A New Teacher Unionism

Steve Owens, one of my colleagues from the Teacher Leaders Network, recently posted some interesting questions on his ED.gov blog:

• What constructive role do you see for unions in education reform?
• What suggestions do you have for how the Department can build the capacity of stakeholders to participate meaningfully in the great policy debates of our time?

Steve is a music teacher, president of his NEA local, and a classroom-based Teaching Ambassador Fellow with the US Department of Education.  Steve helped me understand about the three branches of a new unionism that, if integrated, could help enrich public education.  For Steve, and many of his colleagues within the Teachers Union Reform Network, new unionism includes the integration of industrial, professional and social justice models.  I'll write more about new unionism later, but I wanted to address Steve's questions.

I think unions can have a much stronger role in advocating for teacher leadership. For example, I’d like to see more unions working with districts to create regional (if not school-based) “fellowships” in which teachers have 1/2 classroom responsibilities and 1/2 policy/research responsibilities. What a terrific way to cultivate teacher leadership and give teachers the time and resources to refine their understandings of policy and research.

The Department can get more stakeholders involved by focusing on state-level school board associations, parent groups, administrators and student unions. I’ve attended school board meetings and have been concerned about the adversarial comments flying back and forth between these stakeholders.

The Department is in a position to leverage relationships so that more people are talking about more of the same things. For example, how can the stakeholders work together to protect teacher (and principal!) pensions? If we want the best teachers (and principals) for our students, then we can surely collaborate to create the best working conditions that attract and retain highly qualified, creative and synergized educators.

Even if we don’t all always agree on specific solutions, the shared understandings will help us keep the conversation focused.

So, back to Steve's questions:

• What constructive role do you see for unions in education reform?
• What suggestions do you have for how the Department can build the capacity of stakeholders to participate meaningfully in the great policy debates of our time?

What do you think?

Teaching for profit -- say what?

Over at The Future of Teaching, John Holland has raised some interesting questions about the differences between "teacher leaders" and "teacherpreneurism." Check out John's graphic (below) to get a sense of where John is heading:

With this graphic, John has done a terrific job of probing the differences between “Teacher Leader” and “Teacherpreneur.” I like money as much as the next person, but I wonder about the “non-profit v. for-profit” dichotomy.

By associating teacherpreneur with profit, we embrace a extrinsic reward model of education. The implication is that teachers would do more/better only if we were paid better. I certainly would like a higher salary, but I think we’ve got to focus on effective working conditions that help teachers flourish. Nor are many of our colleagues just plain “lazy.”

Besides, in order to garner “profit,” you have to exploit some resource.  What services are we going to cut in order to create this profit?   If we insert profit into public education, then the goal becomes more about making money and less about fostering democratic habits of mind and body [& spirit].  Is "for-profit"  a model we want for public education?

Why not just pay teachers really well for their important, child-rearing endeavors and elevate collaboration, creativity and critical thinking as our aims?

Why Teachers Like Me Support Unions

I support unions because they are fundamental to a healthy and vibrant democracy.

Unions foster individual liberty while ensuring social equality.  Unions exist on the "commons" of our lives and stand for the sustainability of collective bargaining, safe and effective working conditions, and justice.

The good folks at EDUSolidarity are leading a campaign to support unions.  Read about them HERE, and consider showing your support.

Staying on Message

What's your message about public education?

How can we continuously engage the public without sounding like a broken record?

The short list:
1) Refer to investments in public education as an expression of patriotism.  Divestment in funding of education is unpatriotic.
2)  Describe smart spending at college (pre-service teaching), district and/or school level so that the ideas get out there.  What programs need to be in place to foster love of learning (or "engagement" or "sustained learning")?  Inform as you advocate.

The longer list:
1)  Stay on message.  Public education is about love of life-long learning and civil democratic engagement.  Even though it is exhausting, we've got to have everyone rehearse, investigate and explore this #1 assumption.
2) RTTT emphasizes student preparation to  "... succeed in college and the workplace and to compete in the global economy."  RTTT and other federal, state and local programs should also promote democratic engagement.  Public education is an opportunity for students to learn about the infrastructure of democracy.
3)  America's economic, political and social prowess depends on creative and critical thinking.  Standardized tests do an incomplete job of assessing either.  Invest in professional development so that teachers can develop engaging and rigorous curricula that foster both critical and creative thinking.
4)  Assess students' growth using a variety of measures, including 8-9 multiple intelligences (MI).  Standardized tests incompletely assess verbal & mathematical.  Creative and critical thinking has to rely on other domains such as collaboration (interpersonal), time management (temporal -- I think I just invented that MI), and analysis of mistakes/course correction.  Failure is an essential ingredient of learning.  On this count, high stakes testing measures the wrong things.

