I don’t think it’s fair to paint teachers as victims or martyrs. Professionals in many fields take responsibility for the product and the process of their work, and it seems that teachers may finally need to step up to the plate on both of these fronts.

I’m always amazed by teachers who think that education is some kind of ultra-noble exercise that is unaffected by the laws of organizational dynamics. It seems we’ve largely neglected our professional responsibilities for quality control, productivity, corporate culture and innovation. We’ve handed the reigns of our profession to administrators, staff development experts, teacher’s unions, and local and federal policy makers.

What did we expect? Did we really not see this kind of reform coming?
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As a full-time practicing classroom teacher, I can tell you that your observations are spot on—-and sadly, you’re right to think that we’ll struggle to staff classrooms with good teachers if we continue down the same road.

I’m a prime example: I’ve never wanted to be anything but a classroom teacher–and have turned down many, many high paying opportunities to work beyond the classroom to stay true to that commitment. But I’m actively looking for a way out….and I’ll do almost anything: consultant, college professor, instructional resource teacher etc.

What I’ve seen happen in my work is that I still have all of the traditional teaching tasks to manage—grading papers, planning lessons, communicating with parents—-AND I’ve got to wrestle through countless planning sessions to redesign teaching at the same time. Nothing has been taken away.

And I resent people working beyond the classroom, because they don’t seem to remember the amount of time that it takes to do what we do. Instead, they roll in with new ideas every few months and expect us to implement them. Any pushback from teachers is seen as resistance, and those of us who push back the hardest get speeches about the importance of being “a team player.”

Leaving the classroom looks like the best option because I’d rid myself of the traditional teaching tasks. That’s got to reduce my workload, I’d think.

My thoughts aren’t clear here…I’m rambling. But I’m thankful that you’ve written about this and plan to follow up on my own blog.

Rock on,
Bill
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What I keep asking myself is, “I love my job. Why am I so exhausted.”

I’ve taught 28 years and it is the fatigue factor that is doing me in not the drive to keep on learning.

When I think about the way in which schools are organized for professional growth and learning, I see major flaws. Although teachers are often the kings (and queens) of their domains in the classroom, I don’t feel as though they are empowered in way which enables them to take charge of their own learning to improve the quality of their craft. Closed doors and busy schedules do not lend themselves to collaboration among teachers.

When I envision a school (or district or system) that truly empowers and engages teachers, I am convinced that it can only happen when teachers are taught about the power of the personal learning network. By reading and writing and reflecting, teachers can not only connect with those down the hall but also with others from around the world. Through these networks, teachers can begin to grow professionally in their own ways and on their own time line. Of course, this takes great leadership (and possibly PLCs which teach and foster a 21st century mentality), but I think it’s a way to make transformative changes in schools and in teacher-attitudes from the bottom-up.
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That said, I’ve never seen a detailed breakdown of teachers’ time. If a group of teachers voluntarily started keeping these notes, and if administrators and support staff paid attention and gathered the data, we’d have a much better picture of the problem, could work towards some solutions, and make actual progress because we’d have data to show the decision-makers.

It’d be important to keep it voluntary on the teacher end — mandatory time-cards aren’t going to do anyone any favors.

I guess for me the most troubling aspect of accountability is that right now it is primarily focused on the teacher and the delivery of programs. There is little dialogue about the relevance of curricula in our times; there are some great minds (like yours and Couros) who are advocating for 21st century learning skills, but the reality is that many classrooms do not look that different than when I was in high school in the late 70’s. Is the problem that the current push for change in education is missing the fact that how people learn and the skills people need in the 21st century are changing? While I agree that literacy and numeracy are important, I do question the organization of school by grades, I question how we evaluate students, and I wonder how valid some of these assessments are in regards to improving learning. Are we moving back to teaching to tests?

I also wonder when does accountability include the learner? Don’t get me wrong, I will never blame a student who is trying; but what do you do with “learners” who refuse to engage in the learning process. And I don’t mean just sitting in class bored; I’m talking about those who attend school, but treat classes as optional. My dad always told me, “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.” I’ve seen exceptionally good teachers struggling with students that will not engage in what is asked of them. Is that a failure of the teacher? In these times, that’s what were being lead to believe.

