Musings from a Not-So-Master Teacher

Often, the best words in life are the easiest to spell.  Freedom, chocolate, barbecue, love, peace.  The worst words are difficult to spell: racism, xenophobia, beuracracy, committee.  I know I am oversimplifying here.  Beauty is an exception to this rule.  I mention this because I hate committees.  It seems fitting to me that the word itself is so unnecessarily long, just like every committee meeting I go to.  Just as the word has too many double-letters, the committees I attend repeat the same information over and over. 

I quit my job as department chair yesterday, so I am officially finished with all committee work.  I have made a vow to avoid joining any committee ever again. 

So, I am making a list of why committees are inneffective:

1. No one is really in charge - If one person develops a plan, implements a proposal and seeks feedback from other, the ultimate success or failure of the plan is on the individual.  When it's a committee, the success or failure could be any one of the people.  Thus, there is no true built-in accountability. 

2. Groupthink - Out of a fear of conflict, a desire to reach consensus and a propensity to accept everyone's ideas as equal, groups engage in groupthink.  The end result is ideas that are either myopic or overly broad.  Groups assume that if they share the same passion and beliefs, the rest of the school will follow suit.  Thus, a discipline committee creates a micromanaged discipline system and the teachers on the committee have a difficult time seeing how other staff members might not like it. 

3. Overplanning - Most committees plan for the "worst case scenario."  In the process of creating new ideas and avoiding "groupthink," the committee members create rules and procedures for every scenario imaginable.  The end result is a plan that lacks flexibility. 

4. Relational conflict - I have been on too many committees where it turned into an ugly example of tribalism.  One side wanted one schedule and another wanted the opposite.  Each of the two warring parties would engage in gossip and slander in the staff lounge.  The larger the committee the higher the chance of gossip, slander, ego-stroking, mistrust and poor communication. 

5. Loudest voice - The loudest voice often wins.  Those who talk the most wear down the introverts in a war of attricion.  Rather than beginning with meaningful data (whether it's a reflection sheet, a survey, etc.) members begin with sharing their opinions and ideology. 

6. Lack of inter-committee communication - The discipline committee fails to talk to the department chair committee who fails to talk to the social committee.  Using a divide and conquer approach can be more effecient, but it can also mean that committees make decisions without ever knowing the ramifications of how it will effect another committee.

7. Lack of shared values and purpose - I have never been on a committee where we clarified what we believed and why we existed (I mean this in the practical way and not in the existentialist philisophical way).  In other words, when I attended a discipline committee meeting, we never clarified what we believed about discipline, what we valued as a group and why our committee existed. 

I feel ambivalent toward unions.  On one hand, they protect workers and empower those at the bottom to be active within the business process.  While people label them as socialist, they really work from a capitalist framework.  A strike is essentially reducing the supply while the demand remains high in order to boost the price.  I feel grateful that our union fought to keep higher salaries and refuse to let our class sizes remain in the forties this year. 

At the same time, I have a few concerns with the union.  First, I don't like the way they market themselves.  Twice a year, we sit through a rally that resembles political propaganda and the union reps tell horror stories of teachers wrongly accused of sexual misconduct.  Next, they sell us on the idea of being covered by the union's insurance, followed by a laundry list of cool discounts we recieve.  It is the antithesis of "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." 

I can handle the propaganda, but my next concern is a big one.  In protecting teachers, I believe they protect bad teachers.  Some teachers need to go.  They never write lesson plans, never grade, pass out fat stacks of worksheets from EdHelper.  I believe in teacher accountability.  When a small minority of lousy teachers hide behind a thin veneer of professionalism, it hurts everyone. For example, in the past, unions have fought performance pay on an individual basis (forging a compromise that forced performance pay to go toward the school-based model).  In the process, bad teachers can now force a school to be underperforming, while teachers within the school do really well. 

My final issue is that our union does not fight some of the issues I wish it would fight.  I realize we have limited resources.  I pay my dues, but I am not as active as I could be.  I'd love to see the union fight against prescribed lesson plan formats, rigid standardized testing and intrusive rules or procedures (telling me how to organize by white board, forcing me to line students up at the door instead of walking them straight into the classroom, etc.)  I want unions to fight for professional autonomy and creative control. 

Again, I am grateful for the union, but I am concerned with the myopic focus on dollars and cents.

On NPR today, I listened to a story about a horse whisperer.  He described the way he began as a horse trainer.  He used two-by-fours in order to "break the will" of the horse.  Often, the success seemed immediate, but a few horses would refuse to conform.  One ran away.  Another nearly killed him.  Still, he would dish out the punishments and offer carrots and apples as rewards.  "It was the tradition back then.  We figured that a horse who wouldn't make it, just wasn't cut out for it."  Then he met a horse whisperer and learned a new approach. 

