Reading7-1-2




	ESE502 : The Class : Discipline : Introduction : Reading7-1-2

Cooperative Teacher Development

Career Ladder: Cooperative Teacher Development
The ability to view educational expertise and practices in a different light is a crucial and integral part of moving toward positive change in education. Although we frequently say that we believe individuals have different skills and areas of expertise and that we want to value and validate that individuality and uniqueness in students and educators, in point of fact we frequently devalue those things through looking for a set of observable and measurable gifts or behaviors that a committee has determined to be hierarchical. Thus, we take teacher’s strengths and weaknesses and set them in an order that meets our own needs or goals for an institution rather than looking for and recognizing teaching that is important and valuable for its uniqueness and diversity.

This could translate into destructive practices. For instance, we might hire a teacher who is very loving, nurturing, gentle. The teacher is articulate, committed to excellence and pedagogically sound. After observing a particular lesson the peer cadre or administrative evaluator might say to that person, “Your style of teaching does not rate well on our career scale. In this district we are interested in high scores and a down to business demeanor.”

An excellent, perhaps master teacher, is faced with acquiring sets of behaviors that are antithetical to his/her native personality and philosophy for working with children, or stagnating on the career ladder. In being true to self this teacher may not receive high standing or advance financially in the district. In this hypothetical case, rather than recognizing the teacher’s expertise in nurturing and a natural bent to work with youngsters with the students’ pacing, this teacher has been directed to develop skills and a way of performing that are neither natural nor ideal. This determination of which rung the teacher stands on will have weight no matter how accurate or inaccurate it may be. Once the ladder is there, the district presupposes that it will create a meaningful motivation for upward mobility. Has the notion that the ladder might be accidentally tipped by the preponderance of teachers trying to scale at once? Is there awareness of the competitive aura that surrounds such a device? Is there alertness to the divisiveness this mutely advances?

Students

This is not only the case with educators, it is also a prevailing concept in working with students. Rather than recognizing talents and gifts, of nurturing and developing the individual students, we often determine a general way of being for all students and then set about molding and forcing young people into that way of being regardless of how individually destructive or personally inappropriate those goals may be. We may overlook natural abilities and force students, including those who are singularly gifted, creative, unique, into a semblance of what or who a committee has determined they will need to be in order to go on to college or meet district or State testing standards. Similarly, we set up a course of study, a predetermined set of requirements that have nothing to do with individual gifts, expertise or modality for learning.

What this means at the present time is that we have a significant drop-out rate, we have more than half of the students who are performing at “get by” levels and who take little or no delight in the pursuit of learning. The majority of students either do not learn of their natural talents during their school careers or are taught to ignore or depreciate them. If there is awareness of the natural gifts, they are developed in keeping with system wide goals or subject specific objectives rather than as a true manifestation of joyous recognition of aptitude and individuality.

Using the current competitive system we work to produce graduates who are die cut representations of what looks good on mandated achievement tests. We develop students who are compliant and who bow to authority rather than thinking for themselves or feeling confident in expressing or establishing personal viewpoints or envisioning and pursuing personalized goals for learning and thinking. Rarely will a district set a program that allows students to be self determining. Few indeed are the teachers who encourage students to make personalized learning plans or who assist students to work to establish an individualized course of study. It is a rare occurrence to see a classroom, regardless of age or ability, that is not arbitrarily subject centered and teacher directed. As long as that is the case, students will not feel a sense of ownership and will not work at potential.

We have even gone so far as to say that those who score poorly on tests are lacking native ability to learn what is valuable. The implication suggests inferiority and denies access to higher education. The reality is more closely honored by saying that those who score poorly on our current measures of ability may not or did not or will not learn what a small group has decided is valuable and that time has honored.

Through the Looking Glass

As it is in the classroom, so it is in the school. Many teachers feel as disenfranchised about their own personal growth and talents for teaching as the students. The model holds true at both levels. As long as educators continue to believe that they can mass produce students as learners and thinkers, people who will be good citizens and tax payers, who will take a place quietly in society, there will be a systemic movement to mass produce teachers. Those who come quietly and successfully through the educational system often turn around and become teachers. They in turn carry with them a set of expectations that success as a teacher means getting students to come quietly and successfully through the system. These sets of behaviors are not a measure of successful education and they are not working to move our social systems forward.

