It's funny. I buy that teaching is very skilled and that a good teacher is very different from a bad teacher, because that's how it felt when I was teaching -- I was terrible at it, and I could watch myself gradually learning things that made me slightly less terrible (in two years, I never made it to anywhere near competent, but I did improve a lot.)
OTOH, I found the CT post that the hype about schools that 'beat the odds' is mostly fantasy quite convincing.
it meant those jerks at R1 universities.
In my defense, I'd like to point out that I don't actually teach anything and I'm barely above average as a jerk.
In my teaching evaluations from last semester, I got my new favorite comment ever: "Dr. Geebie breaks things down into such small pieces that you can't help but understand."
That pretty much hits the nail on the head for what I'm trying to accomplish.
Oooh, that is a really nice thing to hear about your teaching.
The CT post, by contrast talks about how, in general, teacher success stories tend to be more hype than substance, and that it's almost impossible to find schools that consistently distinguish themselves from their peers.
I believe this is correct.
5: As Nick mentioned, the CT post does not actually discuss teacher success stories. Not that you aren't allowed to believe the line you quoted, anyway. Believe away!
True -- it's possible that good teachers have different results from bad teachers, but that it's really hard to identify and develop good teachers sufficiently to develop a concentration of them in a school.
I read the CT piece when it was first posted, so it's not fresh in my mind, and I haven't read the Atlantic piece. But that won't stop me from commenting!
Students who enroll in colleges and universities fail to get a degree at really high rates, (30-50% I think? Somewhere in there?), and there is a giant information asymmetry preventing parents and students from being able to accurately determine where exactly they'll receive a quality education, (thanks, Newsweek!), costs are untenably high, and professors don't have any incentives to teach well.
This conflates two issues (not you, heebie, the article): Student retention/graduation, and poor-quality education. I'm going to speak to the first one. Lots of students start college and don't finish, due to:
- Economic pressure (can't afford college and/or are being pressured by family to drop out and start earning)
- Social pressure (e.g. discrimination/feeling alienated and isolated)
- College-controlled factors (this covers a multitude of evils)
Only the last one is something that is under the direct control of the college. I've been gritting my teeth all month because DeVry is running a series of ads bragging that their graduates are employed in 96 of the Fortune 100 companies, or some such. What most of the ads don't say is that this includes DeVry students who were working at those companies BEFORE they began their studies. It's totally creepy and misleading, and unfortunately works all too well.
There is also so much social hype around the desirability of a college degree that I think many families and students are poorly served by guidance counselors and admissions officials who don't help them think through whether college really makes sense for them. What's better, a two-year "business" degree from a poorly respected college or a solid, state-licensed credential from a decent technical school? You pass a phlebotomy exam, you can get hired at a hospital or nursing home even in another state. You get a pointless business degree, it doesn't even serve as a good proxy to the type of hiring manager you'll be dealing with.
You can allow that good teaching makes a big difference without holding that good teaching is something that you (as a school board or school administrator) can get in any generally reproducible way.
7
True -- it's possible that good teachers have different results from bad teachers, but that it's really hard to identify and develop good teachers sufficiently to develop a concentration of them in a school.
So as a practical matter how would this be different from good teachers not existing?
And suppose you could concentrate them in certain schools. Isn't that a zero-sum game?
Only if there's a fixed number of good teachers. If there really is a way to train people to be 'good teachers' that we simply haven't hit on yet, then we could increase the supply.
you can't help but understand.
It's like all those Enlightenment dudes: "The mind is compelled to assent to each of these propositions."
12: SO, YOU'RE CLAIMING THAT I'M COMPELLED TO ASSENT TO EACH PROPOSITION? LET'S CALL THAT A PROPOSITION AS WELL.
At the secondary level, Pedro Noguera speaks very persuasively on how how effective teachers exhibit moral authority. (I can't find an online record of the presentation I heard; the linked article touches on some of the themes.)
In my own research in schools, I have found that children consistently admire and respect those teachers that are strict in setting high standards for behavior and academic performance, and who demonstrate a personal interest in their students. Most schools have at least one such teacher, but too often, that teacher functions in isolation rather than being utilized as a role model. Establishing mentoring relationships among teachers and encouraging collaboration through dialogue over these issues is one way of spreading knowledge and experience around.
Frankly, this week I'm a lot less worried about finding good teachers and a lot more focused on firing bad ones. Intentional humiliation of and physical assault on students should get you fired. Period. How can any student learn when they know you think of them with contempt?
11
Only if there's a fixed number of good teachers. If there really is a way to train people to be 'good teachers' that we simply haven't hit on yet, then we could increase the supply.
Perhaps it would be better to find a way to get good results from average teachers. But there is little evidence we know how to do either.
Perhaps it would be better to find a way to get good results from average teachers.
At that point, I think they are good teachers.
Frankly, this week I'm a lot less worried about finding good teachers and a lot more focused on firing bad ones.
Have fun storming the castle. I agree completely, but I don't see how you do that without union-busting.
but I don't see how you do that without union-busting.
By following the procedures in the contract in a diligent fashion.
No, I'm just venting. I had a heartbreaking conversation with a teenager last week in which the parade of awfulness he recounted was really upsetting. From a second-grade teacher who routinely grabbed students by the ear and twisted them, to a fourth-grade teacher who told them the reason they were in school was because their parents didn't want them around, to a fifth-grade teacher who singled him out for regular daily humiliation because she didn't like how he read out loud, to the high school where he is subjected to constant invasions of personal space, searches and surveillance...it just goes on and on. And the best you can ever hope for is that someone gets transferred.