I’m a lecturer in Educational Sciences at the University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg, Europe and I want to share my humble and preliminary thoughts about “imposed changes”. We are having a major reform of our school law (the last real update was in 1912!) partially due to what has been called the PISA-Shock in Germany (one of our neighbor countries), partially due to the fact that finally somebody got the balls and wisdom to see that our school system and it’s laws and regulations were actually well suited for a society of the beginning of the 20th century but did no longer fit with our changed demographics and the major changes in our economy and cultures (from an agricultural/industrial society to a knowledge/information society). We have namely had major immigration waves to Luxembourg from mainly Italy and Portugal during the last decades, so that the proportion of “foreigners” now takes 40% of the people living in Luxembourg. And we do have a lot of transnational commuters coming to work in Luxembourg everyday (about the size of 30% of our resident population).

Let me be clear at this point: I do think that the changes in laws and regulations were needed and would have been needed earlier.

However, I do feel, like you describe you do, that all the new requirements that teachers in K-12 schools have to handle everyday may be too much for them. I still hope that the new legal framework (away from an input-oriented/teacher-centered/instruction-based teaching system towards an output-oriented/learner-centered/competencies-oriented system) will allow teachers to free themselves from all the time-pressures they had to cope with before and allow them to creatively adapt their teaching practices. We’ve heard all the time from teachers that, given the strict and highly-demanding instruction programs they had to deliver, they never had time to do things at a pace suited to ALL children, that some kids were necessarily left behind, but that they didn’t really have the choice, because they had to rush through the school manuals and the instruction program as fast as possible to be sure that parents (mainly of the “good-grades” kids) wouldn’t come knocking on their doors and ask them why the neighboring classes were ahead of them in terms of this linear, progressive and predefined input program. That has certainly been quite a drain on their mental and physical resources over the last decades.

However, the reform we are living through now may put them under even more pressure, partially because they are not necessarily well prepared for the new requirements and challenges: working in teams, creating enriched learning environments for kids, doing on-going portfolio evaluation, giving each child the chances to learn at their pace, etc.

I hope to do my small and humble contributions to this enterprise by trying to empower my future teacher students to be better prepared for changes in the future by helping them to develop life-long-learning attitudes and behaviors.

However, there are considerable risks that the multiple new pressures that teachers have to cope with will make some of them even more conservative and rigid in their attitudes and believes… “I’ll stick to what I’ve been good at for decades.”

Structural changes need to be supported and scaffolded by those responsible for the change, when it comes from the top to the bottom… changes from the bottom are always more self-supporting, but sometimes a change in laws and regulations become inevitable to allow these bottom-up changes to happen and to be legal and acceptable…

The division I share with Dean has worked mightily to restructure the culture of the organization and achieve some sort of clarity about the outcomes desired in this shift to standardized assessments for learning and student involvement in that assessment. Organizational arrangements shift and communication happens. The skills and knowledge needed to carry out change is being developed. All this is encouraging. Serious barriers remain and these foster the frustrations Dean eluded to.

There is a problem of distance between the resource people with the expertise and the classroom teacher. The materials required to bring about the change are not always available. Assessments and the benchmarks underpinning them are incomplete or in a state of flux as action research leads to false starts and repetition. This is redesign as the vehicle is hurtling down the road and professionals have worked their entire careers under such conditions. It is the norm but frustrating non-the-less.

There are other gaps to deal with. I am less sanguine about the consensus for change. Competing philosophies of education still hold teacher’s attention. The teacher’s priorities also act as a barrier. Dean mentioned concerns that the focus is to narrowed on Math and Reading (add writing to this). Sure there are marginal teachers, or sound teachers in a slump; however, as Dean remarked, most teachers are innovators. We all have private action research projects we have committed ourselves to and these compete with the division’s primary curricular goals.

As teachers accept these changes and integrate them into their practice, they become the advocates for change. It lies with them to sell the change to pupils and families. Again I think frustrations are generated by this process. The current reporting process in the division is as traditional as they come: percentages and a four-point scale. Understanding the data generated from our new assessments challenges students and parents. Further, I feel current post-secondary expectations present another gap. The percentage continues to hold more merit than benchmarks.

Finally the climate of education is not always ideal. As I said earlier, there continue to be competing values in education. There are practical conflicts generated by incomplete (or incompatible) curriculums. There is an undercurrent of conflicting power here because these innovations call for power redistribution. Student involvement in assessment and conferencing shifts ownership. New measures of accountability seem to challenge long standing beliefs about professional autonomy in the classroom. Part of the challenge presented by change is to argue convincingly that there has been no degradation in trust or confidence.

I share in the frustrations and stresses of change. It will come and I will eventually be an effective change agent advocating differentiated learning and student led conferencing to students and families. Interesting times, and somewhat cyclical in nature I am afraid. Fortunately change has been a salient feature of my entire career.
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