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.

The 2013 NAEP results were released today. Once again, these data affect a local school district with the same impact as the National Transportation Safety Board’s report on highway fatalities. The big picture is nice to know, but what is happening at the local level matters here. How are local children performing on bellwether assessments and how many died on our county roads?  In both arenas, our locale is faring very well.  High school seniors are scoring well above state and national math achievement statistics in all disaggregated groups on assessments that can be correlated with NAEP and there were few highway deaths in our county last year.

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2014/05/no_change_in_12th_grade_perfor.html?cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS2

https://www.ntsb.gov/safety/safetystudies/SIR0101.html

Atop today’s national educational journals, the headlines read “No Change in 12th Grade Performance on NAEP Math, Reading.” Read on. There has been little to no change in the NAEP stats for 12th graders in math and reading since 2009. I am moved to ask, “And, what was the expectation?” What has changed in the patterns of high school student persistence in math courses over the past four years that would lead us to believe that achievement patterns would change? Which promising instructional strategies have been exploited between 2009 and 2013 to cause us to look for changes in achievement? Nada and nada.

On the local level, several school districts increased the number of math credits required for high school graduation. Causation possibilities!  As a result, all students are taking and passing, some on a second try, an increased number and variety of advanced math courses in these local high schools. The students of interest in this matter will be the eighth grade cohort who will experience the increased math graduation requirement.

In this same time frame, professional development for math teachers has stressed metacognitive problem-solving.  In addition to the accuracy of their math problem solutions, students must explain their pre-analysis of each math problem, their choice of solution strategies, and their processes for reaching a solution.  A local analysis of advanced math course completions against exiting 12th grade math assessments will become noteworthy.  As will a sub-analysis of student achievement on math problems that require an explanation of mathematical processing.  It will take several years for the eighth grade cohort to move through high school and present their exit assessments. Consequently, any smiling or frowning about 12th grade math achievement will be on hold for a while.

Like any educational news junkie, I read every report and article that comes my way. However, knowing what is important what is not allows this junkie to keep his pants from bunching whenever the NAEP results are released.  I leave it to partisan politics to swoon over broadsided data releases.

An April article in US News and World Report made an impressive case for why public schools must maintain strong programming in what otherwise are known as the “extracurriculars.” Taken broadly, “extra” curriculars include all subjects taught in school beyond the state-mandated academic areas of reading and literacy, mathematics, science and social studies, especially history, government and economics.

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2014/04/28/music-art-and-language-programs-in-schools-have-long-lasting-benefits

Harvard University President Drew Faust thinks that the extracurriculars are very important. She speaks of how a study of the humanities teaches students to “think critically and communicate their ideas clearly, and those transferrable skills lead to rewarding lives and careers in every field of endeavor.” The humanities include art and music and foreign languages and the subjects that explain the history of mankind. They are what often comprises a liberal arts education.

http://harvardmagazine.com/2014/03/see-compare-reason-decide

A Concordia University study indicates that “musical training, in particular instrumental training, produces long lasting changes in motor abilities and brain structure.” Children who start very young receive the greatest benefits.

https://www.mcgill.ca/channels-contribute/channels/news/early-music-lessons-boost-brain-development-224936

Learning a foreign language not only provides a person with access to communication and a world of experience in a new culture, but the act of learning a second language causes the cortex of the brain literally expand and this expansion allows the learner a greater acuity of thought, abstract consciousness, and a more expansive memory.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22750568

“Children who get aerobic exercise transform their brains due to a protein that is elevated during exercise.” “Exercise improves circulation, lowers blood pressure and reduces the risk of developing osteoporosis. It strengthens muscles, reduces obesity, improves mobility and lessens the risk of depression.

http://johnratey.typepad.com/blog/2008/03/miracle-gro-for.html

Although these examples, the humanities, arts, music, foreign languages and physical education, seem to be familiar subjects offered in many schools, add these to the list of mandated academic subjects and then view all of the variations on what may be perceived as baseline school programming.

Pragmatically, “must” programming is programming that is measured. That means tested. Federal and state mandates require school districts to assess the learning achievement of all children in reading and mathematics. Applying the adage, “what gets tested gets taught,” reading and math are baseline for all schools. But, wait. Neither of these two subjects represents a single, linear line of instruction.

