Right now, discard everything you have been told about why a school calendar is nine months long. Forget being told that the school calendar is matched to an agrarian lifestyle when children were needed as farm labor in the summer months. Hooey! Whatever reasoning was used in the 1800s to set the length of the school year needs to remain in the 1800s. The real reason for a nine month school year is understood using the words of “Deep Throat” in All The President’s Men. “Follow the money!”

The nation’s school children no longer are needed to labor during the summer months on the family farm. The 2013-14 school year was nine months in length because that is as much school as state governments, school boards and taxpayers are willing to fund. Changing something that is as fixed in our culture as a nine month school year and a three month summer vacation is not only difficult to conceptualize, it is difficult to fund. A calendar that is any longer than nine months requires a significant increase in tax revenue. For example, if the annual school budget is $10,000,000, adding one additional month would require approximately a one-ninth or 11% increase in the annual school budget. An additional $1,111,000 for one month of school is a hard sell for state legislators and school board members who want to cut costs not increase them. We probably shouldn’t think about a year round school calendar requiring a 30 percent increase in school costs. $3,333,000! Hence, the 2013-14 school year started around Labor Day and ended shortly after Memorial Day. And, the 2013-14 school budgets, spent or encumbered, were just about zeroed out at the end of the school year. This it has been each school year across the distant past and may well be for the foreseeable future.

More school year requires more money. Time is money.

It is interesting that when student academic achievement is criticized as falling short of the national and state political and economic interests, time is non-negotiable. Children must learn in 180 days or fail. The current scheme looks like this.

Every child must achieve one grade level’s growth in reading and mathematics or successfully complete specific course outcomes by the end of 180 school days. The teaching resources are provided within the approved budget. You have nine months. Go. And, at the end of nine months the clock stops and the budget will have been spent. But, child achievement will be spread along a continuum ranging from “not close” to “almost” to “just made it” to “successfully completed in April or May.”

In a better educational world, educational outcomes would be fixed and time and resources would be the variables of interest. The scheme could look like this.

We will start educating all children on the first Monday in September. Most children will need approximately nine months to complete the stated educational outcomes. Some children will require more time. We need all children to be ready for the next set of annual outcomes by this time next year; education for those outcomes will begin next September. Use as much of this calendar year as is required for all children to achieve this year’s outcomes. Use adequate educational resources to assure that all children learn.

The school calendar should be flexible to assure enough time for all children to achieve their annual educational outcomes. There is no reason why June, July and August are not available for the continued education of children whose achievement is not yet secure in June. Additional time would be required only for children who need additional time. It is probable that the long term cost of underachieving high school graduates over their adult life span is much greater than the cost of funding annual achievement for all children now.

Franchise teachers? They exist, but I cannot ever recall a public conversation about a franchise teacher. We accept that professional sports, high powered businesses, and medical and tech enterprises have franchise employees. The Green Bay Packers win or lose on Aaron Rogers’ throwing arm. Businesses have “movers and shakers” who are recognized and highly rewarded for their capacity to generate product excitement and financial growth. Hospitals and clinics draw patients from around the country for the medical specialties of their physicians. Every tech company start up is the “brain child” of its resident geeks. Teachers, however, are always talked about in the aggregate or as “the school staff.” We are uncomfortable singling out the talents of individual teachers. It’s time to get over this self-imposed and damaging modesty. Schools have franchise teachers and we need to talk about their exceptional contribution to a school and to the education of children.

A franchise player is considered the cornerstone of his or her organization. As a cornerstone, the presence of this player consistently increases the capacity of the team or group to perform at an exemplary level. With its cornerstone, the identity of the team is golden; without its cornerstone, team identify wilts. It’s Miami Heat’s LeBron James, Apple’s Steve Jobs, and Talk Radio’s Rush Limbaugh. The presence of a key player, the inspirational person, or the “voice” of the enterprise gives an immediate recognition and valuing that would not happen without the franchise player.

The naming and valuing of a franchise player is a concept developed in professional athletics in the era of free agency when a top player could be offered a more lucrative contract by another team. Franchise player designation allows a team to protect and retain its cornerstone member(s). These are the names in the sports pages and on the faces on TV every week.

