Teaching Wonders: Real-Life Teachers in 2014

Part 2 (continued from previous post)


So--

Is it possible to take "some boring, antiquated, real-life teacher" and make him/her into a human version of the Teaching Wonder in time to avoid extinction? What would the "right parts" consist of?  What would the investment be? What would the Assembly Instructions say?  What might you need to troubleshoot? What would the training manual say? 

What would be required beyond Patience and Optimism?

THE ANSWER-----------

Once a teacher has entered the profession, there is only one real way to keep from becoming antiquated and to avoid extinction.  It is through quality professional development.  But what is it?

I Googled "quality professional development for teachers".  Pages and pages of results were position papers/opinions of school boards, various states' departments of education, and many, many companies who have something to sell that will "fix" your teachers.  Try this Google search for yourself--who would YOU trust?  

I opened some of these documents and tried to discover who wrote them, what their agendas were, and how this related to profits (or not).  It was fairly easy to see the profits, but I had to exercise everything I know about my profession and close reading to determine agendas.  Even more challenging was to investigate "who" was behind each organization, company, and what "research" they were using to propel their cause.  (Sadly, the Supreme Court made that even more challenging this week with making it tougher for voters to access financial disclosures regarding the freebies our elected officials accept from lobbyists.)


So why did I bother?  

Because where and how we seek professional development matters.

I can remember a time when there was truly healthy competition among groups offering professional development for educators.  Options and ideas prevailed in a truly academic, scholarly environment.  In my state today, nearly everything has to have "approval" by our Dept. of Ed.  Recently, I noticed that in order for our Educational Service Centers to do a presentation, the DOE's logo must signify acceptance of each PowerPoint slide--logo that denotes the state's approval of that slide and that indicates that the slide can never be altered in any way.

Am I the only one that thinks this is a little like my "sci-fi" parody, TEACHING WONDERS (see yesterday's post)?

So what else is available?

The most sane offerings come from a local consortium called All Write!!!  This is a grassroots group of school corporations that pay a small membership fee to have access to the best educators in the world.  Through the All Write!!! Consortium, I have been able to participate in workshops with countless educational professionals and cutting edge thinkers, including:

• Ralph Fletcher
• Stephanie Harvey
• Donalyn Miller
• Barry Lane
• Christopher Lehman
• Penny Kittle
• Jim Burke
• Kelly Gallagher
• Carl Anderson
• Georgia Heard
• Cris Tovani
• Lester Laminack
• Tim Rasinski
• Dan Feigelson
• Sharon Taberski
• Debbie Diller
• Matt Glover
• Martha Horn
• Katie Wood Ray
• Karen Caine
• Kylene Beers and Robert Probst
• Jennifer Serravallo
• Debbie Miller
• Janet Angelillo
• Franki Sibberson
• Patrick Allen
• Katherine Bomer
• Laura Robb
• Jeff Anderson
• Ruth Ayres
• Aimee Buckner
• Max Brand
• Frank Serafini
• Peter Johnston
• Tanny McGregor
• Terry Thompson
• ...and more

And through wonderful publishers, such as Heinemann and Stenhouse, and professional organizations, such as the International Reading Assn., and the Nat'l Council of Teachers of English, I have been able to spend days with Lucy Calkins, Mary Ehrenworth, Nancie Atwell, Linda Reif, Ellin Keene, Harvey Daniels, Reba Wadsworth, Jennifer Allen, Char Forsten, Jim Grant, Pat Cunningham, Sylvia Ford, Carolyn Chapman, Anne Goudvis, Kristin Ziemke, Mary Lee Hahn, 

The days have turned into hours, hours to weeks, weeks to years of learning, listening, reading, studying/collaborating, and implementing best practices--both tried and true and cutting edge--but all from the the best we have in the field of education.  All of this adds up to the 10,000 hours that Malcolm Gladwell says we must accumulate in our field in order to achieve mastery.  

In addition to the time we invest, what we read and hear influences what we say and do--and what we say and do influences who we become.  So...

WHO we listen to matters.  

What separates real-life teachers from "Teaching Wonders" teachers?  What makes you irreplaceable?

Over the years, experienced teachers have asked, "Why is it that I can have so many years of teaching experience without really feeling like I am a 'master teacher'?"  I think that it goes back to Gladwell's 10,000 hours.  While practice counts, what are we practicing, exactly?  

• Are we constantly honing our craft?  
• Do we seek growth, intentionally planning for our own professional development?  
• Do we know what we want or need to do in order to grow?  
• Do we thrive on learning and growing professionally, being truly "all in" and willing to joyfully invest time, energy, and spirit?  
• Do we read professionally?  How often?  
• Do we thoughtfully collaborate?  With whom?  For what purpose?
• Do we attend workshops with only the best presenters who are doing the work and have first-hand experiences with the strategies that they are teaching?  Are we "fully present" when there?
• Are we reflecting?
• Are we implementing our new learnings as we go?