Blame the unions, yes, but they're only one piece of the puzzle. It's not just the unions by a long shot.
Blame the unions, yes, but they're only one piece of the puzzle. It's not just the unions by a long shot.
Certainly the people who write the contracts with the union are more to blame. I at least get to vote against them.
From Nick S. comes a few links on higher education.
Those articles are about secondary education, aren't they?
Anyone who's ever been educated knows that better and worse teachers exist. It would be very surprising if teaching were the only human endeavor in which it's impossible to identify and train people to be better than they otherwise would be.
Therefore: the question is whether the current system does everything possible to identify promising teachers and to train them to fulfill that promise. Based on previous discussions here about the nature of teaching colleges, I feel pretty comfortable answering "no" to that question. Teaching colleges don't seem to be engaged in any meaningful way in separating wheat from chaff, and they don't seem to consider pedagogy their primary focus - instead, they focus on A. the material to be taught, and B. conveying the norms of teaching n America.
It is entirely likely that a better system would be to lower the barriers to entering the field after developing methods to retain and improve those who show interest and aptitude. Something like: Anyone with a 4 year degree in any field or a 2 year degree in teaching* can teach in the primary grades. After 2-3 years, they move up or out. "Up" would consist of pedagogy training - best practices stuff combined, ideally, with individualized stuff ("Mrs. Hope, you need to work on X") - while "out" would be, well, out. Possibly you offer a third track for those who really want to teach but don't seem to be getting the results - maybe just a more extensive version of the pedagogy training. Secondary teachers would probably come from successful primary teachers who get a Masters in X Education, X being whatever subject they want to teach.
Presumably the unions would hate this, but I'd say that, if teachers who've completed the pedagogy training are tenured (or effectively so), then, from the union POV, it's not so different from the status quo ex ante.
You probably also need a new method of developing administrators, but I don't have any informed guesses about that.
* something to this effect; it wouldn't nec. be a mini-version of the current teaching degree. My idea is that someone with an HS education isn't prepared to teach, but that 2 years of additional, focused education would get them to a baseline
Anyone who's ever been educated knows that better and worse teachers exist.
But even people who've been educated by the same set of teachers can disagree on which ones are good teachers. Is it clear that there's a good definition? Maybe it's "teachers whose students learn the material well", but how do you assess that?
My idea is that someone with an HS education isn't prepared to teach, but that 2 years of additional, focused education would get them to a baseline
I'm guessing that you meant with a BA/BS. At least that's what you talked about above. That seems like a very good idea and also one that will not happen.
You probably also need a new method of developing administrators, place to promote people to that isn't useless administration, but I don't have any informed guesses about that.
18
By following the procedures in the contract in a diligent fashion.
Procedure for firing a tenured NYC teacher. Not surprisingly it doesn't happen very often. This isn't accidental, the contract is intended to make it almost impossible.
25: Right now, the main 'promotion' for teachers seems to be getting moved to a school in a nicer area with a greater number of kids from middle class backgrounds. Which seems to be counter-productive from a society standpoint.
Heebie, what do you think of the CLA as a test? I know well how much work an added layer of assessment can be, but if we are going to get one anyway, is the CLA a good one to have?
Personally, I don't have a problem with teaching to a test, if the test is worth teaching to. In any good classroom, the material covered will match the material tested. This happens because we as teachers design the tests to cover our material Basically, we test to our teaching. If an outside test covers the right material and assesses it well, then it shouldn't disrupt the teaching process.
22
Anyone who's ever been educated knows that better and worse teachers exist. ...
They all seemed about the same to me. Although I liked some better.
26: Honestly, Shearer, you're not that dumb. Actually look at what's in all those little boxes -- they're not procedural steps mostly, they just drew a box around each sentence of a chatty description of the process.
27
Right now, the main 'promotion' for teachers seems to be getting moved to a school in a nicer area with a greater number of kids from middle class backgrounds. Which seems to be counter-productive from a society standpoint.
Liberals say this all the time but it doesn't make any sense to me. Seems like society is better off if the best students have the best teachers.
Honestly, Shearer, you're not that dumb.
See 31.
30
Honestly, Shearer, you're not that dumb. Actually look at what's in all those little boxes -- they're not procedural steps mostly, they just drew a box around each sentence of a chatty description of the process.
Do you disagree that the contract makes it extremely difficult, expensive and time consuming to fire a tenured NYC teacher even in reasonably clearcut cases?
31: Large numbers of children failing to be educated even on a basic level strikes me as much more costly to a society than failing to get an extra 15 SAT points from someone from at the 95th percentile. I'm speaking of primary and secondary education here.
Seems like society is better off if the best students have the best teachers.
And the best swimmers should have the best lifeguards.
The description of the "good," process-blowing-up, exhaustively-prepared teachers for America makes me wonder whether we would be better served by attempting to identify and place in education people of that stripe or by identifying what it is about the current educational system that requires unscaleable obsession and self-sacrifice to do an above-average job.
31 strikes me as stupid and I agree with 33.
Right now, the main 'promotion' for teachers seems to be getting moved to a school in a nicer area with a greater number of kids from middle class backgrounds.
This is definitely true in higher ed. The goal of almost every college professor, as far as I can tell, is to live in a city with nice restaurants. The holy grail is to live in Manhattan. I've heard a lot of conversations that, when decoded, go like this:
Prof 1: I have a large cult of graduate students and untenured faculty who literally worship my cock.
Prof 2: Oh, yeah? Well I live in Manhattan.