We cannot and should not make of each teacher a Madeline Hunter, a Lee Canter, an A. S. Neill. We cannot and should not force any human being to become a kind of teacher that is an antithesis of the person. Some teachers are good humorists, while others seem to try humor and find sarcasm. Some can sing and charm youngsters, others sit in a rocking chair to share a book and mesmerize listeners. Some can make arguments of logic, quote poetry, develop a diatribe. Some make every day of Lincoln’s presidency a worthy study, others find a way of sawing through statistics to the bare bones and helping us to find a responsive appreciation in the numerical journey.

What we can assist each teacher to become is an expert. “Expert” needs to be redefined and in the defining, we need to address what the pinnacle of education might be and what a professional educator would look like. The career ladder has often been highly competitive. We have also mirrored that competitiveness in searches for a “best” teacher, or the teacher of the year. [Do you just hate that nickname TOY?] Instead of looking for one teacher to represent the best possible practice and thus be defined as expert, we need to move to a more team oriented and cooperative perspective in teacher expertise. We might legitimately look for a group of teachers who worked as a team to change student lives or a system’s quality rather than one individual to shine forth.

In a cooperative stance, much like a piano key board, each teacher would be helped to develop a set of personal and team goals and expectations for personal, professional and team growth. From those goals the team would work together to assist each other in meeting and monitoring the development of personal expertise. Thus an expert would become an integral and differentiated member of a team that possesses expertise and that builds on collective strengths to build education and to address the individual needs of students thus enhancing the social system of which they are all a part. The teacher teams would then provide the school system into a well developed, multi-dimensional highly articulated group of professionals.

The emphasis would change from giving individuals merit pay and advancement based on ability to scale above or beyond another teacher’s abilities. There would be many ways to show expertise and to advance. As we change the way in which we show value for and validate expertise and personal skills, we would lose much of the “my little kingdom” perspective. As the move is made to more expansive ideas of what constitutes good teaching, collaboration and cooperation could become essential and viable tools since they would enhance the available dimensions of expertise.

Change is disquieting

It is important to note when we begin talking about making changes, that some people feel frantic about how changes would impinge on preparation, on perception of capability. Some of the concerns are face-saving, some are genuine concerns about the worthiness of “one more educational swing”. Some are based on the very real fact that many of the cooperative and collaborative skills being suggested are new concepts and call for expertise that has not been shared with classroom teachers. Most educators want very much to please and to fulfill personal dreams of helping others and building society, and their concerns center around the ways that they can learn the new formats, manipulate their own behaviors to develop the preferred new skills and facilitate implementation of the new concepts. Still convincing them that a new concept will be helpful to others is not the same as showing them how and easing the pain of uncertainty.

Administrative concerns are also viable. As teacher behaviors change there is a ripple effect in the system. Administrative roles and skills would also be dramatically altered in response to a more cooperative team oriented type of management. New areas of expertise would need to be developed to complement the expected changes in teacher behavior. Quality of educational expertise is one of the foremost concerns that people address when we talk of change in education. There is a natural human reaction to believe that if we stop using a competitive system where we can easily compare and thus measure who is best, then there will be a drop in expertise or a lack of quality and quality control. Although this is a natural fear, there are centuries of examples that can be enumerated to prove that these concerns are largely unfounded. Perhaps one of the fastest ways to allay this concern is to suggest the idea of the symphony.

Symphony as a new metaphor

In today’s world there are many areas in which quality has diminished or become less important or less apparent. This is not true however in the symphony orchestra, one of the places where high quality, expertise and rigor are very much in evidence. Rigor and structure are not only demanded, but forthcoming. One person stands at the helm and directs and calls forth expertise, developing an esprit de corps that provides for an intermingling of skills, capability and quality in such a way that the performance occurs. In that performance a score is articulated in such a way that the special music of the piece is brought forward and the genius of the composer is reproduced and rendered allowing listeners and performers alike to achieve a peak experience and share in the wealth of talent and expertise.

A very real part of the musicality, of the quality of the symphonic experience is the ability of each member to maintain their place in the music, to watch and respond to the conductor and to provide their very best effort at each point when they are called upon to perform in the score or to present a solo work. When musicians are not performing a solo in the work, they are expected to give an ultimate performance - to play each note musically, on time, in harmony and as a true reflection of the artistic expression of the work.

