How Morph #1

If you are still with me and have been tempted to sign up for the School of Morph, then a valid question would be, "How the heck do we get there from here?" Ah, the "How Morph" question. A series of simultaneous events must happen in a way that coincides with a series of professional realizations to get the ball rolling. So, there are two sets of responses, one based on the current education institution and those of us within and without pushing and pulling, and the other grounded in political and economic reality. Education first I always say, so this post will address the professional realization piece, and "How Morph #2" will address the political/economic realm.

Though I believe many in public education sense the coming morph, they have yet to congeal around a picture of what is coming and how to help make it happen. By the phrase "in public education" I mean teachers, aides, administrators, superintendents, school boards and professors of education as well as the wide array of vendors, consultants and others who make their living off public education dollars but are not actually employed by a public school. As a matter of disclosure, I include myself in this group of "in public education," not as a vendor, but as a practitioner.

The current model of public education is not working and is on the verge of implosion. That realization led me to "Why Morph?" As more and more of us in this profession take a deep breath and review our practices and policies and procedures from aloft and with good hearts devoted to the mission of educating the youth of this country as an essential process of preserving and improving our future on this planet, then more and more of us must stand up and say, what we are doing is not working. It is working for some, but not for nearly enough. That is realization #1 and it is critical. If we believe that what we are doing is working, is good for kids and is good for this country, then we will never morph, and we will simply accelerate down the road we currently travel. That is the path set by folks who are not in this profession. I find that thought frightful.

I started this post on the first day for Texas school children to return to school. That was a really appropriate time to discuss realization #2: Schools must operate year round. The incredible stress of starting up each year is unbearable. The amount of time spent in classrooms putting up the bulletin boards that were just taken down in June is absolutely ridiculous. Developing schedules, assigning classrooms, conducting the mandatory faculty meetings, attending the mandatory staff development, leveling classes and printing student handbooks and forms for parents to fill out would all be moot if we simply never shut down. Add to that what happens in classrooms across this state, (and I suspect most others), after the administration of the high stakes standardized tests and one wonders why we even require kids to attend class after the tests. Field trips, assemblies, carnivals, etc., etc., dot the lesson plan landscape as teachers and administrators intuitively know that once the bubble sheets are shipped, school is over for the year. That can be as early as March or as late as May, but school is out when the scantrons are in. We keep running buses and we keep taking roll, but little instruction is actually happening. For schools to be effective and for teachers to be taken seriously, school must be an option for kids year round. We must stop the incredible waste of resources at both the end and beginning of each school year. Until teachers begin to lobby for that it won't happen, and as long as we are a "profession" that is only on call August to May, or September to June, we are part-timers and also-rans. No one who gets ten to twelve weeks a year vacation plus 2 weeks at Christmas, a spring break and at least 5 other random days per year is ever going to be seen as a real professional, much less listened to when the salary moaning begins. Teachers must work year round and schools should be open year round.

(Businesses close to remodel and then have a grand re-opening. If we remodel we do it on the fly during the school year whether we are talking new curriculum, newly purchased gizmos or software, or whether we are talking facilities. If summers were used for nothing else other than to further the professional practice of teachers with kids not present, we would be light-years ahead. Good Lord, our communities did not spend millions of dollars on facilities to sit idle ¼ of the year! Custodians do not need that much time to wax the floors and get cobwebs off the light fixtures.)

If you say, “We can’t afford that,” then I say, “Read part 2, coming soon to a blog near you.” If you say, “I don’t want to work year round,” then I say, “Re-evaluate your vision of teaching as a profession.”

Realization #3 is already out there, but it hasn't really sunk in. The most critical variable in any student's successful learning, demographics and DNA included, is the teacher. One of the most powerful subtexts in the whole high-stakes testing movement is the realization that who teaches the kids makes a difference. Hence the tests: let's find the good ones and fire the rest and use a test to separate the cream from the skim milk. The kid makes a difference too, but who teaches the kid makes a big difference. Parents know that on "meet the teacher night" and on "back to school night." Parents with efficacy make sure their kids get the “right” teacher. Schools go through incredible policy gymnastics to proclaim that classes are balanced by gender, ethnicity and heterogeneous performance history to justify spreading the kids out among the available pros. All the insiders really know the best teachers get both the toughest kids to teach and the kids of the most politically connected parents. The charter school movement appeals to parents in part because they have some choice in who the teacher is. Private schools, for those who can pay, settle the selection process once and for all. You too can buy your teacher, not to mention your child's peers. (It has always been amusing to me that every teacher I ever fired for incompetence either ended up making more money doing something else, or got hired by a private school. Go figure.) The teacher, the pro, makes a difference. Until teachers own up to this revelation, the chances of further realizations are slim.

Own up to realization #3 and you are ready for realization #4: teacher preparation and practice is critical to the future success not only of the teacher but of the students. How many reports do we have to see regarding the rapid exodus of young teachers from the profession before we say, you know, we are probably not setting them up for success. Duh. And, the preparation issue is not necessarily content area mastery! There is a reason doctors spend years in paid apprenticeships as do plumbers, welders, electricians, etc. One must learn one's craft. If the craft is teaching, then content knowledge at the university level is just about as critical to successful teaching as college level biology courses are to surgeons: nice to have, but not nearly enough. Teachers must be taught by other teachers. (I know. I can hear the universities grumbling already. But frankly, I have more degrees and graduate hours than I am willing to claim, and if I sit through one more lecture on why it is important to vary instructional strategies and differentiate instruction I am likely to commit mayhem.) We need to ensure that prospective teachers get the university content prep necessary to teach subject matter, then pay them for a one to three year internship wherein they learn to teach kids the subject matter, not just teach the subject matter. And this cannot be done by dropping the future teacher in an isolated classroom, or asking them to student teach for 6 weeks. This must be done in the ongoing company of real professional teachers.

Hence, realization #5: teachers must collaborate and should not be allowed to isolate. Neither an ill-prepared college grad nor an exhausted 20 year pro is likely to work well in a room alone with 20+ little humans. The structure for success is all wrong. No one else works alone, much less practices a high-stakes profession alone. Doctors don’t, engineers don’t, lawyers don’t. Teachers do. And when they get together, their clients and patients are not present and the temptation is simply to play, “Ain’t it awful.” To make real collaboration happen, schedules must be radically changed, the way we build schools must be changed, and the way we picture the school day must be changed. That will take community and parent involvement, professional support from teachers and administrators, and, surprisingly less money! We just have to paint the picture of what a group of pros can accomplish with a group of kids, working together for the purpose of learning, and working year-round. (OK, I guess that requires another post!)

So, how do we morph?

First, a large number of us (though research on meaningful change points to a critical mass of 10 to 20%) must say that what we are doing is not working, schools must operate year-round, teachers really do make the difference in a kid’s learning, we must change the way we prepare and support teachers, and teachers must work collaboratively rather than in small rectangular rooms all alone with kids. If the profession took this stand, modeled it, piloted it, demonstrated it, and showed that not only does it work better, it costs less while retaining the best, then we will get the parent, community, board and legislative support to do it.

We must create a model. A model morph: A vivid picture of a school serving a diverse group of kids who are achieving high academic success in a new setting with new behaviors on the part of the adults in the building.

Looks like I have more posting to do after Part 2 of “How Morph”, but you can start thinking about it right now!  Break down the walls!