Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Two weeks of the teaching road have passed under my feet, and I am plenty covered in the dust and sweat of long hours in school. It’s hard to tell if my voice is scratchy and throat dry from exhaustion, sickness or both, yet somehow my energy keeps coming back in waves of inspiration.
My students show me daily what’s possible in the classroom, as much as I alternate between feeling like a circus ringmaster and a crazy uncle to the kids. With school procedures and deadlines, I feel like Michigan’s Vincent Smith might have felt being hit by Jadeveon Clowney in the Outback Bowl: right when I think I see an opening it’s plugged up by another responsibility or expectation.
In other words, personal development in the teaching profession comes haltingly in the first year, with such a learning curve to climb. I can’t help but reflect, though, on what decisions I ought to make in the school which will set me on the path toward greater effectiveness as a teacher. With the political controversy surrounding teacher performance and the Georgia Teacher Keys Effectiveness System (TKES) soon tied to performance pay, I need to develop a good frame for understanding the support available to me as well as the content of teaching expertise which grows over time.
As near as I can pin it down on the surface, I already feel a “head” versus “heart” approach to learning the teaching profession, not unlike the difference between method acting and classical acting. In other words, will I be a Daniel Day-Lewis or a Meryl Streep teacher? Or rather, what is the best combination of these skill sets to bring to the table? The focus on “head” teaching would be the technical mastery and replication of effective practice while the “heart” teaching would be adopting the skills which best fit the personality and motivations of the instructor.
Past Work on Training the Effective Teacher
A good starting point for understanding effective teaching has not come from Teach For America (though the Teaching as Leadership model, the No-Nonsense Nurturer management model and the Teach Like A Champion toolkit are important curriculum tools) but from research on effective systems for educating teachers. What are the best practices for ensuring teachers are selected, inducted and retained within the profession with the capacity to become experts in the classroom?
My paternal grandmother did research on this subject at the University of Texas, helping compile and edit Reality and Reform in Clinical Teacher Education in 1986. The collection uses a seven-part framework to propose reforms in teacher training which include the following features:
- Context-sensitive
- Purposeful and articulated
- Participatory and collaborative
- Knowledge-based
- Ongoing
- Developmental
- Analytic and reflective
These seven points drive all phases of teacher training, from university classes, to new teaching to professional developmental and into district/state-level reform. The authors contend academic training is often too divorced from “clinical training” in the classroom, development is patchy and cookie-cutter, and teachers are not given targeted enough feedback to improve instruction. Programs should have more collegiality, adaptability to the individual school and opportunities for reflection on the ends and means of teaching.
The outcome of the seven points of the Research in Teacher Education (RITE) framework is the elevation of the teaching profession from being seen as a technical craft — protected in the same way as traditionally blue-collar craft-based industries - to positions of professional decision-making. Yet for the increased training with more research-based instruction, the authors acknowledge “many of the best ideas for improvement reside within the teaching ranks.” Combine this with the fact that at the time of the study 56% of teachers entered the profession as a second career, and the experience-based “heart” teaching becomes equally important as the expertise-based “head.”
Other Combinations of the Head and Heart Teacher
Witnessing the group of rising stars which devote themselves to the teaching profession in TFA has shown me skilled head teachers and heart teachers in equal supply. The dangerous assumption is that teachers should replicate a single rubric for master teaching. This debate reminds me of the C.S. Lewis analogy of people as carbon-copy “tin soldiers” and Stanford psychologist Carol Dwerck’s work on fixed versus growth mindsets. We have to choose aliveness and growth as teachers to become effective: meaning a combination of technical skill and personal drive to succeed.
- Teacher talk strategies to improve literacy combine the instructor in the classroom with the nurturer outside the classroom. Motivated by the “thirty million word gap” in which students in households with lower educational attainment inherit vocabulary gaps which stunt their literacy, teacher talk strategies make every moment with a student an opportunity for growth. How can we challenge students and invest in them such that we are never too busy to wear the teacher face?
- Community-driven education: I’ve written before about the reform ideas of Geoffrey Canada and Harlem Children’s Zone which at its most basic level increases “face time” with students and invests in them psychologically, socially and developmentally to show great compassion for students. The basic proposals in his TED Talk include increasing the length of the school day, year and number of years of schooling. While Teach For America has talked community investment in this way, its incentive system for Corps Member performance and ideology have not always reflected it. A new focus in TFA Metro Atlanta this year on community groups as well as a nonpartisan policy forum which discuss and put roots in local issues has potential to change this reputation.
- Culture building in the classroom relies heavily on the relationship between the teacher and the student, based in a careful mixture of vulnerability and high expectations – combining the intuitive push to connect with the struggles of students and share in their growth with the systematic effort to build a safe classroom environment in which a sense of urgency and passion drives 100% of students. The culture building responsibility is even greater given that most American teachers are middle-class and white and politicians eliminate curriculum which brings up challenging progressive content.
Week two is still about navigating a challenging school environment while trying to pin down the basic things like bringing my lunch, remembering kids’ names and getting technology in the classroom to work. Yet as I think about how to chart a course in my school in the coming months I am convicted that I need to take advantage of Teach For America’s rigorous clinical education curriculum and combine professional standards with personal motivation for the work I am undertaking.
Little moments powerfully remind me of this motivation: such as when my students in unison yell “PINKUS!” at the end of our read aloud of Pink and Say to honor the memory of a freed slave killed in Andersonville prison. I am effective only as much as my students and school context effect change in me.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
