer is the aggregate of our preventive and responsive measures. Safer includes actions to screen access to school property to prevent danger from entering and to issue tourniquet supplies to classrooms to be applied after injuries have occurred. Safer is rehearsing active shooter practices and advocating “see something – say something” procedures to address persons in of assistance before tragedy strikes. Safer is paying for a police presence in and around school houses to either dissuade a murderer or to assure that a school house attack is “death by school house attack.” Sad it is to even write that last sentence.

Safer is not placing school in a prison-bubble. Safer is not going Wild West and issuing guns to school staff. Safer is not metal screening every student entering the school house every morning, an hours-long process, or every parent visiting school, or every patron at a school event. Safer is not building impenetrable walls around school children – what will we do with school buses and on school field trips? Safer is not raising the imprisoning measures that morph a school house into a malfunctioning “safe” house.

Because we will never be capable of assuring school house murder never ever happens again, we must reasonably work to make school houses safer. Safer, when completely safe is impossible, is a better place to be.

There is No Teaching License for Mental Health

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As much as politicians and media want it to be otherwise, there is no teaching license, not expertise, that certifies teachers in the area of mental health. There is no major or minor in colleges of education for the certification of a mental health teacher. There is no student teaching preparation for the instruction of mental health. With the exception of a DPI-certified school psychologist, there is no faculty or staff member in a school who is remotely prepared to inquire into another person’s mental health. Any teacher, administrator or school staff member who engages as a professional in the treatment of mental health, acts are their own peril of practicing without a license.

That said, any person advocating that public schools must identify and attend to children who exhibit characteristics of mental illness is guilty of obfuscating the issues of mental health in our state and local communities. Mental illness is a serious problem that requires the attention of trained and expert practitioners in the mental health industry. Psychologists. Psychiatrists. Therapists. Clinicians. These are persons trained to engage with the afflictions of mental health. The 50,000-plus public school teachers in Wisconsin have a full-time professional commitment to educating children and are not substitutes for trained mental health practitioners.

Oh, you say there are not enough trained mental health professionals. Or, there are none in your community. Or, care from a mental health professional is expensive. These are facts and it is these facts that must be addressed. Politicians who want to make a difference in improving the mental health of their constituents need to act to fund the training of more mental health professionals. We observe political will to provide tax incentives, grants and forgivable loans to industry in the name of “jobs.” Mental health jobs warrant their action.

But, you continue, when children of poverty come to school hungry, schools provide free lunch. And, when parents are not at home to supervise children before or after school, schools provide activity programs. And, when children need pencils and school supplies or coats and hats, schools usually have resources that provide. These and more examples of how schools care for the needs of children are true, but they are far from the requirements of mental health.

Every time a governor or legislator or congressman publicly laments that failed mental health resources are the causation of a tragic event, I ask, “And, what have you done to assure adequately trained mental health professionals for your state or community?”

The problems of mental health will not be solved in schools or by school faculty and staff. We will support the work of mental health professionals just as we support children with their physician-prescribed medications during school hours. We will become “first responders” for children demonstrating mental health crisis just as we are first responders of child abuse. These are positive and appropriate roles for educators.

While I grieve for every victim of a crime perpetrated by a person suffering with a mental problem. I shall not tag a local public school with a responsibility for the too often uttered lamentation, “We must assure that this never happens again.”

Instead, I shall promote the responsibility of state and county government to provide the services of trained mental health professionals in local public mental health clinics. Government provides for the defense of the accused through the legal services of public defenders. In the same vein, government should provide publicly supported mental health services to the afflicted. Providing public assistance in front of the injurious actions of persons with mental health issues is more efficacious than using public resources to deal with their aftermath.