Allison Hunt is a teacher at DuPont Manual High School in Jefferson County, Kentucky. She is an NBCTwith an MAT in social studies from the University of Louisville. She wrote this reflection on hearing of the death of legendary basketball coach Dean Smith.
She writes:
“Sports commentators have emphasized Dean Smith’s practices more than they have focused on his games. The practices, according to reporters and former players, were carefully planned. He also did not hesitate to be innovative, informed by his knowledge of his players and their strengths and weaknesses. As teachers, we need to focus less on the assessments themselves and more on the lessons that lead to the assessments. We, like Smith, must carefully plan every minute of instruction and we must also make sure that we know our students and creatively maximize their strengths to overcome their weaknesses. What is our level of effectiveness in day-to-day lessons? Are we willing to be innovative and take risks?
“Former National Player of the Year Jerry Stackhouse, when reflecting on Dean Smith, said, “It was always about the players.” There is no doubt that Dean Smith wanted to win and, in fact, had to in order to keep his position as head coach, but he did not let the accountability detract from what he needed to be to his players. As teachers, we must not forget it should always be about the students, not about the assessments. We must be what we need to be for our students—not just for the stars or those who struggle, but for each and every student. All students needs to know that we put them first. Will your students reflect on your teaching and say it was always about the students? “
Diane Ravitch's blog 
How about Dean Smith’s four corners offense??? He believed the game should have a shot clock, so he had his players dribble on for minutes. Voila! Along came a shot clock! Parents, if you want to change the game, have your kids dribble (refuse, stay home from school, etc.). How do businesses fold??? By having no customers.
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TRUTH is where one finds it – and has the perspicacity to recognize it when it stares them in the face..
The hierarchy so often found even in education should never dissuade us from seeking out that which expands our parameters of perspective – my definition of education.
Instructors, teachers, and educators. Educators are found in unlikely places oftentimes AND no-one has a monopoly on TRUTH.
addendum: It seems that our politicians wish instructors, not educators.
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“We, like Smith, must carefully plan every minute of instruction….”
No, no, no. There has to be room for students to plan their own instruction, to learn what they’re interested in learning, to go off on a meaningful tangent, to spontaneously delve into a science experiment, a debate or some other project that allows their own interests, experiences and understanding shine through. Students are not buckets to be filled.
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Dienne: agreed.
And teachers are not data-driven automatons whose every motion and word should be or need be scripted and timed and measured.
“The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.” [Plutarch]
The self-proclaimed “education reformers” adhere like super glue to the first part of what that very old and very dead and very Greek guy said, but genuine learning and teaching is what he’s referring to at the end.
Thank you for your comment.
Here’s to setting fires and being set on fire.
😎
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Actually, it depends. When you are teaching a lesson that hopefully will result in further honing a performance skill and one where an entire large group is dependent on each and every player to know his or her individual role within the group, you *should* plan every minute of your lesson. This facilitates cohesive and meaningful instruction because there is plenty of student “doing” built in. Students will engage in a group experience if you carefully plan how and why each task is important to the larger goal. Eventually, there will be enough student experience to allow for the personal discovery you mention, but it really depends on the sophistication of the skill and the group dynamic, not to mention the developmental level.
I used to let my choral rehearsals be loose…just planning the repertoire and the excerpts of said repertoire to be covered that day with an objective of a specific skill or practice as the goal of the repertoire required. I found that some rehearsals were just not run efficiently that way.
I learned from one of the most fantastic choral directors I ever had (and I had to wait until I was in my 40s and completing a Masters degree to witness this) that every minute counts. There should be a game plan for each skill even if it comes down to 2-5 minute increments for every segment of the lesson time. Ever since I started planning my choral rehearsals that way, I was more efficient, the practice was more meaningful and the students were not only engaged but they retained and connected skills from rehearsal to rehearsal until they built a repertoire of skills that would inform their performance choices later on when older and more autonomous.
So the strategy above can and does work in some learning environments. The totally student-driven activities that evaluation models like the Danielson tour for the “expert” level do not always apply to performance classes such as basketball and choir.
There are so many relationships between players that aren’t just individualistic or small-group related. There is something to be said for physical and mental training, too. Performers whose “products” live in the moment understand this, and the ones who have experienced this training thrive.
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“Tout” not “tour.” I hate auto-correct.
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“There should be a game plan for each skill even if it comes down to 2-5 minute increments for every segment of the lesson time.”
