I was asked to contribute to a blog collection about teachers.
This is what I wrote:
http://teacherpoetmusicianglenbrown.blogspot.com/2012/07/im-on-your-side-by-diane-ravitch.html
Archives for category: Teachers and Teaching
Many readers have noted that their colleagues go along with policies they know are wrong. They comply because compliance is easier than resistance. They comply because they fear losing their job or being seen as a troublemaker.
This is sad but understandable. People need to feel secure, they need to feed their family and pay the mortgage. Few people want to step outside their comfort zone or risk opprobrium and punishment from their supervisor.
Go along and get along is a lot pleasanter than being abrasive. But dream for a minute. What would happen if every teacher in a district refused to give tests that don’t show what their students know and can do? What would happen if teachers said no to policies that hurt children? And to policies that are unprofessional?
Sort of reminds you why teacher unions were created almost a century ago.
Just thinking.
A reader suggests some reading for Professor Fryer and his colleagues. Fryer has spent years searching for the incentive that works. This reader says he should stop searching and read an article by Frederick Herzberg. No, it did not appear in the Teachers College Record or the Harvard Educational Review or Phi Delta Kappan or an AERA journal. This is the classic article to which he refers:
Check out the <i>Harvard Business Review</i>. There is a classic article there from the . . . 1950s? 1968 originally? often reprinted . . . Frederick Herzberg, “One more time: How do you motivate employees, <i>Harvard Business Review</i>, 46 (January/February), 53–62.
Motivator-Hygiene Theory. Loss aversion? That’s a demotivator, a destroyer of motivation, a destroyer of teams — and ultimately it can lead to violent revolution.
<b>Motivators</b>, in order that Herzberg first found them: Achievement, Recognition, the Work Itself, Responsibility, Advancement, Growth. Later research notes people will work hard to get on a winning team with good people (but not a winning team with schmucks).
Hygiene factors, or dissatisfiers, again in order: Policy and Administration, Supervision, Relationship with Supervisor, Work Conditions, <b>Salary</b>, Relationship with Peers, Personal Life, Relationships with Subordinates, Status, Security. Notice how far down the ladder is “Salary,” but notice that it will dissatisfy, and is NEVER a motivator (except for a about 14 days after a significant pay raise, Herzberg hypothesized).
Fryer’s an economist? We need a psychologist, a coach, a leader, and a pastor, and we get an economist? Is this the same guy who figured it would be cheaper to pay the odd successful wrongful death tort suit instead of spending $1.89 to fix the Ford Pinto gas tank?
Give me an economist who values human life over machination, please. Can we sue him for economic malpractice? Terroristic threats? Call Homeland Security. Get him out of the building. Don’t listen to him until he gets an appointment to get the word from Herzberg.
(Herzberg is dead, I know. Loss-aversion should be dead, too.)
Why in the world aren’t they consulting the hard literature and research on motivation, instead of inventing new Hunger Games? Is that Fryer I hear quacking in the background?
A reader describes the madness of value-added assessment as practiced in Florida:
| I teach English in a Florida high school. Although I taught all juniors last year, my VAM score was based on the school average for 9th and 10th grade. Why? Because they cease testing in 10th grade except for those who don’t pass. Of my juniors who didn’t pass FCAT as sophomores, I had a stellar retake pass rate–but that’s not going to count for me. Only what other teachers are doing with other kids I couldn’t identify if you paid me big bucks.
Don’t even get me started about what they’re doing to my colleagues in the arts, JROTC, or other electives. Data selection is arbitrary. Considering that we were in a high-needs, inner-city school, none of us came out looking good. I’m all for evaluation, but to conflate test score results with teacher quality is wrongheaded, misguided, and downright crazy. Unfortunately, better ways of doing this take money and time and won’t enrich outside providers’ wallets, so it’ll never happen. For the love of Pete, folks, get noisy. Talk to everyone, and vote for sane candidates in November! |
Policymakers are busy writing laws in every state to evaluate teachers. They think they can create a system that will spot the best and fire the worst. So far, none of those systems is working, and none has made any difference, other than to make teachers nervous and make them wonder what these guys will dream up next to complicate their lives. The economists say that credential don’t matter; that masters’ degrees don’t matter; and that experiences doesn’t matter. They say that no one should be paid extra for getting more education or having more experience. They say only test scores matter, and those can be produced by a first-year teacher as well as a veteran.
A reader posted this comment:
My department head carries the title of master teacher. She is working on a second masters degree and has taught for over 20 years. My mentor teacher has been teaching over 10 years. I am starting my 5th year of teaching and not a day goes by when I dont seek their counsel. I am a product of a local alternative prep program. These folks that set it up are current teachers and have degrees in education. The director has her PhD and she assigns you a mentor who works with you throughout your first year along with your campus assigned mentor. The program is short (3 months) but these folks make sure you dont flounder that crucial first year. We take classes at night and are mentored very thouroughly. And after that first year they still hold alumni meets to see how we are doing and work with the local union to solve issues regarding our districts. In all the time I was in prep I never heard them say that teaching had a magic formula. They always said to seek the experienced teachers at our campus and to foster our education and professional development. I feel lucky to be an educator. And one thing for sure is I have learned a lot in 5 years. And by no means do I consider myself a master teacher.Especially not after my first year. I am sure that will happen a long time from now when I gather something called…what was that word again? Oh yes. I believe it is experience!!
