The "Teachers Are Built" Non-School of Thought

[tonysam]

This is a response to the NYT's bullshit article this past weekend about "creating better teachers," which of course implies the problem in education is with the teachers. That is a lie, of course.

Anyway, from Schools Matter:

The New York Times Magazine has a fondness for giving great swaths of paper and ink to the reform schoolers' mission to turn K12 education over to the corporations, and this week's 8,000 word piece by Spencer Foundation fellow, Elizabeth Green (former ed reporter for the right-wing New York Sun), does not disappoint in that regard. The operative metaphor of the piece, "Building a Better Teacher," follows from the ed deformer's core conceit that teachers are like mousetraps, devices that can be designed, re-designed, torn down and tinkered with to produce a more efficient way to capture and confine, er, educate.

And if you don't like the mouse trap metaphor, how about tinker toys or bricks or computer components, all of which may be assembled by curious tinkerers like charter schooler, Doug Lemov, whose quest to fabricate the best teaching tactics by the nation's champion test score producers is matched by another mission to turn his ultimate "taxonomy" for test score production into the bible for teacher training. Lemov's new bible would be composed of 49 commandments that are to be committed to memory and practiced until perfected. That, for Lemov, would be teacher training aplenty.

It is just too bad that author, Green, did not learn something about education before she landed her $75,000 grant to learn how to write about it. If she had, she would not have spent so many of her 8,000 words oohing and aahing about commonplace practices in teaching like "wait time" and "calling on non-volunteers," which she seems to think were first documented by Doug Lemov. And even though Doug has come up with 49 commandments, Green pretends that educational thinkers over the centuries have been in search of "one essential trait for good teaching:"

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[mike_c]

1. I've been an educator for more than twenty years...

...and I will be the first to admit that there are some poor teachers in the business, although not nearly as many as most people think. The nature of the business simply doesn't provide enough rewards to keep bad teachers coming back for more once they realize they're doing poorly. Success is the most compelling motivator for most of my colleagues. The few genuinely-- and innately-- unsuccessful ones that stay are mostly oblivious to their own ineptitude, much as in any profession.

I also think it is DEFINITELY true that teachers grow into their profession. I certainly have. To be fair, I wasn't given any training in education, but K-12 teachers typically receive LOTS of training, so while it has taken me years to develop in the classroom, maybe K-12 teachers mature more quickly. Maybe. But I still think it takes lots of experience to reach our fullest capabilities, so I'll never dispute the notion that we can become better teachers, or that better teachers can be "created." I've seen it happen.

But in all my years in education I've also become utterly convinced that with few exceptions, teachers are the strongest links in the education chain, by far. School administrators, school boards, state and federal agencies and legislators, et al are the real problems, mostly because they bring conflicting agendas to the classroom, often agendas in direct conflict with the mission to provide educational opportunities and direction to students.

[tonysam]

2. Teachers are the strongest link in the educational chain, but they have the least power

and are the most abused.

WHERE are they in this neverending onslaught of propaganda against their profession by the media? They are TERRIFIED of speaking out BECAUSE they can be so easily retaliated against.