Beginning in middle schools, math is not a single subject but a ladder comprised of Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, and Calculus with layers of each, such as Beginning Algebra, Intermediate Algebra, Advanced Algebra, and Second-year Algebra. Do this expansion for each English, composition, literature, life science, physical science, Earth science, biology, chemistry, physics, and astronomy course and a conception of the usual school subjects moves from a narrow list to a dense smorgasbord of subjects. And, this doesn’t include the landscape of social science subjects. Nor, does it include the variations of Advanced Placement and special education courses. And, every one of these subjects with its course variations is surrounded by children, parents and community members who believe that their favorite subject is “most important.”

Without much effort, one can find “who says” testimony and evidence for why a very wide array of topics and experiences should be provided by a local public school. Many are extrapolations of traditional skill sets with contemporary applications. Other topics meet a perception for future employment skills. And, other topics answer current economic and political complaints and concerns.

The Huffington Post offers these:

• Taxes
• Budgeting and Finance
• Computer coding
• Emergency medical training
• No-bull*** sex education
• Cover letters and resumes
• Sustainable living

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/13/things-schools-should-teach_n_4576389.html

Everything that is curricular and extracurricular is important. But, it does not end there. Everything that is co-curricular also is important. For example, just try to reduce a co-curricular activity to find out how important it is.

The Hermantown (MN) school board faces a $260,000 budgetary for 2014-15. After several years of budget cutting and keeping cuts as removed from classroom instruction as possible, the board approved a reduced budget including two elementary teaching positions and high school cheerleading.

“Two weeks after eliminating funding for cheerleading – a move that led to community outcry and surprise – the Hermantown School Board voted to reinstate money for the program Monday night. A crowd of often emotional supporters packing the small boardroom lined the wall and sat on the floor to both hear and speak about the activity.” “’The students put in a lot of work in the last weeks to save their program,’ said junior Courtney Martin. ‘It’s the best feeling I’ve ever had in my life knowing I get to cheer another year,’ she said.”

Every school subject and every activity is important to someone!

http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/content/hermantown-school-board-reverses-course-cheerleading-cuts

The Hermantown experience is repeated broadly each year as school boards across the nation battle with planned budgetary expenditures that surpass anticipated revenues. Consider the number of grade level teaching positions reduced against the number of football and basketball and hockey, or even cheerleading, programs that are reduced. What is important remains intact after the budget has been reduced.

For more than a century, the Marshall Field Company prospered with two slogans. The first slogan was “The customer is always right.” This concept fits perfectly with one of the world’s leading retail merchants by assuring a universal understanding that Fields valued customer satisfaction above all else. Certainly there were times when a sales person in the Fields State Street store in Chicago was exasperated with an over demanding customer, but it was that employee’s duty to live up to the Fields’ second promise that they always “Give the lady what she wants.”

A business model for a public school today is little different than that of Marshall Fields. “Give the community what it wants.” If not, parents in the community will take their business to competing schools. What a web we create when we first practice to accommodate. There may not be a limit to the important things that will satisfy a community of school customers.

Aesop tells us this fable. A miller and his son were taking their ass to sell at market, when they passed a group of girls, who laughed at how foolish the miller was to have an ass and yet be walking. So the miller put his son on the ass. Further down the road they passed some old people who scolded the miller for allowing his young son to ride, when he should be riding himself. So the miller removed his son and mounted the ass himself. Further along the road, they passed some travelers who said that if he wanted to sell the ass the two of them should carry him or he’d be exhausted and worthless. So the miller and his son bound the ass’s legs to a pole and carried him. When they approached the town the people laughed at the sight of them, so loud that the noise frightened the ass, who kicked out and fell off a bridge into the river and drowned. The embarrassed miller and son went home with nothing, save the lesson that you will achieve nothing by trying to please everyone.

http://www.businessballs.com/aesopsfables.htm

The most difficult aspect of the “everything is important” conundrum is this; although public educators know that they are Aesop’s miller, they can do nothing in the face of the politically-charged tsunami of parent choice demands, charter and online school options, and politicians who surf on the denigration of the public schools they have created to change the current educational environment.

Perhaps a true test of importance is sitting with a group of children in elementary school to explain what will really be important in their future as they move through the grade levels of school. Keep a straight face with the knowledge that small girls and boys remember everything you tell them. They think of these as promises. Nothing is more important to these children than your promising description of their future. They get excited with everything you tell them. Then, when you are finished and they have gone off to play, every school offering that you did not promise is not important. It’s a beginning.