There is a natural camaraderie, and natural teasing that goes on as a part of a well honed symphonic group. For instance the percussion section may be silent for twenty or thirty minutes during a piece. A harpist may play only intermittent pieces during a performance. The oboe may be called upon once in forty-five minutes to quack like a duck or play a short plaintive melody. The French Horn section may be divided up with the lower sections playing umpah, umpah to an off-beat pattern while the first chair plays solo selections. The strings, meanwhile are playing constantly every measure. In a well developed symphonic group, the strings do not fight and become angry because they are playing during the entire concert, nor do the brass or Timpani players fight because they have been out played and given few solo opportunities.

As we talk about this orchestration there is a parallel to be drawn. A similar setting occurs in the well developed school. There are a number of master teachers, each fulfilling a calling, each expressing the self in a fine performance of individuated expertise. All of them work together in concert with a team to provide a performance. The educational system provides the best possible opportunities for the children to grow, to develop, to become who they are. The educational system can and must change in radical and appropriate ways in order for the best possible performance to occur for children.

As it is true that some people are fine violinists, so it is true that some teachers will become the concert mistresses and masters while some will direct the orchestra and others will sit in the background and play muted lines. Not one of these people will be given less money because they have a particular part to play, nor will they be valued more or less. Not one person will be devalued because as an integral part of the whole, their part is admirably represented. The array of teachers in the fulfillment of this orchestration will provide each with the opportunity to be a best self, to give what talent and gift they have, will touch certain lives, meet specific needs, give of themselves wholly and with expertise.

This could translate into a highly structured, highly articulated group of people who work as a team, who value each other and who are valued for skill and expertise.

We might see the school system becoming a true system. We could see an explosion of interest, energy and expertise brought about through the valuing of each member and their skills and abilities rather than the devaluing disenfranchisement of teachers due to unrealistic expectations that do not coordinate with their gifts. In order for this to happen we will have to change the mode in which we evaluate and provide remuneration for teachers. [We might lay the ladder down so it looks rather like a key board]. Rather than looking for a career ladder we will be looking for a compliment of people who have the ability to bring out the best in each other and in their students. We will be looking much more for an orchestration of teachers, a key board of complimentary skills and talents rather than for a few isolated and outstanding soloists. As is true in any system, as soon as we change one modest concept, as soon as we say that teaching from now on will be more cooperative and less competitive. [Let’s not just trade one buzz for another; competition isn’t evil and climbing to new heights is not “out” -- Perhaps by laying the ladder sideways we could create a teeter totter. Those who wish competition would be on top in alternating motions]. we begin to recognize that there would be a change in the way that administrators view teachers, ways in which we evaluate what a teacher is doing and who a teacher is as well as what s/he has to offer.

As these changes begin to occur, it becomes obvious that the evaluation procedure for teachers would have to change markedly. It would no longer be possible to utilize a set of student scores or achievement test marks to determine a teacher’s marketability. Instead we would have to revamp our view of good teaching. Further, we would no longer be looking for one outstanding teacher and what that one person could do for children. Instead we would be looking at the impact of a team on students and student learning. We would begin viewing teachers as a team of educators, a complimentary set of roles. We would be more interested in how the team cooperated together, how they complimented each other and worked for the best interest of the students and the community.

We would look for a validation of a team effort rather than keying in on one sole contributor. The role of the school administration and school board would change from a group of people who judge and evaluate to a group of people who orchestrate, develop and maintain a teaching force.

Again, the concept is complex, interrelated, intertwined, and the realization could best be measured by the competence of the entire system not the competence of one or two teachers. The teachers would no longer be the major focus of the evaluation process, but rather the entire system would be judged on outcome and expertise. We would focus on who children are becoming rather than pointing to an isolated set of scores. The final performance would become much more important than one or two isolated testing experiences.

Summary

It is interesting to speculate about how stable our career ladder is. Could Socrates climb it? Would we afford a place for Buddha or Christ or Moses on a rung? If our historically powerful teaching models would not fare well, do we have the right model? Are we moving in the right direction? The symphony concept is a metaphor for explaining the importance of moving away from competitive evaluation. Solo performances are still welcome. Individual taste has a place, individual gifts honored.

Whatever we finally decide, systems theory points out a crucial concept. One change in the system will effect all parts of the system. It is only necessary that we begin in one place to effect change in all parts of the system.

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E-mail J'Anne Ellsworth at Janne.Ellsworth@nau.edu