Interestingly, a franchise player may not be the team’s best player in terms of playing skills. Most often, it is a combination of skills and personality, mature experience and dynamic energy, and self-confidence with self-effacing team work that elevates an expert player to franchise status.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/67825-who-are-basketballs-true-franchise-players

http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/36615/who-will-be-2013s-30-franchise-players

It is not difficult to extrapolate the concept of “franchise player” beyond sports to other enterprises. Consider the Rolling Stones and Mick Jagger, U2 and Bono, or Wheel of Fortune and Vanna White (the quiet face of the game show for 32 years). Consider the Fed and Janet Yellen, the Today Show and Matt Lauer, or Facebook and Mark Zuckerburg. Franchise players are present and recognizable in every significant enterprise.

Can we say the same about our local school? Not so much. Teachers, like Garrison Keillor’s Norwegian Lutheran residents of Lake Woebegon, shun the spotlight. They believe that being allowed to be a teacher is reward enough for their exceptional work. Teachers are expected to be modest public servants working in the backdrop of public education. But, if we pay attention to the dynamics of how our local school or school district operates, we can identify individual teachers who provide a charisma, inspiration, creativity, and voice that are even more remarkable than anyone in pro sports, on television, or in the tech world. Athletic glory is limited to several years, business and tech gurus last until the next guru makes a splash, and the personality on TV or radio often lasts as long as the attention of their audience. Except Vanna. Teachers, on the other hand, impact generations of children. Good teaching forms a mind and mindful thinking lasts a lifetime.

Franchise teachers come in a variety of flavors. Volcanic energy. Forceful personality. Expertise. Classy. Each flavor has the capacity to affect the nature and flow of a school for a generation or more and touch the lives of teachers, children and parents. Interestingly, most franchise teachers don’t recognize the impact they have on others, because they are just being what they are: super teachers. It is best to name and describe several examples of these franchise teachers. Describing them in the abstract does not do justice to their work.

Charlie Eckhardt is an example of the maestro franchise teacher. Charlie is the band director in a small, rural school district in northeast Wisconsin. The school’s instrumental program begins in 6th grade when kids “pick” their instrument. Children sing and dance in elementary school before they become Charlie’s. By the time these musicians graduate, they will have joined a unique fraternity of Gibraltar School band members. Charlie’s band performs in the school auditorium, local churches and town halls, marches in parades and travels to the corners of our country. Band members win regional and state honors and earn college scholarships. His musicians are versatile. They play in the pep band, symphonic band, jazz band and perform as solos and ensembles. From their first day until they graduate, Charlie commits to each student’s musical education with a constancy and fervor that “lights the kid up.” And, the biggest kid in the room is Charlie. Charlie teaches kids to love music and to play music. He teaches kids to enjoy and grow from working with other kids. He teaches kids to be a part of their school.

Charlie also is the biggest kid among his faculty peers. In any meeting, one can expect him to say something that is “one click off target but eye opening because it refocuses the conversation.” He heats up the conversation, pouts when decisions go a different direction than his, but always engages in the work of the school. When he dons his 1970s, boiled wool marching band jacket with its braid and chenille, Charlie exemplifies why every teacher in his school wants to teach there. He is a franchise player.

The late Tom Bromley was a tour de force franchise teacher. Tom taught physics in an affluent, suburban high school near Milwaukee. I can still see Tom standing halfway down the middle aisle of desks in his classroom with his feet spread wide apart asking, while his arms windmill, “What just happened? Explain it using math and physics.” And, hands would fly as kids wanted to be first. First, however, was only the start of being “Bromley.” “Add to that!” “And?” “So, what? Why is that important?” “Are you sure? Prove it to me.” Tom was an inspired, intuitive, natural teacher whose fire for teaching burned hot and bright every day. He turned kids on to science and thinking like a scientist.

