Tag Archives: Education

#TeacherTuesday: Tony Danza Is Sorry, and So Am I

Trying to Improve Education? Talk to Some High School Dropouts

I’ve learned more about education from high school dropouts than I’ve learned from any book, article, or lecture. Despite holding a master’s degree in educational studies, working as a GED instructor for adult minority students in Southeast Washington, DC opened my eyes more than any other experience to the realities that students face as they go through the American educational system.

In many ways, my classroom was a microcosm for larger systemic educational issues. Students were shockingly lacking in basic math and literacy skills. Most of them had been repeatedly told as children that they were lazy or stupid because school was difficult for them and to this day experience anxiety just from walking into a school building. I even had a mother and her 18-year-old son in my class, evidence of the cyclical nature of academic failure and lack of opportunity in families.

Although these students should have been in adult basic education programs, my supervisor informed me that the organization had abandoned that program years ago. Many students received negative pressure in their social circles about going back to school, but being able to say, “I’m getting my GED,” still held a good amount of social prestige. There was no prestige, however, for those students to say that they were learning basic math and literacy skills. Due to sharply falling attendance, the basic education program was dropped in favor of an all-GED program.

While I was frustrated that my students were underprepared, their desire to be in my class signaled some important realities to me: they took pride in their decision to go back to school and were emotionally invested in doing well. Their reasons for returning to school were noble. Most wanted to get good jobs or hold onto the ones they had. Others wanted to be able to help their children or grandchildren with their homework. A couple even told me that they wanted to go onto college.

In all likelihood, many of those students will need to study for years before they pass the GED, and many will never pass it. And yet, they maintain hope. Perhaps merely having a positive educational experience was enough to put them on a good path after years of discouraging encounters with education.

My students knew very little of the scholarly theories we use to explain their situations. I am sure that few of them have ever learned about social capital theory, non-cognitive skills, or the legacy of Brown vs. Board of Education. They made no excuses for why the American educational system did not work for them.

As scholars, we rarely understand high school dropouts as anything other than a set of statistics. I was fortunate enough to learn at an early age that these people are valuable for much more than that. In our discourse about educational reform, these should probably be the first people we talk to about how we can improve our system, not the last. They prove that it is just as important to learn from education’s failures as its successes. And they prove that the people behind those statistics can share with us a wealth of knowledge and perspective.

“Medora”: A Team, A School, A Community

Teaching Is Hard Enough Without All the Haters Out There

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I just began reading The Inspired Teacher: How to Know One, Grow One, or Be One by Carol Frederick Steele (2009). I came upon it in a rather odd way. My dad was buying gas and a cup of coffee a few weeks ago and somehow struck up a conversation about me with a fellow patron. He mentioned that I had just gotten a degree in educational studies and she, who turned out to be a lecturer at Michigan State University, insisted that I read her book about teaching. My dad scribbled down her name and the book title and relayed them to me that evening.

Having never received any sort of formal teacher training (and very little informal at that), I’ve been wanting to gain some insight on pedagogy for a long time. I’m not sure yet whether this book is what I’ve been looking for, but I appreciate Steele’s desire to help all teachers improve their craft, regardless of their current levels of skill and experience. I’ve been intrigued by her discussion of a set of 8 qualities shared by expert teachers. Her list includes:

a strong sense of mission,
a desire to improve their teaching,
a holistic sense of teaching to develop individuals as well as impart facts,
a high degree of confidence in their own personal and professional views,
a peer support system that reinforces their sense of mission,
a form of support from significant others,
a sense of professional autonomy, and
a refusal to permit interference with their teaching mission.

I couldn’t help but consider how these traits related to the teachers I had while in school. I even went so far as to begin a chart in which I designated certain teachers as particularly good or particularly bad in each respect. Like probably everyone, I had a handful of favorite teachers through the years and a few that I really didn’t care for. It felt good to deeply reflect on my favorites and realize that the qualities on this list are indeed what made them great, or at least contributed to that.

But my analysis brought up some uncomfortable feelings as well. Feelings of guilt. I felt guilty for putting some teachers in the ‘bad’ column, even though I was trying to make an honest assessment. Why did I feel like I needed to do this? How much can I gain from reflecting on what I found to be bad teaching? How much of the big picture might I be missing?