Prof 1: [hangs head in shame]
identifying what it is about the current educational system that requires unscaleable obsession and self-sacrifice to do an above-average job
This.
33: I'd agree that as carried out in practice, it's insanely time-consuming. I don't think there's any good reason to believe that all or most of the ridiculous delay in the process comes from the union side.
James, you're retired now, right? So you must have lots of time to bake. You know the rules: Bring baked goods if you're going to troll.
(Although equating "middle-class kids" with "the best students" is lame even for you.)
Back to the OP, a big question mark in both the TFA "teacher success" and the CT "school success" discussion is what outcomes are being measured. There are structural issues with the way schools are set up and funded in the U.S. that affect a school's ability to achieve student-specific outcomes -- if a school routinely has students moving in and out of the neighborhood, that's going to affect things that the greatest teacher and administrators in the world can't fix.
And indeed, it creates perverse incentives. I was recently trying to help an emancipated teenager enroll in school, and the school's response was: But what if he's absent? We have other students [like him demographically] and one of them has 56 absences this school year.
Profiling aside, it' not a totally irrational response -- when teachers and schools are getting rated and punished based on whether students show up, it's not crazy for them to want to avoid enrolling new students that they suspect may be likely to have absences. But my goodness, is it counterproductive to the social goal of educating young people.
Prof 2: Oh, yeah? Well I live in Manhattan.
I've been there three times. It always seems much too crowded.
36
... or by identifying what it is about the current educational system that requires unscaleable obsession and self-sacrifice to do an above-average job.
Unreasonable expectations of what teachers can accomplish.
Heebie, what do you think of the CLA as a test? I know well how much work an added layer of assessment can be, but if we are going to get one anyway, is the CLA a good one to have?
Oh jeez, I've sat through a bunch of orientations over these things and I still don't know if I have a good answer. Partly because we'd already signed on, and were being informed as to why we'd made such a great decision already.
I think the accreditation people really value CLA, and we really value the accreditation people. IIRC, it tests the same exact students upon entry and after four years, which is good. But it's voluntary, I think, which causes problems.
We're responding really specifically to the areas that it showed we are weakest in (problem-solving), so in that sense it gave us meaningful feedback.
I just don't really know what the alternatives are, or how much it costs, etc.
40
I'd agree that as carried out in practice, it's insanely time-consuming. I don't think there's any good reason to believe that all or most of the ridiculous delay in the process comes from the union side.
The delay is built into the contract. It is hard to see why management would want to make it hard to fire people and easy to see why the union would.
They all seemed about the same to me.
Shearer's incuriosity about the world around him started early.
41
(Although equating "middle-class kids" with "the best students" is lame even for you.)
Statistically the nicer the neighborhood the greater the fraction of good students.
33: Sure. It is. But it is also difficult to fire teachers on false pretext--which is probably what the procedure is actually designed for.
Certainly it isn't insane to imagine that, say, an administrator might observe her late middle aged teacher whom no-one really likes (perhaps because her consistent failures of empathy and almost pathological dedication to deliberate misunderstanding for the purpose of dismissing the arguments of others as illogical) but who makes fair coin (due to her previous good work and long experience), and fabricate a reason to fire and replace her with an entry-level model next school year--thus reducing her payroll and earning her a pretty certificate and a small performance bonus.
41: How are you, or the statistics you're relying on, defining "good student"?
This bit in the TFA article is interesting:
Kosmicki is not very interested in the things I noticed most: charisma, ambitious lesson objectives, extroversion. What matters more, at least according to Teach for America's research, is less flashy: Were you prepared? Did you achieve your objective in five minutes?
I feel like the teachers who were generally regarded by students as "good teachers" were the extroverted, charismatic ones, not the well-prepared ones. The description of William Taylor's classroom in the article certainly emphasizes his preparedness, his structured routine -- but what we get is a description of the finished result, a system that his students have already accepted. How did it get to be that way? It's hard for me to imagine the students settling into this finely-tuned classroom routine if the teacher isn't charismatic.
But even people who've been educated by the same set of teachers can disagree on which ones are good teachers. Is it clear that there's a good definition?
This is another idea that makes me feel ambivalent. On one hand, I know a number of teachers and I know that many of them are clearly good teachers which any student would be lucky to have.
On the other hand, I was talking with a friend about High School and we agreed that, while everybody had favorite teachers, they were not the same teachers.
On the third hand, there are certainly teachers who were nobody's favorite teacher. I'm inclined to think that one mark of a good teacher is that they can be beloved by the 10-15% of the class who have personalities that mesh well and, at the same time, be successful at getting 70-80% of the remaining students to at least have a basic grasp of the material and not hate the subject.
Flippanter makes a great point in 36. TFA is notorious for (self)selecting for young people with limited or no family responsibilities, which certainly allows for more of that "obsession and self-sacrifice."
TFA is notorious for (self)selecting for young people with limited or no family responsibilities
Why "notorious"? It's not a model that scales to all teaching everywhere, but why isn't it a perfectly good selection criterion if the goal is to get teachers who can be effective for one or two years?
I feel like the teachers who were generally regarded by students as "good teachers" were the extroverted, charismatic ones, not the well-prepared ones.
The teacher that I would now say was my favorite from High School was not one about whom I felt particularly warm and fuzzy about at the time. He was my trig teacher (and math team coach), and he was someone who had a plan, and wanted everybody to do things his way, which caused me to bridle a bit at the time.
Even at the time, however, it was clear that he was exceptionally good at teaching the subject and, in retrospect, he was so much better than any other teacher I had in High School that there I don't even have a 2nd choice for best teacher.