Perhaps that works for you but all subject areas demand different approaches-what works in some may or may not work in others. That is where the teacher as a professional steps in, not some outside bloviator who knows nothing about the teaching and learning process.
As the years have progressed I’ve gotten away from that hyper control and have learned to spontaneously weave in students’ comments/concerns into the task at hand. Are all necessarily appropriate and useable for that day? Not always but one learns to weed them out quickly and the students also know what is legit to the matter at hand.
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“Perhaps that works for you but all subject areas demand different approaches-what works in some may or may not work in others.”
That’s actually my point exactly. To pontificate that this approach is right or wrong is foolish. As I said, it depends.
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Not the same as having ex-basketball player Arne Duncan in charge, and with the largest discretionary budget ever. He and Obama elected to use that money to bribe public officials and make every state “compete” for funds. He has inflicted on children, parents, teachers and school administrators the zero-sum contest of Race to the Top, and rigged the scoring system for the race to ensure there are with many more losers than winners.
Concurrently of course, teaching has been redefined as a matter of recruiting top talent and great leaders…not persons who have a clear sense of teaching as a mission. Just as the best coaches are not always the best players, the best teachers are not always those with the highest GPA in college.
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“. . . teaching has been redefined as a matter of recruiting top talent and great leaders. . . ”
Since the push began for supposedly “great leaders” back at the turn of the century, the teaching and learning process has become increasingly bastardized to satisfy the whims/desires of those supposed “great” leaders. Screw them and those who support them.
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And don’t forget the great UCLA coach/teacher John Wooden. http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2015/02/25/a-coach-with-the-heart-of-an.html
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Gosh Dienne… you stole my thoughts … ughh… really… “We, like Smith, must carefully plan every minute of instruction …” and I could not agree with you more on disagreeing with that point!!! Maybe the author meant that we must come prepared to class and have a “game plan” but forgets the part about not be locked into that plan lock-step because we after-all have students before us who guide and direct us as to their needs. So, in essence WE HAVE TO BE LISTENING AND HEARING WHAT THEY ARE TELLING US and factor this into our lesson and be totally embracing of this flexibility. The article addresses this point through the analogy of the coach. The current problem (and there are many others) with education is that the “ed reformers” treat students like they have “flip top” skulls and our jobs as teachers are to write out a script – “lesson plan” and follow it like a dancing bear – a performance. We are to prance around a room and “sprinkle scripted ‘knowledge’ ” into each and every skull which miraculously is opened like a flip top lid… and VOILA learning is supposed to enter the brain and instantaneously take place. This article is really on target otherwise. And in sports when there is too much emphasis on “winning” (the assessment is on one winner vs. the losers) often times there is cheating – thinking Lance Armstrong, New England Patriots filming incident several years ago and the recent “deflate” issue – more importantly real learning is ignored. Are runners who are able to qualify for the Boston Marathon not good at running because they do not win first place? This is what RTTT has horrifically been modeled on. But that might be an economical strategy for those in charge because directing all the “losers” to an impossible task of being that “one winner” is tatamount to the Myth of Sisyphus” – being very profitable for those providing the stones and the hills! The more they continue to ignore POVERTY the more RTTT does seem analogous to the Myth of Sisyphus!
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TAGO! artseagal!
“. . . follow it like a dancing bear – a performance.”
Repeat after me, I am a teacher not an actor, I am a teacher not an actor!
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Yes, thanks for expounding and well said.
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“As teachers, we must not forget it should always be about the students, not about the assessments. ”
It can’t be about the students if you’ve been fired due to the assessments.
Also, basketball teams, which are populated by people who love the game so much that they compete for a place on a team, are not analogous to classrooms. Additionally, coaches don’t coach 150 or more every day.
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And, sorry, but I’d really rather see teachers hold up great women in education as role models rather than extremely-well-paid men in sports. You may think I’m too negative, but I think this is too conventionally status quo.
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Justateacher,
I know a HS teacher who has to give the STAR test (computerized) as part of her evaluation. This test does NOT count WHATSOEVER for the student. It does NOT count as a test grade, a graduation requirement, a requirement for the student to move on in grades, etc. This test counts 40% of the TEACHER’S evaluation. This is a 15 minute computerized test. Sometimes the same questions come up over again. This test material is peripheral to what the teacher does in class. Students ask this teacher, “Oh, is the test nobody cares about?” and “Do I have to try?” Students just tap answers. This teacher has had students finish in 4 minutes or less. The students know that this test is used to evaluate only the teacher. This is patently and unequivocally absurd and unfair. It would be risible if it weren’t so odious.