Tom also was the advisor to the Student Council at a time when Council officers were the elected nobility of a high school. These kids ran the student life of the high school that led the state in ACT and AP test achievement, racked up state championships in sports, and sent its orchestra and choir to Europe every year. The graduates of Whitefish Bay became the “Who’s Who?” of their college campuses. As the Council Advisor, he honed members’ ability to organize campaigns, think like executives, and finesse and charm like US Senators. Tom was a franchise player and the heartbeat of his school. Sadly this was proved at the time of his premature death.

Dave Griffin was a drum beating franchise teacher. Dave was a late-comer to education. He knocked about in early jobs, painted houses, but hung around the school district until, well into his 40s, he completed his baccalaureate with a teaching degree in social studies. Dave stammered and often had to rethink whether his subject and predicates jived. But, Dave was a natural-born teacher. He was gifted in his capacity to capture every student’s attention with the hook of curiosity and intrigue that made every child want to know and do more. Before problem-based learning was vogue, Dave was creating scenarios of engagement in meaty, real-world issues. “If we teach just to have kids memorize dry facts, why bother,” he would say to his colleagues. As a result, Dave’s students were incited to march the Denfeld High School halls when studying civil rights, organize a student union when learning about labor movements in the US, and campaign like the “died in the wool” at election time. Dave knew what made kids tick and consistently ticked them to learn.

Dave also was a natural staff developer. Teaching was not the career of his youth; as the career of his maturity, it was his passion. He thrived in discussions of “teaching tools”, dove headlong into seminars and workshops on pedagogy, and was the school leader in “trying things out.” He did not foolishly or naively engage in every school house fad, but sorted and delved into those that connected sound theory with practice. Dave was not the classiest teacher on the faculty nor was he the brightest. But, he was, without question, the sparkplug that moved the faculty and school from point A to point B. He provided leadership by doing and excitement with a punch. He was a franchise teacher.

Some franchise teachers are the heart of their school. In the neighboring school district, a franchise teacher will retire this year and it will be interesting to see how the school reacts to her absence. For more than thirty years, Cassie’s sweat and energy were the lifeblood of the school. She made the success of academically- and socially-troubled high school boys her professional challenge and she won. Their graduations were her triumphs.

She has been the constant fountain of school action. If a local family suffered, she organized a school response. When school funding dipped, she organized fund raisers. When faculty spirit and camaraderie waned, she led a team-building experience. When the School Board needed information, she was consulted. When the administration needed a “front” person, she stepped up. A school’s heart is developed over time and is demonstrated by caring. Someone, though, must be the organ of that heart and that is a franchise teacher.

Lauren Bremer, Wendy Relich and Dick Hubacek stand out from their colleagues in almost every regard. They are classy. They are the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers (Google these names if you must) of teaching. They are classy, because they are expert teachers. They are classy, because they are well educated. They are classy in the way they care about each of their students’ learning. They are classy without intending to be and would not necessarily understand if you told them they were classy.

Each earned graduate degrees in education for the purpose of expanding their skills as teachers. Each is widely read and traveled and this allows them to connect a student with graphic examples that makes learning something difficult much easier. They transport student minds. Each is an eloquent speaker and writer. They make listening and responding to their teaching easy. Each makes her or his students want to succeed, because learning for learning’s sake is a good thing.

I worked with Lauren and Wendy and was Dick’s student. On any day, if asked to describe a classy teacher, these three wonderful and powerful teachers stand out because they define the term.

If schools were for-profit organizations, Charlie, Tom, Dave, Cassie, Lauren, Wendy and Dick would be paid handsomely and given annual bonuses for their “franchise” work. If super success was rewarded, each of these teachers would be wealthy. If super success meant public recognition, their names would be proudly displayed in the school’s organizational literature. They would be known beyond their school walls. But, schools are not for-profit organizations. A franchise teacher’s salary occupies a cell on the School Board’s salary schedule just like a good, but average teacher. And, there are no bonuses paid in public ed. There is no agreement between Board members and rank and file on pay for performance.

If teachers were esteemed professionals, franchise teachers would be the upper echelon of the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers. But, the emphasis of teaching’s professional organizations is political and economic and not the furtherance of teaching. So, franchise teachers are not recognized within their professional community. Lauren Mittermann was the 1999 Teacher of the Year in Wisconsin. This recognition was for the body of her work not just a single season or solitary accomplishment. The criteria that gained her Teacher of the Year have been present every year across a thirty year career. Yet, Lauren completes her final year in the classroom this month and retires quietly.