We can also assess (K-12 and beyond):
-student attendance
-parent participation
-graduation rates
-employment rates
-sense of civic engagement
-health statistics
-student post-secondary employability
-students growth towards stable home ownership or renting
-students access to libraries, parks and safe neighborhoods
--EMPHASIZE THAT STUDENT GROWTH IS SYSTEMIC
5)  Develop a rubric with schools, parents, students for "school readiness."  What do students need to benefit from a rigorous, engaging (and therefore joyful) curriculum?
6)  Assess teachers growth in collaborative "aims" [not "goals"-pet peeve] that are aligned to everything above -- or parts of above because we are not gods -- and bench-marked progress (1/4ly, yearly).

International Teaching Standards?

My colleague Zac Chase just shared an article that a national emphasis on reading and math has resulted in a drop-off in science education -- as compared to students scores in other countries.   That's certainly possible.  However, I think we can view literacy and numeracy alongside, or integrated with, science education.  How can we do this?  By providing the time and resources for teachers to co-plan effective K-12 curricula, especially within elementary schools.

Elementary teachers are especially well-situated to create integrated curricula that help students identify problems, create solutions, measure outcomes, and co-present with classmates. For example, the study of an urban brownfield (or the African savanna) could easily develop students' language, social studies, math and science skills.

Back to the international comparison of students' test scores.  If NAEP is going to be used to compare students' scores with other countries, then what metrics are the other countries using?  There's something very unscientific about standardized test scores in general, and when comparing NAEP to other types of tests, in particular.  Perhaps the TIMMS tests are better for international comparisons -- but to what end?

I was a bit annoyed when President Barack Obama said that we have to beat other countries in science and math education.  US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has been saying the same thing.   Both Obama and Duncan have suggested that America's economic future is a stake if we fail to enrich math and science education.  Yet if our educational prowess is a means to economic dominance, then somebody, somewhere, has to lose.  (Besides, it's American capital that is outsourcing, junk-bonding and/or embezzling.  Where is American corporations' sense of patriotism?  Oh, I digress).

Of course I want America to have a healthy and sustainable approach to education.  Yet I thought the purpose of education was to bring us together as a people on the planet.  Where are the international content (and instructional) standards that all people, all over the world, are collaborating and reflecting on?  When do we say we have to work with people all over the world to develop the wide range of learning experiences that meet all children's needs?

When do we say that teachers, all over the world, have to have the working conditions where they and their students can thrive?

10 Minutes of Bliss -- for the Effective Teacher

What makes you feel like an effective teacher?  What is it about where you work -- or how you work -- that makes you effective?

I often feel effective as a teacher at Science Leadership Academy (SLA)  because of my working conditions. I have a lot of bright and thoughtful colleagues, well-organized classroom resources (paper, printers, markers, warmth, lab materials, etc.), energetic and curious students, and a supportive administration. I have opportunities to collaborate with colleagues and co-plan curriculum, programs, and our professional development. All of these wonderful elements create a platform for consistent effectiveness, whether over a 9-week period, or within a short 10 minutes. Below is an example of 10 minutes that were especially productive.

Earlier this quarter, I worked with "KM," one of our 9th grade science students who hasn't had a lot of experience with writing or organizing. By using a collaboratively-developed lab proposal process, KM has been able to develop his exciting ideas about science, and then make them more concrete through structured coaching, encouragement, and direct experience in the lab. KM has been able to identify and describe an unexplained event, develop a hypothesis and procedures, and then experiment to find out more about his questions.

The 10-minutes I spent with KM in September carried him through October and November. Each time that I've worked with KM since September, his inquiry has become deeper and his knowledge is more thorough. KM now visits my classroom during his free period to work with other 9th graders.  KM could have easily become frustrated and lost in the mix, but because of his persistence and my availability, he is engaged and enthusiastic about learning.

These 10 minutes have been so effective because of the explicit commitment from colleagues within the science division to develop a common language around lab proposals (and lab write-ups). Our discussions and deliberations over the last few years have really helped me to refine and enrich my understandings about what student need in relation to the philosophy and process of science. The professional collaboration at SLA has provided the context and support for me to be more effective.  It's also nice to have a functioning lab -- with running water(!) -- that is attached to the traditional classroom space.

So what makes you feel like an effective teacher?  What is it about where you work -- or how you work -- that makes you effective?

Fun with Wordle!

As you may know, we just published a report of teachers' effective working conditions.  I then dumped some of the text into Wordle, a fun, word-clouds type graphic arts program.  Try it, you'll like it!