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What is happening in this country is stunning. This is a national agenda that is about turning every, every, everything in this country, including schoolchildren, into commodities for short-term profit, in a country in which the government is beholden to corporate cash. The fact that so many people can still be down on teachers as the country bashes and abuses them (us) – some of the hardest-working, most decent citizens out there – is an alarm. This country has gone nuts. Meanwhile, the students learn that they are responsible for nothing, and if they have bad grades or are in trouble for bad behavior, it’s the teacher’s fault. Not only is the country in a mess, it promises to become worse as this attitude increases.
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Agreed. There is also the underlying belief that if teachers improve their teaching, students will never miss a question on a test. It’s absurd. It really makes me sick that I’m supposed to improve my teaching after every test. Ridiculous.
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I don’t think teachers have all that much to learn from a “great” basketball coach (where “great” implies winning record. Let’s face it, if it were not for the winning record, none would even pay attention to Smith)
First, coaches of the best college teams are a bad example for teachers to emulate because their job is totally dependent on winning.
Second judging coaches based on the record of their teams is fundamentally flawed — as foolish as judging teachers based on the test scores of their students.
There is much more involved than simply winning record.
And, hardly inconsequential is the fact that the coaches with the best records generally get the cream of the crop to work with.
Teachers can learn from each other far more than they can learn from coaches and others outside the profession.
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Hear, hear! Thanks, I thought I’d hear negative responses to my negative response. In Las Vegas, they dimmed the lights on
The Strip for a recently-deceased basketball coach, while Nevada teachers are being increasingly dumped on in a right-to-work state with low funding that always comes in at the bottom of the country for education and the well-being of its children. Basketball coaches are not my role models.
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Agreed. But sports figures and celebrities are the role models now.
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In the past, this was possible. You could go into your room, close the door, and do what you needed to do for your students. Imagine Dean Smith’s boss telling him he had to use a certain practice strategy, that he had to focus on certain players, that he had to follow a certain script, and that the accountability piece included not just winning games but also included following these other directives. What would Dean Smith do then? I’m thinking he would either follow the directives as much as he had to, sneaking in true best practices whenever he could, or he would defy his superiors, daring them to fire him, or he would leave. This is precisely what we see teachers doing today.
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cyn3wulf: nicely put.
Which is exactly why in so many instances—from the predatory tactics of Parent Revolution and the sucker punching that is part of CCSS and it’s conjoined twin, high-stakes standardized testing—teachers and other school staff are told to shut up about worst practices and hideous policies and just carry them out. And to add insult to injury, take responsibility for what they have been mandated (under threat of punishment, up to and including loss of employment) to do.
Think of the very practical question by a parent that decides that the hazy ritual known as standardized testing is ruining the public school their children attend: “Teacher So-and-so, why didn’t you tell me about this? Why did you just go along with it without at least telling us parents what was going on? No you complain that it’s hurting you—and you claim to be speaking in the best interests of me and my child. Why should I trust you?”
I know I am being a bit harsh, but that’s the usual twofer of self-styled “education reform” as exemplified by how they are playing the ‘John Deasy card.’ He takes a wrecking ball to public education and then the self-same corporate ed rheephormers throw him under the bus, claiming that public school advocates backed him and “education reform” is even more necessary because look at that iPad catastrophe and MISIS mess and the tremendous loss of public confidence in public schools.
Double talk. Double speak. Double think.
Don’t expect them to fight fair. They will use the silence of public school staff not just as consent but as enthusiastic support for their own policies when they fail miserably. Will it be difficult? Dangerous? Yep. But that’s what needs to be done. Apply the following to education:
“Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.”
Frederick Douglass. Right then. Right now.
Time to start plowing.
😎
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“Double talk. Double speak. Double think.”
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. If test scores go up, it’s because of CC/technology/the reform movement; if test scores sink, it’s because of teachers.
They will not lose; they have too much money and influence. But decent people can at least stand up with a little dignity.
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Agreed!!!!
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Hopefully they can learn to not imitate the hoopster Arne the Dunkster.
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Coaches with the best records only select and play the best players. They get rewarded handsomely for doing so and penalized (even fired) if they do not.
That’s a very poor model for education.
People need to get over their obsession with sports.