There was, inevitably for a math class, a significant amount of repetition of familiar concepts and techniques, but when I think back on it I'm shocked at how little of that was wasted or unnecessary. He was remarkably good at coming up with ways to make that repetition a useful learning experience (even for someone like me, who got the ideas pretty quickly). I couldn't tell you how he did it except that he was clearly very organized in his own understanding of the subject and how he wanted to teach it.
The hardest thing about rating teachers is that no one really watches you doing your job, and even when they do, it's skewed by all kinds of messy stuff like personality conflicts, lack of context, lack of shared methodology, whatever. You can't judge their job by the student evaluations because students can be vindictive or easily bribed with grades. You can't judge them by the grades they give because you can't know whether they're a "tough grader" or just too lazy to help students achieve higher grades. So it makes some sense that there's a movement toward regulating the material and methods taught and having standardized tests--not because it helps you judge the students, but because it helps you judge the teachers.
It's hard to think of another job in which performance assessment is so deeply rooted in third-hand gossip. If you're assessing the new administrative assistant, you can all have a conversation about your interactions with her and how well she met the needs of the business. The most accurate assessments I hear of my teaching come not from classroom observations or student evaluations, but from what I hear other professors say to one another that they heard a student of mine say about our class. It's only on the basis of that information that I get re-hired from semester to semester.
Contra 36, though, there are some other professions that seem to require extraordinary personal commitment to get above-average results. A psychotherapist who's just punching a time-card and going by some set of therapeutic procedures is going to suck, for instance. Same with an actor or performer. And teaching has a lot in common with therapy and with acting.
fabricate a reason to fire and replace her with an entry-level model next school year--thus reducing her payroll and earning her a pretty certificate and a small performance bonus
Seriously? Do incentives elementary and secondary administration work this way? They certainly don't in Missouri. (Where my mom was an elementary school principal for years.)
It's hard for me to imagine the students settling into this finely-tuned classroom routine if the teacher isn't charismatic.
Most students are motivated by grades. If you let them know exactly what they need to do to get their good grade, most of them will do it. If you have set your tasks correctly, they will learn.
There is a performance aspect of teaching, but everyone seems to think that it is the only important aspect. I blame Hollywood movies like Dead Poets Society. I suppose that is natural for people in Hollywood to think that teaching is all about charisma and performance, but I'm mad that they have convinced everyone else that this is the case.
A psychotherapist who's just punching a time-card and going by some set of therapeutic procedures is going to suck, for instance.
Yes, but plenty of psychotherapists are sufficiently compensated that they can limit their number of patients to a number that they can do a great job with, in a 40 hour week. Teachers can't, in our existing system.
Let me be the first to observe that 36 is spot on.
I feel like the teachers who were generally regarded by students as "good teachers" were the extroverted, charismatic ones, not the well-prepared ones.
I've certainly met quite a few extroverted, charismatic teachers who were popular but who relied too much on their charisma and popularity to coast through their classes without enough preparation to actually be very effective. I've also met well-prepared teachers who just weren't very good at imparting knowledge or keeping students motivated and interested.
While natural talent and temperament play a large role in both skills sets, I also think both are amenable to improvement through teaching and practice.
why isn't it a perfectly good selection criterion if the goal is to get teachers who can be effective for one or two years?
Because not everybody agrees that that is/should be the goal.
If you get a bunch of 1- or 2-year teachers, you won't have very many who have the institutional history to understand how to work the system to get certain things done. I'm on Month 20 of trying to get help for a teenager with serious learning disabilities, and the only help I've gotten in kicking things along has come from people who've been working with the system for 15+ years.
This is NOT to say that brief spells of energetic young people can't be helpful, or that every old war horse who hangs in for 20 years is wise and helpful.
Most students are motivated by grades. If you let them know exactly what they need to do to get their good grade, most of them will do it.
If these are the students you're working with, you've already won half the battle.
Ironically, this thread is keeping me from preparing for classes next week.
I've certainly met quite a few extroverted, charismatic teachers who were popular but who relied too much on their charisma and popularity to coast through their classes without enough preparation to actually be very effective.
Oh hell yes. This is my biggest pet peeve. There are several teachers at my grad school institution who made me fucking irate, but they are ever so charming! Why on earth would anyone call them on their bullshit when they are charismatic?
58: Good points. Contra, though, one might note that psychotherapy and acting are not large-scale quasi-industrial processes with compulsory subjects and public-sector accountability, like public education.
And teaching has a lot in common with therapy and with acting.
Yup. And, like therapy and acting, teaching is a job best done in ways that seem invisible and effortless. Charisma only gets you so far in the classroom; a lot of truly excellent teachers are quiet, thoughtful, relaxed, and not frantic at all. I worry about the "sacrifice everything" model of teaching that makes us feel like we're saving lives every day. It's not productive of good pedagogy.
60, 62: I don't know, I'm not thinking in terms of Hollywood movies, but in terms of my memories of grade school. I'm thinking in particular of a Spanish teacher I had in middle school, who was very well-organized and did a lot of things that sound superficially similar to what is described in the article. (Breaking students into groups, having the good students help the weak ones, using games to motivate learning, getting everyone in the class to respond to things in unison and spotting who wasn't getting it.) But she was pretty much the polar opposite of "charismatic", and all the classroom structure she would try to build would fall apart. The kids in that class were unruly and vicious, in a way that they weren't in most of their other classes. Maybe this is M/tch's "well-prepared teachers who just weren't very good at imparting knowledge or keeping students motivated and interested", and maybe the thing that keeps students motivated and interested isn't charisma, but I think there is something missing from the article's summary of what makes good teaching.