What Gladwell doesn't address is what it takes to sustain mastery, knowing that mastery today will surely look different tomorrow.  AND THAT MATTERS.

Teachers in our area are fortunate to live and work in a place that has access to our consortium for professional learning (see above).  The opportunities exist to learn together professionally vs. having "training done to teachers" by people who are not living the work.

But living in a place that has ready access to world-class master educators is different from choosing to attend their workshops and participate in job-embedded professional development.  Existing with those who are vested is different from being fully invested for yourself.  

Surely, building and sustaining mastery of teaching requires consistently and intentionally choosing to grow, seeking the appropriate professional development (including book studies, collaborations, workshops, and implementing with a coach).  

In particular, thoughtfully implementing new learning--putting it into reflective action in the classroom NOW--is what sets teachers apart in their growth, learning, specialization, and expertise.  

We have the freedom to choose... to participate... to actively engage... to exist authentically...to see our learning as intrinsically valuable and necessary. Peter Block (1993) says, "If we cannot say no, then saying yes has no meaning."  When do you accept professional development?  When do you seek it?  From whom?  Do you see yourself as being finished?

I think the sense of urgency in growing and learning professionally has to exist among all teachers.  When administrators and others "in charge" worry that we have become passive about our learning, that is when "training is done to teachers."  

Parker Palmer (THE COURAGE TO TEACH, 1998) says, "Authority is granted to people who are perceived as authoring their own words, their own actions, their own lives, rather than playing a scripted role at great remove from their own hearts.  When teachers depend on the coercive powers of law or technique, they have no authority at all."  (p. 33)  

That might be when we inadvertently become boring and antiquated... replaceable by a "Teaching Wonder".

So how do teachers "author their own words/actions/lives"?  How can a district assist in honoring each teacher's voice?  

In 1989's THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE, Stephen Covey says, "The more deeply you understand other people, the more you appreciate them, the more reverent you will feel about them.  To touch the soul of another human being is to walk on sacred ground."  (p. 258)  This is the work of an instructional coach.

Jim Knight, president of the Instructional Coaching Group at the University of Kansas, discusses coaching as a partnership in his book, UNMISTAKABLE IMPACT (2011).  Knight reminds us that when teachers work in a partnership with the coach, "...we respect our partners' professionalism and provide them with enough information so that they can make their own decisions.  Partners don't do the thinking for partners.  Rather, they empower their partners to do the thinking.  Reflection stands at the heart of the partnership approach, but it is only possible when people have the freedom to accept or reject what they are learning as they see fit."  (For more on this topic, see my post, "One-Minute Wisdom".)

To be reflective, to enjoy your teaching work, and to build competence in tackling new challenges, three steps are required (Knight, p. 37):

• We must look back at what we might have done differently--what worked and didn't and why.
• We must look at, considering what we are doing while in the act, monitoring our work as it is in progress, making adjustments, differentiating every moment of the day.
• We must look ahead, thinking about how to use an idea, practice, or plan in the future, thinking about what we can do to ensure success.  This is where we can be creative in making an idea our own by reshaping, adapting, or reconstructing it to fit our style of teaching and (of course) our current students' needs.

It is our accumulated knowledge that helps us assume autonomy in this complex process of building and sustaining 'mastery' in teaching.  

Though we have the freedom to opt out of many professional development experiences (such as reading professional books, thoughtfully collaborating with colleagues, partnering with our instructional coach, participating in workshops with the best in the profession, etc.), we do so at our own peril. 

Without being invested in our own professional development, our knowledge does not accumulate with our experience--we might think we have autonomy since we have opted out, but in actuality, we have sacrificed it.  

When we opt out of professional development, we opt in to losing our teaching voices, being handed scripts to follow with fidelity, and quick-fix prescriptions for teaching written by people who do not know us or our students... all of which stand to destruct education as we know it.

True autonomy for our professional growth occurs when we intentionally and willingly learn, implement, and reflect.  

To gain (or regain) control of our own professional development, Jim Knight (2011) says that we need to exercise the following principles:

• Equality
• Choice
• Voice
• Reflection
• Dialogue
• Praxis
• Reciprocity

Equality means that professional learning occurs with teachers and isn't "training" done TO teachers.

Choice means that teachers have choice regarding what and how they learn.  (Notice that opting out of learning is not part of this equation.)

Voice means that teachers are empowered and respected as they learn.

Reflection means that we think about instruction by looking back, looking at, and looking ahead.

Dialogue is authentically integrated in learning.

Praxis means that teachers apply their learning into real-life practice AS THEY ARE LEARNING.

Reciprocity means that we should expect to get as much as we give.

All of these naturally occur in a partnership with the instructional coach.  A mark of an invested, "all in", authentic professional is his/her willingness to partner with the coach, interacting as equals, to impact professional learning.

This is how we avoid extinction.  This is how we are better than the world of the automated "Teaching Wonder".

What action will you take?