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Agree 100% – especially considering the recent scandals (post Dean Smith) at UNC-CH
http://www.newsobserver.com/2015/02/28/4589708_former-unc-official-pressure-led.html?rh=1
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SomeDAM Poet: to approach it a little differently…
Elite coaches get to, nay, are required to and rewarded for, performing “sport triage.”
Better fewer but better. So if millions and millions and millions of aspirants are screened out, thrown away, cast aside, and looked down at as losers because they didn’t go, let’s say, to the top basketball colleges/universities and then on to NBA teams [which have a total of under 400 players on their rosters]—
We’re talking about good coaches according to the standards of “education reform.” In fact, by the metrics of the “new civil rights movement of our time” those coaches are better than that—the best and the brightest.
Yet most people look at participation in sports as a lot more than just who gets to play on a professional sports team or participates in the Olympics or competes in national or international class tournaments.
It’s a question of values and goals and, may I add, morality.
Just a small reminder of the Paralympics. And of the many benefits of exercise for everyone, whether a casual athlete or an elite one.
So when it comes to cage busting assessments: “That’s a very poor model for education.”
Quite so!
😎
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Thank you. As I said in another response, I thought I might get negative reactions to my negativity about this post. Let’s stop holding up privileged men as role models, and acting as if sports are so terribly important in life. They, too, are business, like everything else in this country. Many college athletes are being terribly exploited. (In fact, I think I’ll make that point.)
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I think some of us are missing the point and instead are getting hung up on the idea that this is about a coach and winning instead of about being a prepared instructor. Take the lesson and put it in your own context.
Also, I don’t think any good teacher is a dictator who stacks the class with the only goal being “to win.” There are far more life lessons to be had in environments that rely on teamwork than some may realize. When you affect everyone around you by your commitment (or lack thereof) to the task, you are learning citizenship skills. Not every classroom has this built-in, but performance-based classes do.
Context, people…context.
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Please don’t lecture to me. My context is what I live daily. My opinion is that it is time for teachers, predominantly women, to stop colluding in their exploitation by going along with – even promoting – the status quo that puts men like this so very, very, very far above us.
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Agreed!!!
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Nobody is lecturing you. Just pointing out that there are MANY ways to approach different contexts. I’m sorry that point was lost on you.
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Actually, the context in this case is number 4 on the list of all time winningest coaches in college basketball.
🙂
Dean Smith has been singled out for accolades precisely because of his winning record.
Otherwise, no one would hold him up as a model for preparation, knowledge of players’ strengths and weaknesses or anything else.
Incidentally, also part of the Dean Smith context: The greatest basketball player of all time (Michael Jordan) was one of the players that Smith had the good fortune to coach. Jordan was one of the primary reasons Smith won the national championship in 1982.
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
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Many college athletes are being terribly exploited, just as many teachers (including gobs of college adjuncts) are terribly exploited.
American sports are not a good model for anything except indulging in shallow concerns while the country is collapsing, and continuing to place predominantly-male pursuits far above predominantly-women’s difficult and important work, as well as promoting the American business model of rich people owning everything, including athletes.
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There is an undercurrent of misogyny in this whole issue. Most K-12 teachers are women. Poverty affects women and children more than men. The importance of pre-natal care is an issue directly related to women as Dr. Ravitch has pointed out. Listen to Arne Duncan and his attack on those snobby suburban moms whose children aren’t as smart as they (the moms) think. I think women do have to see the misogyny in many of these issues.
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As a former athlete, coach, and current educational professional, I’ve always seen the connections between the life lesson that we can learn from organized sports and apply to almost anything that we tackle in the real world. I’ve always been fond of the saying that may be to some yet another sports cliché that we play like we practice—results are simply a byproduct of the work we put in prior to the contest. And like the posting states that “[t]here is no doubt that Dean Smith wanted to win and, in fact, had to in order to keep his position as head coach, but he did not let the accountability detract from what he needed to be to his players” (Hunt, 2015), this is just another example of how the lessons we learn through sports remain applicable to us as educators today. Take the CCSS for example—well, here in California they are now referred to as the New State Standards. These common standards are the equivalent in education as a win is in the sporting arena. We have one goal, to win/learn—but just like winning is the byproduct of practice, so too is learning. As an athlete, I was on teams that were great, fun atmospheres; and as a byproduct we won more often than we lost. All stakeholders worked together every day towards one ultimate goal. The outcome, win or lose, came as a result of preparation. So should our focus as educators be on aspects of accountability? Sure, if losing is the ultimate objective.
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