I don’t think I was being unfair in recognizing that some of my teachers could have improved, but I was almost certainly wrong in labeling them as bad. It’s pretty unfair to label someone who has made a career out of an underpaid, usually thankless job as a bad teacher. As Steele points out, many teachers never progress beyond a ‘capable’ level of practice. Some might not believe it’s possible to get better, and some might not feel it’s worth the even greater self-sacrifice that’s required in order to do so.

It’s hard to blame them. The modern teachers’ college focuses on the practice of teaching much in the same way that medical schools train doctors in the practice of medicine. Teacher preparation has only recently taken on this clinical structure, but considering the import of the educator’s task, it certainly seems that saving a child’s livelihood is akin to a doctor saving her life. The American teacher sees only a shadow of the respect garnered by physicians, however. And certainly a mere shadow of the payscale.

As observed by Button and Provenzo (1983), the social prestige of the teaching profession is directly correlated with the difficulty of the material being taught rather than the difficulty of actually teaching that material. Hundreds of years ago, school masters taught Latin, a language that hardly anyone know and thus carried a great deal of prestige. When values shifted toward teaching all children, regardless of class, just enough to read the Bible and perform basic math, teachers’ stock plummeted. Naturally, it fell even further when women got into the profession.

My point is this: even today, society thinks that teaching is easy. They think kindergarten is babysitting, elementary school is a recitation of facts, and secondary school means handing a kid a book to read and a stack of worksheets to fill out. Maybe you’ll get some respect if you’re an astrophysics professor with a PhD. In reality, a college professor never has to worry about a little kid who wet his pants in class. Or a teenager who just won’t put her phone away. Or a middle schooler who somehow never learned how to read. Teaching is so much more complex than knowing one’s subject. It means staying attuned to students and their needs, along with a big dose of introspection.

I ended up reading this book because my dad bought a cup of coffee one day, but I wish I had come across it sooner. Being an inspired teacher is a monumental task, and most people—myself included—need to appreciate that more. A lot of teachers have more work to do and more improvements to make. But so does everybody else.

The Psychology Behind Terms Like ‘Failing Schools’

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It’s a term that we’ve been hearing a lot lately. It’s a term that I’ve used myself. But I never thought twice about it until I was in one of my master’s classes last year. The course was entitled “The Social Context of Schooling.” Usually we discussed the social environment in which teachers run their classrooms, administrators run their schools, and policy makers shape our education system.

That day, however, we turned the lens on ourselves as educational thinkers. We all know that many, many schools are struggling. Struggling to give kids the education they deserve. Struggling to meet the expectations that have been put upon them by AYP and the policies behind it. Many of those schools feel that they are on the chopping block, bound to close, be turned over to the state, or be turned into a charter school.

This limbo is undeniable, but what are the implications of labeling a school as failing, even if that term is informal? My professor urged us to consider the impact that our language can have on our own thoughts and behaviors, along with those of others. She also wanted us to think about how we would feel if the school we worked in or sent our children to had garnered that label. What’s the likelihood that we would feel any power to turn that situation around? Probably pretty slim. What’s the likelihood that we would throw in the towel and accept that if those around us have given up on our school, we probably should too? Probably pretty high.

Talking about the challenges that schools face is essential, particularly in this era of standards and accountability. However, my professor was absolutely right in asserting that we need to show compassion in our thoughts and words. Education is all about building people up. Everyone deserves to feel like his or her school has a fighting chance.

A Very Weird Animal

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Ever try to explain charter schools to a Canadian? It’s . . . difficult. There are so many things about the American education system that make it a very weird animal. And just as unique as our one-of-a-kind educational landscape is the educational experience of every single student, parent, educator, and policy maker in America. We all have a story.

I’ve seen a lot of the American educational landscape. But so has just about everybody else in America. That’s what I love so much about education. Try bringing it up at a dinner party sometime, and everyone will have something to say. Or rant. It’s as ubiquitous as the weather and can elicit as much debate as sports, politics, or religion. It can lift us up. It can leave us out. It can give us hope.

Even within a single family, experiences can be incredibly diverse. From my mother’s one-room-schoolhouse to my father’s Catholic seminary (which obviously didn’t work out as planned) to my own urban high school, there are a lot of stories to be told.

There are few forums for the recounting of those stories, though. I want to change that, even if it’s just a little bit. For all of the books and articles and lectures on education, narrative is rare. In a field of practice and research, numbers and data are almost always privileged over personal accounts.

My goal is to bring more voices to the discourse about education. Luckily for me, everyone has something to say.