October 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment

The Two-Front War on Education

Lesley goes to Education Nation

The War for Education is being fought on two fronts – in legislative chambers and the classroom– and our students are the casualties. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Even at an event that should have been aimed at solutions, the Teacher Town Hall at NBC’s Education Nation, wasn’t. The topics this year were teacher evaluation, common core and rigorous testing. As I sat there listening, the passionate teachers in the room stood up to lament their frustrations and received emotional support from the crowd in the form of applause, nodding heads, and fervent outcries in agreement.

In retrospect, if the point of the day was to educate the viewing audience about what frustrates teachers, then the day was a success. If the purpose was to brainstorm new ways to combat challenges in education, then as the kids would say, “Epic Fail.”

As I sat there listening, I was struck that I have heard all of this before in the teachers’ lounge and on the VIVA platform. I was there to hear something new. I wanted these teachers to realize the power of their platform and share their ideas for making education better.

The event ended before I got a chance to speak. If I had, I would have pointed out that a poll showed that 71% of the public already trusts teachers. I would have asked: Why, then, are we investing so much energy in teacher evaluations and testing to prove to the public that teachers
are doing their job? I would have challenged the teachers in the room to pose real solutions not just keep lamenting the problems we face, such as:

  • Politicians attempt to make legislative decisions based on the advice of researchers and constituents who have an opinion about education.
  • Then teachers have to figure out how to continue delivering high quality education while meeting the requirements of the new mandates. Even if these laws go away (the desire of many educators), they would just be replaced with new ones.
  • The politicians must prove to the American public that the policies are working so they require more and more data as “proof.”
  • Teachers feel more and more overwhelmed by policies that yield them little control but require much of their energy.

Since the beginning of the school year, I have sat in meetings from Michigan to New York – both formal and informal; I’m hearing a consistent plea from my colleagues. How can I make this work? Where do I find the time? How can I continue doing what is right for kids although it is not tested?

Here’s my solution – a teacher Town Hall meeting with a panel of experts in TEACHING (unlike the soon-to-be-first-year teacher who was featured on NBC’s Teacher Town Hall). Imagine the rich discussion about what teachers can control facilitated by the likes of Wormeli, Danielson, Ravitch, Rice and Wong (just to name a few).

By shining a spotlight on the creative solutions that teachers – the real experts – use to deal with the mandates of new laws and the dynamics of a changing society, we will elevate teachers to be the experts in their profession. We can show the public how teachers have come to deal with problems that the general public and lawmakers never even realized schools face. For example, did you know that simply changing the way a teacher passes out materials can yield two extra weeks of instructional time per school year? That is a process teachers can control which will give them back valuable instructional time now taken away by standardized testing.

A meaningful Town Hall would spotlight the ingenuity of teachers instead of continuing to paint the profession as a bunch of whiny people who complain about everything.

It doesn’t matter whether the teacher is inner city or rural. We all have to cope with poverty, parents who are not involved (or over involved), a litany of legislation, too few resources and too many demands.

Teachers need to use vehicles such as VIVA to provide meaningful solutions while spotlighting the challenges legislation has created (thus showing people who write policy how their decisions have complicated – and arguably hampered – student achievement). That’s how teachers can provide policy makers with ideas for laws that would improve teachers’ lives and, therefore, increase student achievement.

Lesley Hagelgans teaches Language Arts at Marshall Middle School in Marshall, Michigan. She was a member of the National VIVA Task Force.

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October 5, 2012 By 1 Comment

Shouldn’t all teachers be on the same side?

By Freeda Pirillis

So often, teachers are asked to share their opinions on what’s broken in education and what needs fixing. But who is asking the questions and leading the conversation, who is listening, and who ultimately makes the decisions that impact the daily lives of teachers and students? Within those answers lies the disconnect between teacher input and true teacher voice.

It seems teachers can find vehicles to engage in conversations on educational issues, evident in the education blogs online, the teaching associations that have flourished in the last 10 years, developing fellowships and hand selecting educators to promote their missions in the name of teacher voice. What is absent generally is the opportunity that VIVA Teachers offers for teachers to engage in solution-driven dialogue with their teaching colleagues, emphasizing visible, systemic change for teachers, by teachers.

This absence in true dialogue made way for a lot of noise and confusion in at the two-hour Education Nation Teacher Town Hall, hosted by Brian Williams and NBC Studios at the New York Public Library on Sept. 23, 2012.

A Platform for Teachers

I headed to the town hall hoping to hear from a multitude of teachers that truly represented the teaching force in the United States. I believed the experience would bring me closer to the colleagues I have in the other school districts, grade levels, and content areas.

When I arrived, I was greeted by a woman who wanted to know who I was, whom I was affiliated with, and what the VIVA Project was? Did I represent the AFT? Was I a teacher? Whose side was I on? Those questions seemed to suggest a divide between the groups. I have always believed teachers, regardless of teaching context, were on the same side, working towards a common goal, and we all had a shared interest in creating equitable learning conditions for our students and teaching conditions for each other. Could I be wrong?

Teacher Voice: A Sampling?

As a VIVA Teacher Leader, I understood why I was in the room, but quickly learned there was one section of teachers who were Teachers of the Year, teachers from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, several individuals I recognized from my time at the Department of Education, and a large group from the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).

I no longer believed true, balanced teacher voice was being represented in this distinguished group of educators and union employees who now had the microphone and the platform to make their voice heard.