67: To be sure. And rob makes a great point, that structuring a course properly is one of the best ways to help students learn the material. It's just that there is a very strong element to the teacher-student interaction that pushes teaching a bit into "helping professions" territory and a bit into "performing" territory, and both of those areas are resistant to quasi-industrial standardization.
The problem with charismatic teaching is that it stresses the students out and makes some of them feel competitive and others resentful. Students who judge you on how much they "like" you will naturally worry that you judge them on how much you like them.
I am, at this very moment, contemplating my options for transitioning to a career of teaching kiddies and am terrified.
You can always join me in law school. Or just contemplate law school, and you'll feel much better about teaching.
71: I think that is no longer true in areas where there is clearly one right answer to a problem. I'm pretty sure nearly all of my students think I really like them a lot (which is true), and that there is no conflict between liking them and failing them.
49
Certainly it isn't insane to imagine that, say, an administrator might observe her late middle aged teacher whom no-one really likes (perhaps because her consistent failures of empathy and almost pathological dedication to deliberate misunderstanding for the purpose of dismissing the arguments of others as illogical) but who makes fair coin (due to her previous good work and long experience), and fabricate a reason to fire and replace her with an entry-level model next school year--thus reducing her payroll and earning her a pretty certificate and a small performance bonus.
There is a point here. The typical teacher pay scale which is very senority based means new teachers are underpaid and experienced teachers are overpaid (relative to average pay). So it is a real hardship for a teacher to be fired at the point they start to be overpaid. And it saves the school district money. So it is understandable that teacher's unions want to make it as difficult as possible. Still this also has the effect of making it difficult to get rid of bad teachers.
An alternative would be to allow firing for any reason but require 2 (or whatever) years severance pay.
Charisma only gets you so far in the classroom; a lot of truly excellent teachers are quiet, thoughtful, relaxed, and not frantic at all.
But some people's charisma manifests itself in being quiet, thoughtful, relaxed, and not frantic. Charismatic does not necessarily mean loud, flamboyant, etc.
How can any student learn when they know you think of them with contempt?
Isn't this useful training for the workplace as well as for interpersonal relationships? The contempt needs to be administered in manageable doses, unfettered conflict between teacher and child is totally unfair, and abusive teachers should go. But if your school is filled with caring nurturers, how are you supposed to learn about normal people in positions of power?
Witt's other remark about incentives is really good; schools respond to their incentives. But is it possible to write incentives that include both remedial teaching for kids who lack stable homes and also efficient identification of talented kids?
Also, I think that the most talented kids need only motivation to keep working from their teachers, not amazing insights or brilliant lesson plans-- many talented people teach themselves given a skeleton curriculum and clear expectations of testing goals. It is the troubled ones who I think need active intervention, someone who understands them.
But if your school is filled with caring nurturers, how are you supposed to learn about normal people in positions of power?
This makes my inner child cry.
Isn't this useful training for the workplace as well as for interpersonal relationships?
I think it was educational theorist John Holt who said that even if you knew your children were going to have to move to a country with great famine at age 18, it still wouldn't make sense to starve them in advance so they'd be prepared to live there.
I don't think adults should have to work in situations of active, sustained contempt from people with power over them. But regardless of the reality of that, I don't accept that an OK way of helping children to prepare for unfair and arbitrary exercise of power is to subject them to it.
79 was me. Also, there is a very large gap between "caring nurturers" and "actively contemptuous." Kids do fine interacting with adults who are civil rather than warm and fuzzy or cute and peppy. It doesn't have all be sunshine and lollipops.
Also, there is a very large gap between "caring nurturers" and "actively contemptuous."
Maybe that's why I'm so tired. I have a daily commute across that gap.
And the 'airily dismissive' portion of the road is very poorly maintained.
The single thing that had the greatest influence on my teaching ability was a brief seminar on how to tell stories. Just a professional storyteller talking about how to tell a story and then having us each take a shot at it. Very helpful indeed.
The training we received in grad school was pretty pathetic. The only useful thing I got out of it was the habit of taking pictures of my students in small groups and having them put their preferred name on the back. It meant I could call on students by name within the first week of classes, which really helps build a connection.
The training we received in grad school was pretty pathetic.
I received no teaching training in grad school. I didn't even TA before teaching my first (and only) class.
The single thing that had the greatest influence on my teaching ability was a brief seminar on how to tell stories. Just a professional storyteller talking about how to tell a story and then having us each take a shot at it. Very helpful indeed. . . . The training we received in grad school was pretty pathetic.
I should mention Northwest Teachers Conference for anybody who's interested in a that sort of opportunity to talk about teaching techniques. I only know it by reputation, and I know several of the people who organize it, and they're all exceptional. If you want details there's contact information on the website, but I would also be happy to pass along any questions.
NWTC participants include teachers, administrators and specialists who work with ages ranging from birth to adult in many different settings. They come from across the United States and are motivated to explore what they don't know and deepen what is familiar. ... [Northwest Teachers Conference] is held soon after the school year has ended. Educators are tired. Details are full and fresh and, for a time, deadlines are over. Emotions and ideas from work just completed are easily shared. It's the perfect time to reflect with peers from across the country.
Hell yes to 64. My experience is that, sure, college-bound students are motivated by grades. Others need to be motivated to care about grades (beyond not-failing or meeting some minimum threshold set by someone/thing external).
I also agree that it's easier to identify "bad" - or, rather, ineffective - teachers. But I don't think that doing nothing but getting rid of the bottom 20% of teachers would make a difference to the system as a whole. Rob's self-motivated kids will be fine no matter what the teacher is like (although they may have a tough year due to a bad one); but the unmotivated kids won't do much better under a mediocre teacher than under a bad one.