It is left to local schools and school communities to recognize and honor their franchise teachers. And, to do more and better than they have done. This is a brief prescription for how to do right by your franchise teachers.

1. Discern and recognize the franchise teacher. This is not to denigrate the solid, average or above average teacher. Instead, discernment means looking more deeply into the effects a teacher’s work has on children and the school and labeling that work. It is past the time when a school should identify its maestros, its tours de force, its drum beaters, its heart beats, and its classy teachers. Name your franchise teachers.

2. Celebrate the people connected with events. When the Board approves a significant initiative, there is an expectation of achievement. When the achievement is reached, acclaim the persons responsible. Attach a face and name to school success just as if your school was in the major leagues. Tell people who moved and shook the school, who inspired children, who beat the drum of success. And, celebrate publicly.

3. Attach financial meaning to the goals of the school. Across the board and identical treatment is a nemesis for the teaching profession. At the end of the day, every teacher in the school knows who put in a solid day or year of teaching. They know who “just showed up and did their usual” and they know who “rocked the school.” This is no secret. Create an annual bonus for exceptional annual teaching and school leadership. Create a new salary category for many years of exceptional teaching and school leadership.

4. Pay attention to your franchise teachers or they will leave teaching. Many maestros don’t know they are a maestro; they are just being themselves. But, achievement needs recognition or the achiever is never certain if the work is above or below their mark. Many franchise teachers are starved for what motivates them the most, a heart-felt, fully engaged professional conversation. Spend time and commit personal support to your franchise teacher and she or he will, like the Energizer Rabbit, give you years of exceptional teaching.

Creating a new generation of talented, professional teachers begins when today’s teachers and counselors say to the most academically advanced children in each classroom and school, “You should be a teacher.” Implanting a positive conception of teaching as a profession and the idea that a bright child should consider being a teacher is like the first dollar in a young person’s retirement plan – it will grow in value and pay dividends in the future. The public image of teachers today is not good and teaching needs an infusion of “intelligent talent” to turn this around.

There is an invisible yet persistent competition every year for the most academically talented children in our schools. What careers and professions will these children pursue? Steering children toward a preferred career begins at an early age.  Generations ago, many of these “when I grow up” dreams were stereotyped and gender-fitted. Little boys dreamed or being firemen and police officers, professional athletes, Presidents and super heroes. Little girls dreamed of being nurses, secretaries, homemakers and mothers. Today, there are no reasons for gender-fitting; every career dream is equally open to and appropriate for all boys and girls. Many of yesteryear’s childhood aspirations to be a professional athlete and media star still persist for boys and girls today.

However, after the glitz has faded and reality proves that the ladder of college and professional sports stardom is for the athletically gifted and talented, children begin to consider real career aspirations.  That is when the sorting of talent starts anew. Children with intellectual talent gravitate and are guided toward specialties where their intellect is recognized and rewarded. Rewards are not just monetary, but the earning power of a profession does count. Straight “A” children with achievement scores in the top one percent are more likely to hear parents, teachers and counselors coach their future career paths toward areas of specialized work. “She’s headed to an Ivy League school where she should major in pre- (fill in the blank with med, law, or any other course of study leading to a post-graduate degree).” “He is smart like his parents and will follow their footsteps in …” Seldom does the profile sound like, “She is so academically talented. She should use her intellect to teach children to read or understand the beauty of mathematics or the functionality of physics.” Kids with intellectual talents are steered toward “intellectual” pursuits.

The following generalization is just that – a generalization, but it is true most of the time. Most college students who choose majors in education are not in the top 10, 15 or 20 percent of their graduating class. Magna and summa cum laude graduates seldom become teachers. This is not to say that teachers graduating in the second quartile of their class will not make good teachers. It is only to point out that in each successive class of teacher-prepared graduates there is a dearth of the “best and brightest.” So, what does this mean?

