No Teacher Left Behind
As newspapers carry stories daily of schools failing to meet the NCLB standards, threatening to intervene, shut them down, reorganize, etc., I'm constantly amazed at the number of "solutions" posed for improving schools. But I have yet to hear anyone threaten to change the actual job of teaching to make it more doable, more conducive to greatness, and more compatible with life in general.
Research indicates that nearly half of all new teachers leave the profession within five years. I'm not sure whether or not I'm included in this number, because while I left the classroom within five years I continued to be employed as a "teacher" (meaning I got paid a teacher salary) for years after that. But I certainly feel like I speak from experience nonetheless. I have also been involved in professional development for years, helping people to be better teachers. My experience is that really good teachers (and I'm including those who have the potential to be really good but are young, inexperienced, etc.) leave the classroom because it just isn't possible for a human being to be a really good teacher every minute, every day, and with every student with the way schools and schedules are currently organized. Now I certainly have seen exceptions to this, of course, but the attrition numbers indicate that it isn't the majority.
Yet, as schools continue to struggle with the requirements of NCLB, I have yet to hear someone suggest that we should make a fundamental change to how schools are set up- how many minutes per day a teacher teaches students, how many days per week teachers work with students, etc. I've seen the research on reducing class size, and I certainly think this is a step in the right direction. I've seen schools with creative scheduling that gives teachers 1/2 day of planning per week, also a step in the right direction I think. This second plan doesn't really increase the planning time, however, it just arranges it differently. While I'm encouraged by these plans, I just don't think it's enough.
My husband (also a former classroom teacher) had a discussion with a friend of his who worked in the business world. He was attempting to help his friend understand the pressures of being a teacher. He asked his friend how long he would spend preparing for an hour-long presentation for work. About 6 hours was the response. My husband then explained that as a teacher, he had the opposite ratio- about an hour of planning for 6 hours of presentation. His friend understood.
The bottom line here is that we've created a job that almost 50% of the people who try it don't feel successful at. Yet we keep chastising teachers for not doing a good enough job, for leaving children behind, and for not reaching all students in their classes. Then we give teachers the same time to plan, the same amount of hours per day with students, the same number of students, the same support, the same money, and the same resources and expect something different to happen. When are we going to take a hard look at the job itself and ask what we can do to make it different? What fundamental change do we need to make in how it is set up in order to make it possible for the average person who tries it to be successful? If almost 50% of our students were failing at something, wouldn't we change it?
I'll conclude with one of my favorite analogies:
Think of the fly who is trying to get out of a room through the window. He can see the goal- it is so close! He flies at the window, but, of course, crashes into it. So he tries HARDER, and he crashes harder! As we all know, he can try as hard as he wants, but until he tries DIFFERENTLY, he will never succeed.
Research indicates that nearly half of all new teachers leave the profession within five years. I'm not sure whether or not I'm included in this number, because while I left the classroom within five years I continued to be employed as a "teacher" (meaning I got paid a teacher salary) for years after that. But I certainly feel like I speak from experience nonetheless. I have also been involved in professional development for years, helping people to be better teachers. My experience is that really good teachers (and I'm including those who have the potential to be really good but are young, inexperienced, etc.) leave the classroom because it just isn't possible for a human being to be a really good teacher every minute, every day, and with every student with the way schools and schedules are currently organized. Now I certainly have seen exceptions to this, of course, but the attrition numbers indicate that it isn't the majority.
Yet, as schools continue to struggle with the requirements of NCLB, I have yet to hear someone suggest that we should make a fundamental change to how schools are set up- how many minutes per day a teacher teaches students, how many days per week teachers work with students, etc. I've seen the research on reducing class size, and I certainly think this is a step in the right direction. I've seen schools with creative scheduling that gives teachers 1/2 day of planning per week, also a step in the right direction I think. This second plan doesn't really increase the planning time, however, it just arranges it differently. While I'm encouraged by these plans, I just don't think it's enough.
My husband (also a former classroom teacher) had a discussion with a friend of his who worked in the business world. He was attempting to help his friend understand the pressures of being a teacher. He asked his friend how long he would spend preparing for an hour-long presentation for work. About 6 hours was the response. My husband then explained that as a teacher, he had the opposite ratio- about an hour of planning for 6 hours of presentation. His friend understood.
The bottom line here is that we've created a job that almost 50% of the people who try it don't feel successful at. Yet we keep chastising teachers for not doing a good enough job, for leaving children behind, and for not reaching all students in their classes. Then we give teachers the same time to plan, the same amount of hours per day with students, the same number of students, the same support, the same money, and the same resources and expect something different to happen. When are we going to take a hard look at the job itself and ask what we can do to make it different? What fundamental change do we need to make in how it is set up in order to make it possible for the average person who tries it to be successful? If almost 50% of our students were failing at something, wouldn't we change it?
I'll conclude with one of my favorite analogies:
Think of the fly who is trying to get out of a room through the window. He can see the goal- it is so close! He flies at the window, but, of course, crashes into it. So he tries HARDER, and he crashes harder! As we all know, he can try as hard as he wants, but until he tries DIFFERENTLY, he will never succeed.