I'm not necessarily saying that at-risk kids need charismatic teachers - I don't know one way or the other - but I am saying that absence of bad teachers alone won't help at-risk kids succeed.
I'll say this about charismatic teachers: most kids - except for those who grow up to be reactionary trolls - encounter at least one or two teachers whom they love. Those teachers* can provide the spark to help spur the kid through years of uninspired and uninspiring teachers. So, even if it were possible, it wouldn't be necessary to find enough charismatic teachers to fill every classroom in every failing school. But the non-charismatic teachers need to be able to teach well enough that semi-inspired, semi-motivated kids can get it without having to go above and beyond.
On a side note, I absolutely don't agree that no one agrees about who were the "best" (read "most charismatic") teachers; the ones I'd name from my childhood (and college, for that matter) were widely adored, by well over 50% of their students. But this is all anecdata and, as I said, not the key to the puzzle.
* I'll note here that dynamic principals can fill this role to, albeit rarely
most kids - except for those who grow up to be reactionary trolls - encounter at least one or two teachers whom they love.
What about the Strauss guy? Even reactionary trolls have beloved mentors.
Seriously? Do incentives elementary and secondary administration work this way? They certainly don't in Missouri. (Where my mom was an elementary school principal for years.)
Not so much for payroll performance bonuses--but that was actually an allegory for the management of aging mathematicians.
The somewhat recent New Yorker article, The Rubber Room definitely made it sound as though firing a teacher with tenure within NYC is near impossible, no matter the infraction. (And I do agree with TJ up above that rules need to be in place to avoid arbitrary rulings by petty administrators - these just seem to take things too far. Also guessing that it's an extreme situation.)
The hardest thing about rating teachers is that no one really watches you doing your job, and even when they do, it's skewed by all kinds of messy stuff like personality conflicts, lack of context, lack of shared methodology, whatever.
Right now I'm currently working with two groups of fourth-grade teachers in a Lesson Study program, which is designed to help combat this. It's been fascinating. (And also illustrative of the differences between teaching K-12 and college for me, personally.)
One thing that's underdiscussed (around me, at least) is the degree to which a great principal can create a great school. It's probably well-discussed at the national principal conferences, though.
...rules need to be in place to avoid arbitrary rulings by petty administrators....
I recall suffering regularly the arbitrary rulings of petty administrators when I was a prisoner of public education, but no one even pretends to believe that the students are a stakeholder constituency.
The somewhat recent New Yorker article, The Rubber Room definitely made it sound as though firing a teacher with tenure within NYC is near impossible, no matter the infraction.
I recall it as reporting that the teachers in the Rubber Room were in limbo, wanting a hearing on the charges against them but being held for months or years before the school system would schedule a hearing. Not teachers dragging the process out, but the school system. If the school system doesn't have the resources to schedule disciplinary hearings, then they shouldn't have entered into a contract requiring them, certainly. But it's not implausible that hearings could be scheduled in a timely fashion.
But it's not implausible that hearings could be scheduled in a timely fashion.
Not implausible, except that they did sign the contract with the union committing them to something they couldn't really do. I wasn't trying to lay blame at one table or the other, but it sounds like an awful situation.
Of course, out here in CA, teachers get fired right and left because of the inability to fund the schools. About 12 years ago, they passed a law mandating the classrooms to be capped at 20 or so (for most schools, there were always some exceptions). That's going, now - and with it, teaching jobs (and classroom sanity).
It does seem kind of weird, though, doesn't it, that the school system can't manage to schedule hearings. It doesn't seem like the sort of thing that should be impossible unless someone isn't doing their job.
95: Oh, it does.
This seems to be the root of the problem: "Under the union contract, hearings on each case are held five days a month during the school year and two days a month during the summer. Mohammed's case is likely to take between forty and forty-five hearing days--eight times as long as the average criminal trial in the United States. (The Department of Education's spotty records suggest that incompetency hearings before the introduction of P.I.P. Plus generally took twenty to thirty days; the addition of the peer observer's testimony and report seems to have slowed things down.) Jay Siegel, the arbitrator in Mohammed's case, who has thirty days to write a decision, estimates that he will exceed his deadline, because of what he says is the amount of evidence under consideration."
But it's frustrating that the author doesn't get into it in more detail.
Mmm. The drafting of that sentence is a little ambiguous -- I'd be really surprised if the contract actually requires that hearings be held no more than five days a month, or two days in the summer. If that's really a contract term, the school system was insane to have agreed to it. And I don't see any explanation for the length of the hearings that makes sense at all.
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Why if ever I were unbanned, my access would be very short-lived.
Somebody go tell Rauchway that Eichmann was kind to his dog, and that TV shows don't make good arguments about real people. Or something.
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You probably also need a new method of developing administrators, place to promote people to that isn't useless administration, but I don't have any informed guesses about that.
I seldom disagree with Witt, but I sure do with that. Administration is real work that needs to be done well. Like teaching, it often isn't, but contrary to what too many teachers believe, replacing teacher-bashing with administrator-bashing is not progress.
97
... And I don't see any explanation for the length of the hearings that makes sense at all.
The teachers get paid and accrue benefits while the hearings continue. So naturally their lawyers use every stalling tactic they can think up.