First, there is a perspicacity associated with superior intelligence.  A greater intellect allows one insights, judgments and depth of understanding that the less intelligent cannot achieve. It is okay to say that intelligence is the horsepower needed for smarter teaching.  It really is.  Daily teaching is flooded with thousands of opportunities for a teacher to judge a child’s readiness for learning, to judge the appropriateness and correctness of a child’s thought, and to take the next, best teaching action. A highly tuned insight is the difference between a teacher perceiving that the child is just giving an answer and a child who thoroughly understands her response. The insightful teacher will seek clarification while the less insightful teacher, not understanding the difference, will turn the page and go on. The difference that this moment of teaching makes in the development of a child’s education is an irrefutable fork in the road. Consider the plight of a child who can solve a problem involving fractions in elementary school, but does not understand the function of fractions when the child learns algebra. It is a teaching failure like this in causing a child to reach a complete understanding at an appropriate age that makes algebra, geometry, trigonometry and calculus more than difficult for many children who could otherwise succeed in advanced math. Improved education needs more teachers to make the quick, insightful and intelligent teaching decisions needed to maximize learning for all children.

Second, intelligence can provide an “Occam’s Razor” to create simplicity, clarity, and economy of thought and expression that is elegant when compared with others who stumble to make an explanation of even the most mundane ideas. It is difficult enough for a child to sort through all of the words on a page, all of the words spoken, and each of their classroom experiences to create meaning in what they are taught. Every day children listen to pedestrian explanations of what they are being taught by teachers who use the same examples and illustrations year after year. The teacher’s rote modeling within a lesson may incite some children but will not connect with all children. A child is given a gift by a teacher who has the capacity to simplify explanations into increments that make sense.  A teacher who can create clear, multiple examples, five and six and a time, allows every child to say “I see.”

Teachers ask or tell children to use mental processes often without showing them how these processes work. It is a gifted teacher who can model for a student how to compare and contrast data, how to weigh the meaning of ideas, and how to choose just the right words of explanation. It is an intelligent teacher who models and coaches these processes so that children understand when and why to use these thinking strategies not just how to use them. In most classrooms, the average teacher does not have the capacity to simplify, clarify and to build intelligent, incremental thinking in children. It is the difference between teachers who are driven by time and material and teachers who are pushed to create thinking children.

Thirdly, role modeling the challenges and rewards within the teaching profession for bright and talented children is a must if we are to assure future generations of talented teachers. Children learn to identify when their teacher’s explanations are intellectually provocative or lame.  They know when their teacher is just repeating the same statements or is able to use other words and examples to create clarity.  Children identify when their teacher makes casual and colloquial mistakes in the grammar of her daily speech. Children know when they are exposed to a bright and gifted teacher, because over time they emulate or try to emulate that teacher’s manners and characteristics. Seldom do children purposefully try to model the traits of an average teacher. Role modeling is inherent in teaching and bright and gifted teachers have the opportunity to show bright and gifted children that they have a future in teaching.

Lastly, there is a never-ending curiosity and “need to know” associated with intelligence that is required in a teaching faculty. The presence of the intellectually curious teacher lifts or tilts the status quo for all teachers by asking persistent questions or making provocative comments. The faculty needs teachers who consistently ask “What if?” and “Why not?” In any organization of people, it is easy to settle for the norm; it is comfortable when everyone is in agreement. But, schools today cannot rest on their norms, because yesterday’s norms will not prepare children for their tomorrows.

Understanding the value of these four points and changing the hiring of future teachers may be difficult. As a district administrator, elementary and high school principal for more than three decades, I recommended the employment of scores of teachers. My candidate screening always included data related to collegiate grade point average and class ranking. These data along with observations and insights into the candidate’s academic and pedagogical preparation formed the basis of a recommendation. My priorities in ranking candidates ran toward a candidate’s demonstrated understanding of pedagogy and how good teaching is not exposing children to education but purposefully causing children to learn.

