Tag Archives: integrity

Betterment Is A Teacher’s Constant PD

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

Betterment

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

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

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

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

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

Shifting responsibility for professional development

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Consider the opportunities of professional growth, usual and novel.

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

Consider typical threats to teacher stability.

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

Set targets – what are you prepared to do?

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

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

The Big Duh! Betterment is continuous.

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

Atlas is Shrugging

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Think Ayn Rand and then think 2025. Think John Gault and then think the American commonwealth. Think the consequences of industrial leaders shuttering their talents and then think the American people shuttering their care factor. Think the tenets of democracy and then think the pettiness of empirical rule.

When a slim majority of our electorate believes an egotist will elevate their status and cure their woes, what happens if everyone else shrugs? We are finding out.

Fellow educators, we shall not shrug.

Now that you have elected new board members, make them be trustworthy

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Public trust is given to school board members and that trust must be repaid through the members’ informed and active governance of our schools.  Boardsmanship is an active not a passive trust.

It is spring election time, and two school board seats are on the local ballot.  There are no other school district issues to be decided.  If the past informs the future, less than 30% of the eligible voters will decide the two people who will be part of our seven-member school board.  As a generalization, this is the usual pattern of school board elections – 30% or fewer of eligible voters decide who governs our school district.  The generalization does not hold when there is a school referendum or money on the ballot.  Two years ago, almost 70% of eligible voters cast ballots on big money referendum questions and for the persons running for board election that spring.  Dollars and cents issues raise more voter interest than electing who governs our schools. 

Continuing in a predictive mode, fewer than 50 of the voters in the school board election will attend a school board meeting in the next year.  Some of the 50 may physically attend numerous meetings, but fewer than 50 names will appear in person.

That said, how does the public go about the work of trusting elected school board members?

Explicit and implicit trust.

Wisconsin statute 120.12 defines school board duties.  The first two duties set the expectations.  These are –

  • Management of the school district, and
  • General supervision.

Board members are responsible for the “… possession, care, control and management of the property and affairs of the school district…” and are authorized to “… visit and examine the schools of the district, advise the school teachers and administrative staff regarding the instruction, government and progress of the pupils and exercise general supervision over such schools…”.   Subsequent sub-sections of the statute define the scope of sub-duties.

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/120

In the care, control and management of the school district, there are three top order priorities.  These are –

  • Safe and secure schools.
  • Defined curricular instruction leading to quality student outcomes.
  • Inclusive extra-curricular programs, including athletics and fine arts.

These are non-negotiably explicit.  All issues of safety and security race to the school board agenda demanding immediate attention.  Everything from violence on the campus to drop off time on school bus routes to locks on bathroom stall doors is explicitly a board member’s concern.  Failure to resolve any of these issues invites public furor and assurance that someone else will be elected when member terms expire, if not petitions for recall elections.  The public at large explicitly trusts board members to ensure safe and secure schools.

Issues of curricular instruction and extra-curricular programming, though explicit, ignite very selective groups of the public and seldom the public at-large.  Offending the football boosters will not ignite boosters of phonic-based reading or the Art Club.  Yet almost every school activity, curricular and extra-curricular, has a support group that explicitly trusts the board to be positive in its actions affecting their interest.  The connections between moms and dads, alums, and community members wearing school colors are vital to ongoing school culture and future ballot initiatives.  No board member wants to be singled out for offending a support group to the point that the group becomes active in campaigning against school programs and initiatives.  Special interest groups throughout the school community explicitly trust board members to support their interests.

What about children?  Is there an explicit trust between board members and the children of the school district?  Yes but no.  The words “child” and “children” appear hundreds of times in state statures regarding school governance.  The education of children is at the center of the school board’s work.  Yet children are seldom vocal or present when the board does its’ work.  At best, children are explicitly referenced yet the bonds of trust are all implicit.  And children do not vote.

While no board member wants to actively and publicly deny a child or group of children their wants, board members do it all the time.  And they don’t know it when they do it.  A change in school lunch vendors and the foodstuffs they supply will be applauded by some children and despised by others.  Pizza, for example, a staple of school cafeterias changes when vendor contracts change.  Few children will speak about decisions to change brands of toilet paper, yet every child is affected. 

On a larger arena, decisions about grading scales, graduation requirements, prerequisites for course selections are discussed by the board in committee and board meetings, yet few children asked how they would vote, if they could.  Children implicitly trust board members to make positive policy decisions on their behalf.

Trust is as trust is perceived.

Trust is visible.  Board members need to be seen in the schoolhouse and at school events.  Their presence in school may seem mundane, yet their lack of presence infers no personal experience, observation, or first-hand information.  I always questioned a board member who took a strong position at a board meeting about the math curriculum yet had not observed teaching and learning.  Relying on data is okay but combining data about unacceptable student performance data combined with observations of real teaching and learning in the classroom makes a winning argument.  A board member greatly increases her perception of trustworthiness when she says, “I saw how frustrated our teachers and students are with how the publisher presents pre-Algebra.  Our current text materials are not clear and direct in scaffolding required pre-Algebra skills.”  Even though an administrator may say similar things, when a board member makes these statements, they enact their trustworthiness by not being reliant only on what they are told.