This blog has received a late entry into an already closed contest.
Once I realized that the National Lampoon had already threatened to kill the dog on its cover in 1973, I recognized that loss aversion had reached its apogee forty years ago.
Nonetheless, this entry was posted by a blogger-tweeter who goes by the name of “Last Stand for Children First.”
In this post, the blogger is young teacher Monica Caldwell. She was hired by one of those Gates-funded teacher groups:
|
A reader says that if Roland Fryer tries loss aversion in her classroom, she would follow the advice of this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYW44WD792Y
Just when I thought we had a winner for the loss aversion contest–the proposal that the teacher threaten to kill the children’s favorite pet–another reader sent this magazine cover from 1973.
How ever will we motivate teachers now, if neither incentives nor threats work?
We might try reading Daniel Pink or Edward Deci or Dan Ariely. They say that professionals work best when they are allowed to exercise autonomy, when they are driven by a sense of professionalism and idealism.
But don’t expect our policymakers in Washington and the state capitols to listen to wisdom.
Diana Senechal is a brilliant writer. She wrote a fascinating book titled “Republic of Noise.”
She teaches in the summer at the Dallas Institute of Culture and the Humanities. Who knew that Dallas has a vibrant learning center where teachers read the great books? I did, because I visited a couple of years ago and was blown away by the teachers and their enthusiasm for Shakespeare.
This is Diana’s report about this summer’s institute. Every city should have an institute like this one:
Literature as Teacher Education
Diana Senechal
In a lovely tree-shaded wooden building, in July, teachers convene for three weeks not to analyze data, discuss “learning strategies,” or align objectives with standards, but to immerse themselves in literature. This place is the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture—specifically, its Sue Rose Summer Institute for Teachers. As a faculty member at the Institute and a NYC public school teacher, I love the place unabashedly and will try to explain why.
The Summer Institute, part of the Teachers Academy, was conceived in 1983 by Dr. Louise Cowan as a class for high school English teachers in “literature as a mode of knowledge.” It now attracts K–12 teachers across the disciplines, from public and private schools. In the even-numbered years, the Institute focuses on epic (participants read the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Theogony, the Aeneid, the Divine Comedy, Moby-Dick, Popol Vuh, Mwindo, Monkey, Gilgamesh, and more); in the odd-numbered years, on tragedy and comedy. The point is to explore the literature on its own terms and to enrich teachers’ knowledge and understanding. People sometimes ask: how does this affect student achievement? How does this translate into classroom practice? The Institute is there not to tell teachers how to teach, but to feed their imagination and intellect. This ultimately translates into classroom practice, but not in jargonizable ways.
The Institute follows a simple and fruitful routine. Each day begins with breakfast. The teachers sit down to eat in the dining room, in the seminar room with the French windows, or outside on the porch or one of the benches. At 8:45, everyone congregates in the lecture hall, an intimate and elegant room with sloping ceiling. After some brief announcements, a faculty member gives opening remarks. Another faculty member then gives the morning lecture about the literary work under discussion. (Giving a lecture there is an exhilarating experience; the audience members’ eyes light up the way.) Seminar discussions follow and last two hours.
Then comes a hearty lunch followed by the afternoon activities, which may include panel discussions, teaching lectures, plenary discussions, guest lectures, and films. (This summer’s films included Iphigenia, Kagemusha, and The Revolt of Job.) At 4:00, the Institute adjourns; the teachers and faculty go home to regather themselves, think and read in quiet, and prepare for the next day. One ends up dreaming the literature—entering a state of mind like Dante’s in Canto XVIII of Purgatorio (in Allen Mandelbaum’s translation):
Then, when those shades were so far off from us
that seeing them became impossible,
a new thought rose inside of me and, from
that thought, still others—many and diverse—
were born; I was so drawn from random thought
to thought that, wandering in mind, I shut
my eyes, transforming thought on thought to dream.
What distinguishes the Summer Institute from an intensive literature course? First of all, it’s specifically for teachers—so, while there’s minimal discussion of pedagogy, everything studied has an indirect, analogical relationship to the classroom. Second, the unifying principle is genre—not the external structure of a work, but its internal impulse and form. This allows participants to compare and liken the works in intriguing ways. Third, the faculty are there to learn from each other as well as to teach, and the teachers respond to this. Fourth, everyone is tasked in some sense with the impossible, and there lies the cheer. What, give a lecture on the Inferno? What, discuss the Iliad in three days? Preposterous! Yet we go ahead and meet the challenge—and enjoy a few surprises.