Today, my employment recommendations still would demand solid academic and pedagogical training and clear demonstrations of teaching skills. But, I would pay more attention when a keen and unabated intelligence, a fiery curiosity, a divergent thinking process, and a fervent tenacity presented itself in a candidate. I would not let this teacher slip into the employment of some other school, but would do everything necessary to create a teaching “home” for this teacher. The concept of a teaching home is essential for the brightest of our teachers who can be shunned by threatened colleagues or turned off by rampant mediocrity. A teaching home honors and respects intelligent, professional work; it protects the exceptionally talented teachers. Too often, bright teachers become disenchanted with organizations that discount intelligence.  Too many bright teachers leave teaching for different professions that pay better attention to their talented members. In retrospect, I would reconsider all of the time and energy devoted to improving a failing teacher. Today, I would cut the school’s losses with that person and spend more energy in finding, recruiting and sustaining the brightest of teachers.

Children need the power of intelligent teachers. Teachers need the leadership of intelligent colleagues. Teaching needs an infusion of intelligent and talented teachers.

This is the first in a series of blogs about enhancing “Teacher Talent: A Profession In Need.”

Teachers and the teaching profession “has a major image problem. Unfortunately, this perception of mediocrity has negatively affected the national reputation of teaching, initiating a cycle of undesirable outcomes that can be felt throughout the profession.”

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/teacherbeat/2014/04/poll_college_students_dont_fin.html?qs=top+college+students+seeThe

Why Teaching Has An Image Problem

The fact that almost every adult in the US has attended school is a very good thing for the nation. It is not necessarily a good thing for the teaching profession. For example, the persons participating in the above poll are on the verge of graduating from college but have an uninformed sense of familiarity with the profession of teaching. They have been on the receiving end of teaching for more than fifteen years of their young lives and they perceive teaching through the eyes of a student. They, like the proverbial hotel patron in the television commercial, claim an expertise in a skilled profession (brain surgery) as the result of their wisdom in staying at a Holiday Inn Express. At the same time, these participants attach higher esteem to the professions of engineering, the law, medicine and scientific technology. There is a respectful “awe” associated with professions that are less familiar or with which they have very selective yet fanciful experience.

I choose the term “uninformed” familiarity, because being a student is not being a teacher. I have sat in the dentist’s chair and observed and felt the work of my dentists. As a consumer of dentistry, I appreciate the skills of a dentist in preventative and responsive care. But, I am unbelievably uninformed about dentistry. Each of us has an uninformed familiarity regarding aspects of our world. We need to be careful that we understand that such a limited familiarity may lead to uninformed conclusions.

In the functional assessment of professions, teaching is exactly like other professions and also very different than those professions. A teacher is college educated. A baccalaureate or master’s degree and certification by a teacher preparation program is a requirement for employment as a teacher in public education. Similarly, education and an academic degree is required for a civil engineer, certified public accountant, and psychologist. Many teachers also have earned master’s, specialist and doctoral degrees, just as lawyers, doctors and dentists add professional education programs to their undergraduate degrees. The definition of profession and professional is appropriately applied to teachers.

There is a body of knowledge, professional skills, and dispositions that are discrete to teaching just as there are to law, medicine and engineering. A state-awarded teaching license derives from the teacher’s major emphasis in her baccalaureate degree, such as English, math, science, business, French, or counseling. However, there is a distinction between a major in a particular subject and a teacher of that subject. An historian focuses on an understanding of history while a history teacher focuses on teaching children to think like an historian using history as the subject. A medical doctor practices the science of medicine while a teacher in a medical college teaches an understanding and sequential training of those sciences. Teaching itself is the understanding and use of pedagogical philosophy, arts and skills. Teaching that causes children to learn is a constant, reflexive process of teaching, assessing what has been learned, correcting and reteaching for learning errors or misunderstandings, followed by more teaching for extended learning. Teaching is cognitive and dispositional architecture and construction.

Yet, there are at least three distinctions that distract the public acceptance of teachers as esteemed professionals, beyond the familiarity issues. First, most teachers are paid by local and state tax dollars. It is difficult for many in our local communities to separate teaching and teachers from their annual property tax bills. Every household’s annual property tax bill states the amount of tax money allocated to local schools and this is an irritant. How can a professional be on the public “dole”?