Some may say board members’ presence in the school is intrusive.  In fact, the Wisconsin Association of School Board handbook for board members downplays board member visits during the school day.  “Trust the school administration”, the WASB advises.  Board presence during the school day is not a distrust but partnership between the superintendent and the board.  A secure superintendent invites board members to visit school; an insecure administrator does not. 

Trust is vocalized.  When a person meets a board member in an aisle at the grocery store or at the gas pump, and asks a school-based question, board members are given a prime-time opportunity to display and build trust.  “I am open to listening to you.  And I am open to telling you what I think.”  The rules of confidentiality always apply, but outside of forbidden topics, talking with others when they want to talk with with a board member builds mutual trust.

Perception is reality.

Lastly, newly elected board members are expected to go through an acclimation phase.  However, from day one of their term to their last day, the public is always watching.  Board members are constantly measured by how others perceive their work.  While we expect new members to learn, the perception of how new members go about their learning, and how they become fully engaged builds the reality of how much they are trusted.

Be trustworthy to be trusted.

Because Transparency Has Become Opaque Require Integrity

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Each generation has its own edu-speak, those coined words used by educational professionals that are spoken so often and in varying contexts that they soon have no meaning.  These are not the acronyms that abound in school conversations.  We have long abused parents and the public with IEPs, RtI, and BIPs; educators love their acronyms.  I point to the whole words, single stand-alone words, that are used to convey a universal understanding of a concept or value that once stated assumes an end to the conversation.  The word transparency has become one of these and it is meh!  We say “Our decision-making processes will be transparent to the public” as if “transparency” is the end all.  The word is uninformative, uninspiring, unexceptional, and too often is a slight of hand or mouth.  “If I say we are transparent, we are transparent.”  Meh and more meh!

I read of a school board who touts transparency yet when the administration removed two dozen book titles from the school libraries, no board member could provide a rationale other than “we support the administration”.  End of conversation.  They lived their version of transparency.

Another school board claims transparency yet when the administration announces a multi-million-dollar post-pandemic shortfall coming in the next several years’ school budgets, there are no explanations of the decisions that led to gross expenditures over revenue in the recent past.  The task force delegated to create a solution to the huge shortfall is hand-picked and, by design, there will be little voice for the community who sit in school board meeting audiences governed by a very restrictive public participation policy.  Transparency up to a point but no further.  One has to appreciate the complicity of a person who says, “It is transparent to me”. 

I know a school administration that grieves over the drop of student achievement scores in the post-pandemic yet will not make achievement data available to the parents beyond the statewide school report card.  School leaders declare they are being transparent about the continued school ratings of “This School Does Not Meet Expectations” yet there is no accountability for low achievement year after year in the same grade level and classrooms.  It is a personnel supervision problem more than a student achievement problem.  This is an example of being transparent about what does not matter and not transparent about what does.

Stop using the word transparency.  Another way to explain the need for changing this word is that people today say transparent, but they mean translucent.  The clarity of truth and facts has given way to lies and non-facts that are spoken so openly and freely that no listener can take the words of a person in authority at face value.  We have come to expect if not accept cloudy translucency.  This is wrong.

Start using the word integrity, as in “We make all decisions with the integrity our students, parents, and community deserve”.  Integrity, meaning the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles, is not meh.  Integrity describes the direct, honest, data-based, straight-forward answer that a person who asks an honest question deserves.  While there may be a shading in information that claims transparency, a response to a question or problem either is made with integrity, or it is not.

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

I know a superintendent who told his faculty and staff first and then his parents and community, “… regarding the teaching of reading, we have been doing it wrong.  For the past 30 years we have taught children about reading but not how to read.  We did not use a phonics-based, literacy creating instructional program.  Instead, we asked each child to look at the pictures or listen to an adult read and asked children to memorize words hoping that these three strategies would cause a child to become a reader.  And we did this year after year.  Today, we stop that nonsense and are beginning to teach each child how to read.  I invite you to come to school and watch us make these changes”. 

Transparent, yes.  But more to the point, his declaration has integrity.  Communicating and acting with integrity is easier and less stressful than the work needed to obfuscate and maintain an obfuscation. 

We find examples in our daily communications about children and school that are simple and factual and relatable.  As listeners and observers, we must thank and applaud clear and uncompromised communication and actions.  And we must be more stalwart in calling out “Nonsense” and “Bull Roar” when we are treated to an episode of translucency.  At the end of the day, it is better to deal with bad news than with a lie.

We are what we appear to value.  Reading Proficiency and Censorship.