The new approach seems so counterintuitive.  Though he is a six-foot tall, powerful man, he uses a gentle, reassuring voice (though it does seem to have some bass to it).  His approach begins with allowing the horse the option to leave and slowly gaining the horse's trust.  Although there are moments when he establishes power, he does not seem to treat power as a commodity to use, but as a result of the respect. 

I started thinking about the staff retreat I attended.  We spent a few hours working on a new discipline plan and teachers argued the minutia of punishments and rewards.  Some believed in a step-system, while others advocated a one-size-fits-all consequence for each infraction.  I felt like a scientist in behavior management - like I was engaged in a dialogue about social engineering.  Skinner would be proud of our ziplock, air-tight system of reinforcements. 

I began to wonder why a horse was so different than an adolescent.  I wonder how many kids have run away, feeling like they have been blasted by a two-by-four while we blame the kid for refusing to conform to the system. Perhaps we should think about what it means to win a student's trust, to give a student a sense of control and autonomy and to empower students to make better decisions rather than offering an apple or a carrot or a pizza party and gold stickers.

I remember having a few bad teachers.  Actually, I really just remember having about three.  Three out of forty is a pretty low number when I think about it.  Maybe I grew up in a "good school" or maybe I was a teacher's pet.  Yet, when I think about it, I had some damn good teachers.  They created memories that last forever.  I know that sounds so cliche, but they taught me how to read and write, how to add and subtract, how to engage in history, how to balance a checkbook, how to get along with others, what it means to question injustice in the world.  I feel as if I recieved an amazing education. 

Anyone? Anyone?

I mention this because it's easy to focus on the negatives.  I do this.  I tell stories about bad teachers in my school, when there are actually maybe a total of three or four out of sixty-something staff members.  Seeing how 90% is an A, I'm convinced most teachers are actually doing a great job.  So, I made a list of what I notice about teachers:

1. They almost all work extra hours without pay: Whether it's grading papers late at night or volunteering to chaperone a dance or tutoring a kid before school, teachers work extra without being thanked
2. They almost all have a sense of humor.  Contrary to the way we are depicted in movies and the way they market things to us (prim and proper posters with apples and kittens and junk like that) most teachers realize that they need to have a sense of humor to make it in such a draining profession.
3. They are usually great story-tellers.  In fact, some of the stories seem too crazy to be true . . . until you've been in a classroom. 
4. They almost are adaptable, but skeptical.  Teachers can handle change, but they want to know that there is an underlying cause.  "Jaded" veterans and skeptical newbies both realize that heavy-handed mandates from the top are an assault on academic integrity. 
5. They almost never teach for the money (go figure) or the vacation.  In fact, most of them realize that vacation is usually a make-believe concept that they don't experience in the midst of the conferences and classes they take.
6. They almost all share ideas.  I've worked in a sales environment where people hoard.  Teachers usually share ideas with one another in an informal process of collaboration.
7. They are usually in touch with the present reality.  For some reason it seems that most teachers I know seem in touch with the younger generation in ways that others miss. 
8. They are tough. Although many are tired and beat down, but they are also resiliant.  The weakest leave quickly.  Teaching is not for the faint of heart. 
9. They have an uncanny ability to discover where the cheapest items are and how to get past the "limit" listed in an advertisement. 
10. They almost all care about the students.  Even teachers who might be punks to other teachers have a huge heart for students. 

Our district has thrusted upon us yet another heavy-handed, micromanaged solution.  It is a specific, prescribed lesson plan format that every teacher must use.  It's yet another move toward the standardization of education.  I feel that slowly they are invading every aspect of my vocation and transforming me into a prototype.  The following is a list of the assaults on my profession:

• Blackboard Configuration - that's right, they tell us exactly how to organize our whiteboard and we must follow it (it's in our evaluations)
• Word Walls - I have to waste my space jumbling up words on a wall in order to make them happy
• Lesson Plan Template
• Curriculum Maps
• Scripted Curriculum - one class period a day is spent with scripted curriculum.  The district markets it as something easy for us, as a sort-of mid-day break, if you will. 
• Every quarter we must take a three-day Galileo test.  In all, we lose close to three weeks a year in testing (rather than teaching students)
• Common Assessments - All teachers in each department must follow the exact same schedule and students must take common assessments. This year, we get to develop our own department common assessments.  I don't mind it, because the process is grassroots and collaborative. Yet, how long will it be before the common assessments are district-mandated? 

I know that I probably seem too negative here.  However, it is in the subtle acts like a Lesson Plan Template that teachers lose their professional autonomy and academic freedom.  The district now tells me what to teach, how to assess it, what my room should look like, when I should teach what information and with what strategies. From the planning to the delivery to the assessment, Big Brother is there for me, looking over my shoulder and encouraging uniformity.