Second, most teachers are employed for a ten month annual contract. The perception is that teachers have the summer months “off.” True, in many instances. Less true now than in the past when working nine months of the year was preferred by most teachers. Very appropriately, professional education and training in the summer makes teacher work today more like a non-educational employee who has four weeks of annual vacation. However, this uninformed generalization of a part-time professional employee diminishes the public image of teaching as a profession.

Third, most teachers historically have been unionized. A unionized profession seems like a contradiction in terms to many who are self-employed and others whose employment does not include paid benefits. As a union, the teaching profession has used collective bargaining to establish contractual agreements with school boards. Sometimes, unions have used labor actions as a tool of bargaining. Many apply a negative stigma to unions, bargaining, and labor actions and this stigma diminishes their esteem for teaching.

It is savvy with certain constituencies for politicians today to advocate for home schooling and parental choice of schools. It is fashionable to use reports of the low academic achievement of some children in urban schools, the “middling” achievement of US children on the PISA tests (international assessments of reading and math), and statements of parents who have “issues” with their local schools to ramp up disdain for public education. Political leverage has been created for partisan voting by pointing at tax-paid, part-time unionized professionals with full health care and pension benefits as an economic problem for the middle class.

In combination, a professional who is paid with tax money, works less than a full year, is unionized and can be faulted for unacceptable academic achievement by some children indeed suffers a major image problem.

The above conditions are real. When most adults in the working world are asked for their understanding of teaching, these are the characteristics they most frequently cite. Yet, these conceptions are far removed from what teachers do every day in their classrooms, labs, music rehearsal halls, gymnasiums and theaters. Teachers cause children to learn. These simple five words – teachers cause children to learn – are the reality of teaching and embody the talent of teachers possess that should result in popular esteem. A clear understanding of the talent required to be a teacher can raise public esteem for teaching.

Teacher Talents That Warrant Esteem

Teaching is using a natural desire to learn to create an educated person and an educated population.

The human brain is born to learn. Rousseau believed a child could learn all that she needed to know if left to her own designs in a natural state. In the aggregate, a group of children would be the proverbial herd of cats, all wanting to learn but with the diverse attention span and focus of cats. Teaching grouped children takes a trained capacity to motivate, create focus in multiple minds, monitor and adjust the rate and degree of learning, reinforce successful learning for some while extinguishing incorrect learning in others, and doing this continuously. And, this is just a snapshot of what a trained teacher needs to do for every child in a group of children while working all children toward learning targets that are always just beyond their natural grasp. This work requires a professionally trained talent.

Teaching is causing children to do real things with what they learn.

Teacher talent is causing children to read and write, to use mathematics to solve quantitative and qualitative problems, to use science to explain how the world works, to use music and art to express values that are beyond words, and to explore the passions that will carry them into their adult lives.

For instance, reading is not a natural act like speaking and listening. Reading requires training a child’s brain in coding and decoding written symbols, understanding syntax and rules of grammar, and working with the dynamics of a language that is always changing. Reading fluency and comprehension, especially the growth of an expansive vocabulary, is the metric that distinguishes advanced learning. This work requires professional skills.

Teaching is more complex than doing. The uninformed have said, “Those who can do. Those who can’t teach.” Ironically, before anyone can “do”, they must learn “to do” and almost all of learning to do is the result of teaching. It is relatively easy to demonstrate the solution to a geometric proof or to read a chapter of Spanish literature or to solo on the violin. It is an entirely different proposition to teach a class of children to understand and apply the laws and rules of mathematics, to understand the grammar and idioms of a foreign language, or to read a score of music and be able to interpret notes into how to bow and finger violin strings. Teaching requires the capacity to simplify, begin with fundamentals, and grow a child’s cognition and physical skills incrementally. Many can point out errors in what a child says or does, but only a trained listener and observer can identify what is wrong in a child’s thinking or performance, make corrections in the errors, and cause the child to learn new, accurate and correct knowledge and skills. Interestingly, a great deal of effective teaching is committed to correcting learning.