Have I mentioned that my little brother and sister have fifty kids in their high school classes? Nice upper middle class suburb of LA, well-regarded high school. Fifty kids per class.
teacher-bashing with administrator-bashing is not progress
This is true. A friend well on her way to becoming an administrator deals with more blatant contempt than I can fathom (though I imagine it might be like being a certain sort of lawyer?), and she's definitely one of the good people in education.
Have I ever mentioned that my entire graduating class was 17?
Have I told you lately that I love you?
104: I'll believe that once I see the ear in the mail.
99: I don't think Witt was saying that all adminstration is useless.
The ear's in the mail / would I lie to you?
the school system was insane to have agreed to it
Part of the issue is that it's a whole lot easier to put union-friendly stuff into a CBA than to get it back out again. Over time, episodes of administrative spinelessness can accumulate into something that really doesn't work at all. Public employee unions can also assert some influence on management's side of the table through the political process, which can affect the sanity of management's approach.
106: You're probably right.
101: You have younger siblings in high school? Wait, did you have different takeaway message in mind when you wrote that comment?
101: These sort of things happen in failed states.
I don't understand why you'd have to "lean toward" one story or the other if they're talking about different things. One is talking about extraordinary (and, not incidentally, self-sacrificing) teachers -- the other is (not in so many words, but in essence) surveying what happens in an education system that routinely relies on the self-sacrifice of teachers to save its bacon, at the expense of any more coherent big-picture strategy. The Heroic Martyr/Educator cannot stand in for an education system, and the more you see this type being hyped, the more fucked-up you can assume the education system in question to be.
101: You have younger siblings in high school?
Megan just mentioned that yesterday.
Though, without 112 prompting me, I would have assumed that 101 implied siblings who are teaching).
And then we see this sort of thing.
Yep (to both). Definitely a symptom of a failed state. That's cool. Ari will teach them to read when they get to him.
Ari, My Dad had a second set of kids with his second wife when I was in college. They're in high school now. Here's my little brother holding my nephew. The little brother is now 6'2" and slouchy.
One is talking about extraordinary (and, not incidentally, self-sacrificing) teachers
114 seems almost entirely correct, but I don't believe that extraordinary teachers are necessarily self-sacrificing. I concede a strong correlation, but I definitely have experience with people who are both (a) consistently good teachers and (b) are able to accomplish that in a more-or-less sustainable way.
That's just a quibble, however, because those sorts of people are rare enough that you can't base policy around a plan of trying to find more of them.
I would say, however, that one of the things that makes the Atlantic article interesting is the combination of describing good teaching in ways that seem accurate (IMHO) combined with administrators talking about trying to figure out ways to train other teachers in those skills.
I think it makes a huge difference for an education system if the people who are developing the mechanisms for professional training know what they're talking about, and I'd be inclined to believe (without evidence) that there's significant room for improvement in that score.
36
identifying what it is about the current educational system that requires unscaleable obsession and self-sacrifice to do an above-average job.
Money. It's cheaper to hire one person willing to work him/herself to the bone than two people who can each do decent jobs without burning themselves out. And getting money for worthy causes is hard.
59
Do incentives elementary and secondary administration work this way?
They do in Vermont. All new teachers are paid less than any longtime teachers. Less money spent on paying individual teachers means more money that can be spent on hiring extra personnel if needed, or paying for health insurance which last time I checked was growing more than 5 percent a year, or making up for spending increases in other areas. So, sure, there's not actually a certificate and bonus involved, but the incentives point in the same direction.
Another thing that makes it harder for public schools to take care of middling kids is special ed. Some of the needed services should be provided by specialist agencies rather than school districts. It's a very tough set of issues that I don't know enough about to discuss the details in an educated way, but there's a problem there.
99: Actually, I don't think we disagree. I was attempting to say that one of the problems is that the only place to promote teachers is administration, and therefore a lot of reflexive promotion leads to a lot of administrative roles with basically no purpose. That doesn't mean that all administrators are useless.
I do think that there ought to be fewer administrators in every school district I've ever had close contact with, but that's mostly because I think the work that some of them are doing is a waste of money.
There is a core amount of administrative work that needs to be done in any district, and my preference is for it to be done well. It is not at all clear to me that teachers-with-a-promotion are the right people to be doing it. My general cross-industry bias is that having once done the front-line work is important for people who later take supervisory positions. But my observation of school administrators is that there is very little correlation between good teaching skills and good administrative skills. You can be a great administrator and a mediocre or even bad teacher, and vice versa.
121: Yeah, I kind of figured that out after I re-read in response to 106, and I agree with at least most of 121. I think some areas of administration probably actually need more people in them, but I agree that there are a lot of pointless administrative positions.
98: you seem to agree on everything then, its just you want to be glass-half-empty
politics happens tertiarily, its not central to human attention. thats why its easy to to bad thing in politics.
38 "The goal of almost every college professor, as far as I can tell, is to live in a city with nice restaurants. The holy grail is to live in Manhattan."
I'm not sure. College towns are often nice places to live.
I have a friend at Duke who, when recruited for a soft-money situation at Columbia, realized there was no way that he could maintain a decent standard of living on his grant money.
Columbia even built an elementary school because faculty moving into the city can't participate in the public school choice process and ended up having to take whatever school was left (or pay for private).
124: Duke has (had?) a pretty sweet deal as far as helping pay for your kids' college.
But my observation of school administrators is that there is very little correlation between good teaching skills and good administrative skills. You can be a great administrator and a mediocre or even bad teacher, and vice versa.
I think The Office, for all its flaws, has done a good job making an analogous point about sales vs. management.