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Simultaneously the Wisconsin legislature is considering a bill to improve reading instruction for all children and a bill to limit what schools can provide for children to read.  Two bills each with its own perspective on how the state should fulfill its commitment to educating children.  One bill attempts to apply the best practices of the science of reading to ensure all children can be proficient readers.  One bill tells schools to limit what they provide for children to read and see.  Each bill uses the power of the state to transform how schools impact children.  Each bill is an expression of what we value.

What do we know?

Our WI constitution says the state is responsible for establishing and supervising public education.  State statute 118.01(2) outlines the state’s educational goals.  These include instruction in 118.01(2)(a) the basic skills of reading, arithmetic, listening, writing, and speaking, analytical skills to think rationally and solve problems, a body of knowledge in literature, fine arts, and the natural sciences, skills and attitudes for lifelong intellectual activity, and knowledge in computer science including the social impact of computers.

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/118

What is being proposed?

Representative Joel Kitchens is spearheading Assembly Bill 321 to improve child literacy by creating an Office of Literacy, focusing teacher prep programs on science-based reading instruction, establishing and funding literacy coaching, and standardizing early literacy screening through grade 3 assessments.  Equally important to the use of phonics-based reading is the ban on schools from using three cueing strategies in teaching children to read.  Every child in 4K-grade 3 will be taught how to decode words and encode sounds – to read and write independently.  Each child will be taught the mechanics of literacy and strategies for building vocabulary.  A child’s ability will no longer be determined by her school’s reading program preferences but by best practice. 

The bill institutes change in teacher education and professional development to ensure that teachers know how to teach phonics-based reading.  Today most teachers do not teach phonics as it was not part of their baccalaureate preparation or their school district’s PD.  Most teachers learned to teach whole language or blended reading strategies dominated reading instruction.  Teachers will learn to teach and be accountable for teaching all children to read using the science of reading concepts and skills.

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2023/related/proposals/ab321

State Senators Andre Jacque, Romaine Quinn, and Cory Tomczyk presented a bill that would cause schools to remove books and material that are “deemed harmful or offensive to minors from public schools and libraries” and “enact policies that ensure minors do not view harmful materials on public computers”.

Under the guise of parent rights to supervise what their children learn, the bill requires schools to publish their curricular materials so that parents may object to what they deem harmful and/or remove their child from that class instruction. 

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2023/proposals/sb10

One bill supports our educational goals and the other subverts those goals.

I fully agree with Joel Kitchens when he says “Students will succeed by returning to the way most of us learned to read.  I truly consider this to be the most important thing that I ever worked on in the legislature”.  AB 321 advances the educational goals of our state by improving how we teach all children to read. 

Senate Bill 10 contradicts our educational goals to provide all children with opportunities to consider, think, and become intellectual problem solvers.  It ignores or does not trust the authority of school districts to supervise the materials they provide for children to read and see and experience in school.  Instead, this bill creates a new right for a parent to make that decision not just for that parent’s child but for all children.

SB10 is Wisconsin’s effort to keep up with other conservative-dominated state legislatures with book banning.  If successful, the bill ensures that schoolbooks and materials can be censored by a single parent or small group of parents.  It also places school boards in the bullseye of the issue to ban or not ban books.

https://www.wortfm.org/following-national-trend-wisconsin-lawmakers-introduce-book-ban/

Where is our educational high ground?

As a former school superintendent and school board president, I applaud Assembly Bill 321 and shun Senate Bill 10.  The high ground of public education is to teach children how to think and to resolve issues.  It is low ground to tell children what to think and to insulate them from issues they should, with appropriate instructional support, be able to consider. 

Our state constitution explains the educational goals of a public education in Chapter 118, section 118.01.  118.01(d) says “Each school board shall provide an instructional program designed to give pupils: (8) Knowledge of effective means by which pupils may recognize, avoid, prevent and halt physically or psychologically intrusive or abusive situations which may be harmful to pupils including child abuse and child enticement.  Instruction shall be designed to help pupils develop positive psychological, emotional, and problem-solving responses to such situations and avoid relying on negative, fearful, and solely reactive methods of dealing with such situations.  Instruction shall include information on available school and community prevention and intervention assistance or services and shall be provided to pupils in elementary schools.”

The high ground for our state is to implement the goals of its statutes.  Schools must constantly improve how we teach children while we constantly are vigilant regarding the educational materials we use for that education.  The state constitution gives schools the authority and responsibility to do these, and the role of legislation is to enhance not impede schools.  The constitution commends parents to work with local school boards to understand and advocate for the education of all children.

The high ground for local school boards is to constantly supervise the materials and experiences used to educate its students.   When a challenge arises the board can engage in an appropriate conversation with the conviction that the district has and is meeting its responsibilities for the entirety of our state’s educational goals.  We teach all children to become proficient in basic skills and to consider, think, problem solve and make decisions regarding their school experiences.  We do not teach them what to think or how to value their experiences.