Teacher talent is an interpersonal connection that lights a child’s imagination, motivates a child’s willingness to do more than is expected, to create the unexpected, and to do so again and again. One can accurately say that a parent or grandparent or mentor also can do these things for their child, grandchild or special mentee. True. The talent is doing these things for hundreds of children every year, children who are not family members or in any other way attached to the teacher beyond the fact that they are children to be taught. Creating and nurturing interpersonal connections with strangers takes unusual talent.

Teacher talent reaches beyond the tears of a child’s momentary frustration to help the child overcome what seems insurmountable and have an “aha!” moment. Educational accountability today drives teachers toward defined and demonstrable student learning. Each grade level and course has a body measureable and tested content, skills and dispositions and these are the targets for teaching. More to the point, contemporary educator effectiveness requirements assess and publicize every public school’s efficiency in meeting state academic standards and teacher evaluations are directly drawn from the specific achievements of the children they taught. There are no recalls of educational defects as there are every year in manufacturing. School is not Toyota or General Motors. A child who does not acquire third grade reading or math problem-solving skills will have tremendous problems in each subsequent grade level. Once a child advances to the next grade level or sequential course, there are few opportunities for do overs.

Teacher talent is what adults remember fondly when they talk with later-life friends and try to explain where and when and how they grew up. It is the name of a well-remembered person who helped them as no one else could. Everyone has one – the teacher who connected with them in grade school or in high school or college. It is the teacher who caused them to learn. The capacity to create this immeasurable and unforgotten effect is an extraordinary talent.

We, as a nation, have created a real problem related to our perception of teachers and teaching and it is one that we need to fix. Education is the ticket for renewed financial prosperity and closing gaps of economic inequalities. Educational achievements need to rise in international comparisons and each generation of children need to be career and college ready. Educators, on the other hand, are held in low esteem and the teaching profession is demeaned. We can’t have it both ways. It is time to align our national and personal goals with strategies for accomplishing them; it is time to value teaching.

“The teaching profession has a major image problem,” Third Way analysts Tamara Hiler and Lanae Erickson Hatalsky write in their analysis of the National Online Survey of College Students – Education Attitudes. “Unfortunately, this perception of mediocrity has negatively affected the national reputation of teaching, initiating a cycle of undesirable outcomes that can be felt throughout the profession.”

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/teacherbeat/2014/04/poll_college_students_dont_fin.html?qs=top+college+students+see

This poll of academically-successful college students displays that almost 60% have little to absolutely no interest in teaching as a profession. They perceive education as a profession associated with graduates who are socially conscious, patient, selfless and nice. It is not that these are unfavorable characteristics; they are not associated with more desirable professions where the characteristics smart, motivated, ambitious, rich, and driven are more prized. Most of the polled did not perceive a college major in education to be very difficult. They believe that education has lost prestige in public opinion. Lastly, 90% believe that the starting salary in their new profession is somewhat to very important and 89% believe that salary advancement in their profession is somewhat to very important. They believe that teacher salaries are below their professional expectations.

http://www.thirdway.org/publications/810

Public media has displayed the changing and diminishing public perception of teachers over the past decade in releases about teacher unions and collective bargaining, the cost of teacher benefit packages, the stagnant state of student achievement nationally, and the disappointing status of US children compared with their international peers.

Running parallel to a “major image problem” are three phenomena that are even more problematic than a public image. First, in the next several years a graduate of a teacher preparation program will be greeted by more than 3,000,000 vacant teaching positions and will compete against teacher candidates who on average comprise the bottom one-third of the nation’s annual college graduates. The talent pool of future teachers will not include the best and brightest of their generation.

http://www.thirdway.org/publications/811

Second, Children now and yet to be in school will face an array of significant challenges. This image by The Millennium Project represents fifteen of the most significant.

 15 Global Challenges Facing Humanity

http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/challenges.html

And third, national and world leaders perceive that improving the quality of education for all children provides the best chance for meeting these challenges.

If quality solutions to regional, national and global problems rest on the improved education of all children, then the United States needs an increasing number of the best and brightest of each year’s new employment pool to be trained as teachers. Currently, the perceived public status of teachers and education as a profession pose barriers keeping many secondary and undergraduate students from planning a career in education.

A series of blogs in Causing Learning will focus on rebuilding a teaching profession capable of educating children to succeed in their future world.