Transparently Divided

Throughout the discussion, there seemed to be a clear divide between the public and charter teachers. Several teachers stood up to cheer on their charter school, the work they do, how much more they go above and beyond public school teachers; the room quickly devolved to a shouting match. Union and non-union teachers argued over the level of commitment to their job, to their school, and ultimately, to their students, based on the length of their school day and how deep they dig into their pockets to provide supplies to their students.

I was shocked to see such divisions in teachers who share such common ground.

The Issues: A Mile Wide and an Inch Deep

The show began with the topic of teacher preparation, which we looked at closely in our VIVA National Report, Voices from the Classroom. Our ideas seemed to resonate with the teachers at Education Nation who agreed that teachers need hands-on experience in the classroom prior to completion of their coursework and they need ongoing support from master teachers and/or mentors in their first three years of teaching. But teacher training was just one small part of the two-hour discussion.

Throughout, Williams shifted from topic to topic, inviting audience commentary on the effects of poverty on school systems, the shift to Common Core, the role of parents, providing wraparound services…each topic deserving a two-hour time slot on its own.

While I appreciated the role of the town hall to bring teacher voice to the table on each of these topics, the show did offer the solution-oriented nature of a VIVA Idea Exchange. In my opinion, the VIVA Teachers Idea Exchange platform offers real solutions, concrete examples of what is and is not working in schools across the country. The solutions are centered on the contexts with which teachers work, within the state and local mandates of their schools. VIVA is able to accomplish what I believe Education Nation’s Teacher Town Hall intended to represent in a two-hour segment: teacher voice and teacher activism. However, it fell short and I left feeling uninspired by my colleagues from across the United States.

The Take Away

My experience at Education Nation reinforced the validity of VIVA’s mission to elevate Authentic teacher voice. While I believe the Education Nation Summit provides a space for educators to come to the table and discuss a range of issues, I found little in the way of solutions and strongly believe that is what sets VIVA apart from the rest.

As a nation, we have a long road to travel on the path to reform and while I believe we have a common goal–our students–we are transparently divided and, therefore, stuck.

Freeda Pirillis was a member of the team that wrote the first VIVA report, Voices from the Classroom.

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October 3, 2012 By 1 Comment

NBC Teacher Town Hall, a Meeting of Convergent Volume

 by Wade Sutton

“…And thus the Native hue of Resolution

Is sicklied o’er, with the pale cast of Thought

And enterprises of great pitch and moment,

With this regard their Currents turn awry,

And lose the name of Action.”

- Hamlet (Act III, Scene 1)

You would expect a national Teacher Town Hall to ask for change and action. You would think it would encourage divergent thinking. You would be wrong.

If MSNBC’s Education Nation had been honed to actually get 300 teachers to talk substance and seek resolution, here is the script I would have handed to Brian Williams:

Is it the place of the public school system to provide “wraparound services” that include medical care and breakfast? How does this really serve parents? Does it take away from the mission of schools? Are we creating dependence by filling these voids? Discuss.

Will structuring our teaching to a Common Core drive us further into a box and force us to teach to a test? What are other options that keep power at the state level? Discuss.

Why are universities failing to train educators fully? What needs to change? Should teachers only graduate and be licensed after at least three years’ experience in the classroom? Discuss.

Only master teachers with at least 10 years classroom experience should be allowed to begin an administrative degree program. How can we narrow the field to only accept the best as our instructional leaders? Discuss.

How does nurturing the culture of antagonism between teachers’ unions and administration harm our school system and our students? How can this vicious cycle be stopped? Discuss.

Why do teachers see unions as the strongest advocates for education instead of parents? Parents are the strongest advocates for their children, why the disconnect? Discuss.

But these questions demand time. These questions require careful thought and want divergent thinking. These questions depend on quiet contemplation and creativity. None of these powerful, progressive skills were in evidence at Education Nation. Instead, volume ruled the day.

The Pale Cast of Thought

Sitting in front of me were four teachers I thought cloned from one another. They exemplified the tone in the room: filled with what Yeats would describe as “passionate intensity,” the loudest and worst of the consensus, sadly more loyal to their union than to the art of education. They yelled and booed and cheered, entitled to be heard. One spoke to the camera and refused to stop. She solved nothing with her volume. The tone from the audience was not to hear and discuss, it was to display a unified direction. And to shout down dissent with “sound and fury signifying nothing” near to a solution. Good educators know that the loudest may not be the most dynamic. Their filibuster flares quickly and dies while we crave the silent solutions and strength that is caste in a slow hot fire.

And Lose the Name of Action?

This is why I walked away inspired to act with a consistent, powerful force in my own community to inspire change at the local level. I hope in the future that the national stage will mature to seek real solutions and next year I look forward to representing rural schools again. It is a game with a tone that limits our national dialogue on education. This must change. Progress cannot remain pressed aside in comfortable silence. Although quiet solutions were diminished and a real exchange was lost in the tempest, I am encouraged. It will be your unnoticed educator, the quiet and steady servant to parents, who will lead to change and actionable ideas.

Wade Sutton teaches 7-12 grade English at Indus School in Birchdale, Minnesota. He has taught in private and in public school and was a member of the VIVA Minnesota Teachers Writing Collaborative that produced the report called 360 Degree Leadership: Evaluating Minnesota Principals.
 

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