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.