On topic, I remember having some charismatic teachers and some old-school strict teachers (and maybe one who fit both categories, but usually what I'm calling the old school teachers were seen as intimidating more than anything else) and many just plain teachers who don't stand out exceptionally in my memory. I think I found the charismatic teachers "better" when I was in school, but I can't say I believe the same thing now. No one category really stands out anymore (it could just be my fading memory). I'm sure that various measures would show some teachers to have been better than others. I don't think the history teacher who gave the tests that came with the textbook was very good, but I bet any personality type with the same assignments would have done about as well. On the other hand, teaching style must have some influence over whether students actually do the assignments assigned.
In terms of my own educational outcomes, I don't think there was all that wide variation across teacher type, but I did all the work (or nearly) regardless of teacher and as a result what really mattered to me was the syllabus.
I think some areas of administration probably actually need more people in them
My mom's district could use a grant writer. Who knew so much of public education was funded with grants? This is all state money, but the schools have to compete to get it. So you end up with a principal clocking 18-hour days so that the district can win a grant with which they'll be able, say, to hire a technology person for the next year.
127: If they find the right non-profit, they can get a grant to get a grant writer.
I think the best teachers I had, pre-post-secondary, were those who (a) had the most challenging material, and (b) got out of the way, more or less, and let me learn the material directly. This means, I think, that I can't say which of my teachers were better, not really. I don't pretend to be representative of any larger group though--I could have been put in prison for my first 18 years and given books and tests and I probably would have learned as much as I did (with language teachers as an important exception; I had three or four German teachers and they were all charismatic and great).
For me, education was basically like drugs. Drugs sell themselves, so you don't need a great dealer (only one who won't rip you off). It's too bad that I enjoyed school so much but wouldn't know what to do to make others enjoy it as well.
It is of course possible the union has managed to write completely insane termination procedures into the contract; on the other hand, if the employer didn't think the deal was a good one they didn't have to sign.
Also, nutty worker protection clauses tend to be a sign of a dysfunctional relationship between workers and bosses; they are often a symptom, not a cause.
If teacher's unions are a big problem, why is it that New Zealand, which has much stronger nationwide teacher's unions, has a very much better public education system?
130.3: I can tell you what certain Jeezly Bastardin' Shites would think the reason is. But we've had that discussion before.
130
If teacher's unions are a big problem, why is it that New Zealand, which has much stronger nationwide teacher's unions, has a very much better public education system?
I don't think teacher's unions are a big problem but it is often almost impossible to fire teachers. And it isn't just New York City. Charlene Schmitz continues to collect her salary while serving a 10 year sentence in federal prison. Stories like that make it easy to scapegoat teacher's unions but since teachers don't actually make that much difference it isn't so important to get rid of bad ones.
Why do you think New Zealand has a better public education system? Most people judge schools by how the students perform but that depends more on the students than on the teachers.
if the employer didn't think the deal was a good one they didn't have to sign.
Errr...well. Of course this is technically true. However, there are often complicating factors that make "not signing" a very financially, emotionally and politically costly choice.
For example, there are currently millions of dollars available in federal education grants in the U.S. This is a big deal, as ordinarily almost all education funding comes from local municipalities or the states. In order for my city to apply for this money, the union and the district have to agree on a number of key aspects of the application.
I can well foresee some enraged voters if the public perception was that the district blew the opportunity to apply for this federal money because they were holding the line on some arcane contract issue with the union.
To take another example, although the teachers in the city here are not legally allowed the strike, the teachers in every other district in the state (there are 501 districts) are allowed to. It is common for teachers to go on working after their district's contract expires, as long as the union and the district are still talking. If the talks break down, a strike can be called. Again, very costly in political capital (sometimes for the teachers as much as the district, but from the district's perspective it's a very big gamble).
nutty worker protection clauses tend to be a sign of a dysfunctional relationship between workers and bosses; they are often a symptom, not a cause.
This, I agree with.
Sorry, should be "not legally allowed to strike."
You're in Philly, right? How'd you get teachers strikes forbidden there?
It sucks to be in a city that is legally defined as "Second Class." You guys get all of the good trains too.
Errr...well. Of course this is technically true. However, there are often complicating factors that make "not signing" a very financially, emotionally and politically costly choice.
Ye-es, this is true. But it's also true for the teachers. Teachers don't generally speaking want to go on strike; teachers suffer from strikes, etc etc.
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Ye-es, this is true. But it's also true for the teachers. Teachers don't generally speaking want to go on strike; teachers suffer from strikes, etc etc.
But teachers generally care more about not getting fired than management cares about being able to fire them. So contracts make teachers hard to fire.
But teachers generally care more about not getting fired than management cares about being able to fire them. So contracts make teachers hard to fire.
But this assumes teachers are a homogeneous block in terms of chances of getting fired, which is I think wrong.
Also, it shouldn't be easy to fire teachers in general.
I've only the skimmed the thread, so hopefully this is redundant. Teaching involves at least two people: the teacher and the student. It doesn't seem surprising to me that when you control only one the outcomes vary. For instance, people have different learning styles, and it is likely that even very good teachers don't present material in a way suitable all their students' learning styles.
The big problem is that teaching is really hard, and so naturally there aren't many people who are good at it. I don't understand the hate on charisma. Teaching requires leadership; leadership is often built on charisma (why would you agree to do what someone says if you don't like them?). Teaching requires many somewhat orthogonal difficult skills. Mastery of the material, coupled with an ability to remember what was hard about it once you've mastered it. An ability to read students to determine what will motivate them best. Basically, a combination of pretty high logical intelligence, coupled with a pretty high emotional intelligence, coupled with a lot of hard work. It's no surprise that few people have all of these abilities.
