Musing Elizabeth Green’s NY Times, Building a Better Teacher, The Current NYC School Management Model Is Teacher Unfriendly.

 “If she can’t find a husband she can always become a teacher.”

a mother of a single daughter

 

Each generation thinks of itself as new and different, of having found that holy grail that sets them apart.  Teaching is no different.  The current wave of reform is simply yet another look at the teaching profession without understanding that reform, like the tides, comes and goes with the seasons and the phases of the moon.  Kate Rousmaniere looks at teachers in the 1920s, City Teachers: Teaching and Social Reform in Historical Perspective, shows that reform is not a new term, the reforms of the decade of the 20s appeared to change the face of the teaching profession.

 

Elizabeth Green’s NY Times magazine features Uncommon Schools founder Doug Lemov in his peregrinations to define and teach the discrete functions that define effective teaching.

 

Lemov’s has not made an earth shattering discovery.

 

Flanders Interaction Analysis uses videos of segments of lessons, a method of coding teacher-pupil, pupil-pupil interactions on a matrix. The matrix codes levels of questioning, from simple to complex. 

 

Cognitive Coaching,

 

a set of strategies, a way of thinking and a way of working that invites self and others to shape and reshape their thinking and problem solving capacities. In other words, Cognitive Coaching^SM enables people to modify their capacity to modify themselves.

 

The teacher videotapes his/her lessons and under the guidance of a coach dissect their lesson, modifies practice and continues to work with the coach working on specific skills.

 

New York State requires each teacher to be assigned a mentor, an experienced teacher, in their first year of employment. Unfortunately, in New York City mentoring is simply a compliance issue, it varies greatly from school to school.

 

The Gates Foundation funds the Measuring Teaching Effectiveness imitative in New York City and other cities around the nation, a three year project,

 

Identifying good teaching doesn’t and shouldn’t have to be a matter of conjecture or opinion. We can build on solid research and create tools that accurately distinguish teaching that leads to student success from teaching that does not. And we can use multiple measures, including student-performance data, classroom observation, feedback from students, and other evidence, to provide well-rounded, fair, and valid input into important decisions.

 

Doug Lemov’s collection of discrete teaching skills is a worthwhile effort, I fear however that teacher training will retrogress to simply a long list of exhibiting skills, I hope it will not diminish the importance of content area knowledge.

 

For me, the core question is: how do we identify prospective highly effective teachers before they enter teacher education programs? before they enter their first classroom as a teacher?

 

The Haberman Foundation uses a pre-selection tool, a

 

research-based model for identifying teachers and principals, particularly educators who serve students at risk and in poverty,

  

and is used in hundreds of school districts, both public and charter, to pre-screen applicants.

 

I don’t not believe that we can train anyone to teach.  For many who want “to make a difference,” they simply do not have the skills, no matter how much they study, they will not.   Sports analogies abound, some kids make the basketball team and others don’t, not because they don’t have the desire, it’s because they don’t have the ability.

 

In the current NYC Department of Education management model the only measurement is output, scores.  Scores are an important measurement, however, principals, in all too many cases, don’t have the skills to improve instruction.

 

School leaders must provide space in which teachers can interact and grow. In my experience schools with team structures and common planning time are schools in which practice can be at the center of teacher life.