The Summer Institute is so far removed from typical teacher training, and yet so soulful in its approach to education, that some participants experience shock and pain. How did we remove ourselves from what matters in education? How did we get caught up in rush and frenzy? The Dallas Institute manages to create time where there is little. The time expands even as the three weeks come to a close.
What brings about this expanse? Part of it is the excellence of the literature and the practice of returning to it. The three weeks are a beginning, an opening. There’s minimal talk of pedagogy or skills—but the Summer Institute’s format suggests many possibilities, and thus open up teaching. A teacher couldn’t replicate the Institute, but the point is not to replicate. In the words of Dr. Claudia Allums, director of the Dallas Institute’s Cowan Center for Education, the point is to “work from abundance.” The abundance makes its way into everything, even into time running out.
This was my first summer as a full faculty member (I was a junior faculty member last summer). I laughed and cried during the closing ceremony, when the teachers presented us with surprise awards. Mine was the Venus Award for inspiring a love of poetry. I saw teachers joyous about what they had received at the Institute, and knew myself joyous and grateful too. I left confident that the good work of education is possible. The Dallas Institute clears away distractions and delves into good things. May it do so for many years to come.
This just arrived in my email box. The writer signed her name:
There has been so much debate about educational reform and about Michele Rhee and her Students First organization. I am compelled to describe my experience this past June with the Rhode Island Teaching Fellows Program, a Rhee brainchild. The Teaching Fellows work along the same lines of The New Teacher Project but the Teaching Fellows is an alternative route to teacher certification. The premise is to attract people from the public sector and after 5 weeks of training they will be employed as first year’s teachers in high needs urban schools. The catch phrase is “Let’s close the achievement gap” and get your teaching certification in an alternative route program-well yes I know all about the achievement gap and only starting to realize all the components at work and I decided to re-enter school to become a teacher and this program sounded perfect. I could not have been more wrong!
We start week one learning this militant type tactics of behavioral control-such as “Do it again” “Do it now” and “Slant” to name just a few-we practice this over and over again in a highly structured environment where our every move is scheduled and monitored. We are told where to sit, when to stand and when to speak-they occasionally mix up the tables I believe so friendships are not formed and “talk” starts. We have lunch in groups with our coaches. We are actually scheduled to meet with our coaches for “debriefing” where we are told not to talk and only answer with yes and no. We watch videos of children in which these tactics are employed in other States.
Students are drilled on how to line up, hands by side, mouths closed-told which way to turn and what muscle to move next. They are instructed like they are in the military or prison. All the kids in the video are of course black-these behavioral control tactics are of course not utilized in white schools. A strict agenda is posted in the morning requiring us to adhere to it without question. We are at this point working 16 hours a day and not thinking clearly at all. We are then told to start working on lesson plans that we will implement in the field experience component in the evening and e-mail them to our coach for a review. This lesson planning has to be evidently self-taught as I have taken no education courses, which is one of the requirements of the program.
The second week of the program we begin the field experience component is a 4 week 2.5 hour class consisting of students requiring summer school to recover credits. These are the very students we are supposed be so concerned about with the achievement gap. After 1 week of training we are individually thrown in front of this class of 22, still being monitored by training team members. I will argue that I am NOT an effective teacher after one week of training and these kids WILL suffer because of it. By the third day, 6 of my students were not in class and I believe they will ultimately drop out and as an inexperienced RI Teaching Fellow I am completely responsible; it is reprehensible what we are doing to these kids.
At the end of this 5 week period we are then placed in an urban school where we are allowed to teach under an emergency teaching certification. At this point we are required to join the TNTP academy where throughout out the year we attend classes and workshops to get our own teaching certification after one year. So the premise is that to qualify for the $5500 educational grant through AmeriCorps you must work in a high need urban school in Rhode Island, what is called the urban4-Providence, Pawtucket, Woonsocket, and Central Falls. These are exactly the only districts we are allowed to apply to. We are also enrolled in AmeriCorps and will receive our educational grant of $5500 after one year of service.
The cost of this TNTP academy is $6ooo-hmmm…so I will argue that the Teaching Fellows Program doesn’t care one bit about closing the achievement gap but in fact victimizes our low income minority students to achieve their own agenda which is enrollment in the TNTP academy and to fill their own pockets with outlandish salaries. . I saw advertisements on employment agencies sites for jobs within the Teaching Fellows organization paying anywhere between $60-and $78,000.00 per year-a lot of income to certify perhaps 20 teachers a year in the State of Rhode Island and my guess is less than half of those will stay in the high needs urban public schools. When I began the program there where 28 fellows; I was the fourth to drop out by the eighth day. I believe this organization is syphoning money from public education grants to serve their own purposes and the students that are being harmed are the low income black and brown students in these high needs urban schools. Michelle Rhee and this organization need to be stopped. I have decided to continue on and obtain my M.A.T. and become an effective teacher the proper way in two years and not destroy the lives of unsuspecting students on my way. I am continually looking for ways to expose this organization for what it is and hope it’s days are numbered before any more harm is done to these students.
–Theresa Laperche
Diane Ravitch's blog 
