Tag: professionalism

Things I Know 139 of 365: We don’t work in the mailroom

There is absolutely no indication this is a problem beyond the mailroom.

– Phil Budahn

I don’t see myself as working at the bottom of the education hierarchy.

In his weekly media address, President Obama said, “We need to encourage this kind of change all across America. We need to reward the reforms that are driven not by Washington, but by principals and teachers and parents. That’s how we’ll make progress in education – not from the top down, but from the bottom up.”

See what happened there?

In attempting to build up the teaching profession, the President admitted teachers work in the equivalent of the mailroom of the educational industrial complex.

We don’t, but it’s subtle turns of phrase like that which continue to make it acceptable for politicians, commentators and anyone in general to talk about teachers as if they were the least important pieces of a student’s life. Often, this is a breath or two after they’ve admitted teachers are the most influential factors in teaching and learning.

“From the bottom up,” is one of those frequent idiomatic turns of phrase thrown in as filler or a linguistic bridge to get from one point to the next.

It draws much less attention than “Teachers are facilitators of learning,” or “We must focus on 21st-century skills.” Those rhetorical lightening rods draw the attention of anyone with an opinion on education while “From the bottom up,” or “From those on the front lines of education,” merit little notice in the educational thunderstorm.

This is how we keep teachers in their place. This is how we continue to scratch away the polish of the profession.

“From the bottom up,” implies the President wants to put a suggestion box in the break room and give a coffee mug to any teacher whose suggestion makes it to implementation.

At this point in a conversation, my students would claim I’m reading too much into President Obama’s remarks. Perhaps I am.

Consider, though, the effects if he reversed his language to paint a different mental picture – one that sat educators as the experts at the top of the system and recognized the role of government to provide a foundation of support.

“We need to support expertise of educators all across America. Washington needs to support reforms driven by principals and teachers and parents. That’s how we’ll make progress in education – from the top down.”

It would shift the paradigm. It would acknowledge that educators serve the needs of our students and that Washington serves at the pleasure of its electorate.

The first step toward the adoption of this language will begin with parents, principals and teachers and their rejection of the notion that they operate at diminished capacity simply because that is what they have been told.

We must engage in self-advocacy as we would want our students to do.

If we continue to agree with the linguistically constructed hierarchy, we will never be models of change to our students.

Things I Know 80 of 365: Building online courses is scary

In my experience, it takes about twice as long — prep time, putting materials together — to actually deliver the online course than it does to deliver the on-campus course.

– Denise Keele, professor of environmental policy, quoted on npr.com

For about an hour this afternoon, I felt as though I’d written myself into a corner. I’m doing some work with a school district’s professional development office to build a course on inquiry and project-based learning in the literacy classroom.

The thing should be a piece of cake.

I’ve spent the better part of a year in an online grad program that gets it wrong in so many ways that I am acutely aware of the pitfalls and pratfalls of online learning.

Building the course is about more than distilling the core beliefs and approaches of how I think about teaching and passing on those ideals.

It is also about building a space where the discussion board isn’t a place where discussions go to die and feedback consists of copying and pasting from a rubric.

After eight months of knowing what it feels like when done wrong, I sat scheming today, dedicated to constructing an online learning space and process that felt real.

The worry we have about K-12 teachers ignoring the needs of their students and teaching in mentally tortuous ways because their education is compulsory, is too often exacerbated in adult learning spaces.

Sometimes, I let my mind wander and imagine what the planning sessions must be like.

“Okay, we want our faculty to be trained in how to take an inquiry-based approach in the classroom. Let’s sit them all in a cafegymnatorium and tell them about inquiry.”

“That’s a great idea. I’ll build a PowerPoint with all the information from the book we’ll buy them and see how many words I can fit on each slide.”

“Great! While you two are doing that, I’ll build the online follow-up that will vacillate between assignments giving them directions to follow that are so specific that the implementation can’t possibly fit their students’ needs and assignments so vague they’ll never be certain they completed them correctly until they receive the final e-mail.”

You can see what I was working against this afternoon.

I don’t want to build what I hate.

Turned out the answer was the same as it ever was. I need to do what I say I believe. I started drafting questions to help focus on the ends toward which participants will work. I imagined how a participant would ideally shape his classroom upon completion and worked backward to design modules that help participants raise relevant questions and work toward their answers through inquiry, implementation and reflection.

The course is still in its most nascent stages, but I’m building somewhere I’d like to learn. That can’t be all bad.

It turned out the best way to avoid becoming the practitioners I resent wasn’t to work against becoming them, but to work to be more myself.

I wonder how many times I’m going to have to learn that lesson.

Things I Know 39 of 365: Leave it to Dana

You’re only as good as your last haircut.

– Fran Lebowitz

Dana usually cuts my hair.

She’s a smoker. She’s from Jersey. She was married once. She realized she didn’t love him as much as she needed to and it ended early. Now, she’s got a serious long-term boyfriend. She swears they’ll never get married, but they’ll never break up either.

She told me all of this whilst cutting my hair.

That’s no small task.

It’s a mess up there.

Childhood scars and cowlicks. Not pretty.

Dana, though, navigates it each time with perfect aplomb while telling stories.

I soak it up.

She makes it look so easy.

From shampoo to dusting the strays off my collar, not a break in conversation, save for the odd “Look down.”

Let me tell you, it’s not as easy as she makes it look.

The first time I tried to cut my hair myself was a little over a year ago.

I was officiating the wedding of some friends that afternoon and decided I needed a little trim.

Yes, the fact I chose that particular moment to try my hand at hair cuttery probably speak volumes as to whether or not loved ones should trust me with their nuptials, but we’ll move on.

It did not go well.

An hour later, I was sitting in Dana’s chair recounting a boldfaced lie about how my roommate had sworn she could cut hair, but had freaked out after the first pass with the clippers. Dana believed not a word. For he briefest of seconds, I’d considered fessing up, but realized the slap in the face it would be to tell her I was so pompous as to think I could perform her job without any training.

Dana patched me up as best she could and sent me on my way. She warned me it would take time for the mistakes “my roommate” had made to be corrected, but she’d plotted the course. For my part, I made certain all wedding pictures featured my left side.

It was silly to think all I needed were the tools and I’d be able to use them with the same finesse as someone trained and experienced in a profession in which I had no experience.

The idea I could try my hand at a profession in which someone was certified was a foolish one.

That it never occurred to me I might need to learn from those who had come before me or value the expertise of those currently practicing was almost unthinkable.

I’m glad I don’t have to worry about that in education.