I Teach: A Teacher’S Handbook on Making Teaching a Profession Again

Whither The Children?

It’s on the test! – that’s the cry;

Not so much in what they teach,

But

HOW they teach it.

They rip the bloom of curiosity

From its natural state,

Plant it in a four walled pot

And feed it sterile information.

Yet it withers.

"We followed the rules.

We taught them all they need to know.

They passed their tests!

How did we fail?"

You shielded them from wonder.

Their natural quest for why and how -

Well – was ignored.

Therefore the question is posed:

Are we raising a generation of bubbled in bobble heads

When we desperately need more why’s men and wonder women?

Bob Bruesch

Not Your Normal Cure-All

Education in America is in crisis. So, what’s new? For more than a century American education has experienced crisis after crisis. Psychologists, educational analysts, behaviorists, futurists, humorists…. All have warned us about the future collapse of the American educational system. All have called for reform, and reform has come again and again. All these reforms promised to fix the problems of American education but never quite reached their goal. Let’s make it clear: the goal of educational reform is a moving target. Education is an ever-changing organism that builds up resistance to all would-be remedies because of its inherent complexities.

One thing is certain: government action (and often inaction) cannot fix what’s wrong in our classrooms. Grandiose and misguided federal and state legislation won’t solve America’s educational problems. Historically (and often hysterically), educational reform is based on political agendas and mandated administrative policy changes. All governmental educational reforms are reactions to the perceived failures of our education system. What is needed is a different proactive approach if we truly want to solve the current and continuing crisis in our educational system.

This proactive (and less costly) approach is based on three basic principles:

• View classroom teachers as the answer to the problems not their cause.

• Treat teachers as professionals.

• Attract creative, inventive young people into the teaching profession.

That is the purpose of this book: to restore confidence in the abilities of our teachers and to help those classroom teachers realize their value to their communities and to our society.

I hesitate to call I Teach a book. The term book may give the reader the feeling of being trapped between its pages, going down a path of chapters toward the glorious denouement where the plot concludes and all the questions are answered. I Teach, on the other hand, is a conversation between knowledgeable people who share a mutual interest: education. As with every conversation, your conversant may wander off track or repeat things. Sometimes the tone may become a bit melancholy or maybe even angry, but that’s all part of having a conversation, right? Please keep in mind that your author’s universe is education. My passion is teaching and teachers. Reminiscing about my adventures in teaching provides the platform upon which is built the central tenet of the book: Teachers are not the cause of educational malaise in this country; they are the answer! The first element toward solving America’s educational problems is professionalizing teaching and returning that profession to a position of importance and respect in every community. So please join me in this trip through a teacher’s experiences and, sometimes, struggles to maintain a level of professionalism while swimming upstream against the currents of educational fads. I didn’t drown, so maybe I was doing something right!

Teach: v. - to impart knowledge

We called it Teachers Trio. We bowled on Monday evenings from five to seven because it made Mondays, the start of a long week, more bearable. The league was open to all teachers, staff and parents of our district - an ideal place for interacting with the whole Educational Community. One evening, one of our female teacher teams was having a particularly good night and were celebrating with shrill laughter and screams. In the area behind our lanes sat half a dozen burly gents who were waiting for our lanes. As one of our teachers passed them, they were jeering at the silliness they were observing. One commented, What do you expect? Ya know, if ya can’t do nothin’ else, ya can always teach! The teacher turned around and said, I’d gladly allow you the chance to teach my class for a day. You’d want out before lunchtime! He was about to make a snide reply when his pal grabbed his arm and said, Don’t! That’s my third grade teacher!

I TEACH. A simple title, right? Not here! Teach is a loaded word that most people misinterpret and don’t fully understand. That misunderstanding is what this book is dedicated to unraveling – the misconceptions, the prejudices and the outright anger that word causes within the listener. Why was it chosen as the title? Simply because, whenever asked what I did for a living, I answered with two simple words: I teach. Then I waited for the usual response: something about a relative or friend who is a teacher, or, worse, with a pat phrase about how tough the job is now-a-days. What was, and is, always missing in those responses is a real appreciation of the momentous changes education has been experiencing in recent decades and the realization of how thoroughly trained teachers must be in today’s Information Age schools. Over the past two generations, teaching has metamorphosed from merely supplying information to students so they can pass tests and graduate from high school and, hopefully, get a job, to providing an environment in which students are able to learn how to think and evaluate information – in other words, how to teach themselves. Today the world needs these well educated graduates who are life long earners: people who will continue to teach themselves the new skills necessary to succeed in a rapidly changing work place. It is our teachers who turn the concept of life long learners into reality!

This tectonic change isn’t the simple swing of the educational pendulum from phonics to Whole Language or from basic math to new math. It isn’t the knee jerk reaction of schools to the most recent educational fad. It is a fundamental change in the way teachers see themselves and how society reacts to and appreciates their efforts. Recent media diatribes attributing the feared downfall of our education system to the lack of concern by teachers are a disturbing trend. Many ill-informed commentators long for the perceived security of the good old days in the classroom: the comforting sense of security found in teacher-directed, blandly scripted lessons and the repetitiveness of the workbook pages assigned as homework. With the explosion of technology and the media that started with cable and satellite TV and home computers and which has evolved into smart phones, notebooks, pads, texting, streaming and a plethora of other new advances that seem to appear every day, the classrooms, the students and the teachers of the good old days are long gone. New educational resources, new sources of information, and new theories of how children learn have transformed modern classrooms into laboratories of inquiry, exploration, interaction and discussion. This book was written to inform the public, including teachers, about this new world of school reform and regeneration and to urge them embrace the concept that new measures beyond one-size-fits-all normed testing mechanisms are needed to evaluate its effectiveness. Its central hope is that, collectively, parents and politicians can look deeper into this ever-changing educational panorama and see its purpose and power to provide our children with the skills they will need in our evolving new economy. It also challenges educational leaders and their bureaucracies to come to realization that fulminating against these changes is as useless as sticking their collective thumbs into a leaking dike.

A corollary to this charge against the education monolith is an attempt to convince teachers that they are – and always will be – professionals in every sense of the word. The stories in this book are meant to show teachers a way to approach their classroom activities not merely as a job, but as a profession, with all the rights and responsibilities implied by that word. The hope also is that the book finally provides a worried public a more comprehensible yardstick with which they can measure their local schools’ success – or failures. The word professionalism is used often in society but it is a poorly understood concept. Usually, a professional is seen as a business person or employee who has the ability and autonomy to gather information, design programs that solve problems, and work independent of the daily scrutiny of the system in which they operate. These professionals are judged to be successful based upon the overall success of the systems they create. Notice that I said systems they create, not things they make. In a professionally run classroom we should look not only for enumerating the things students learn; - we must look at the learning skills the students acquire. We have to be sure students have the ability to apply their newly learned skills to new situations; that they are able to create new systems for acquiring new information to apply to new learning challenges.

In these pages, then, the word professional will mean:

• Autonomy in the classroom with its corollary responsibilities of setting and meeting goals.

• Flexibility to adapt to constant changes.

• A vision of what students need to succeed in life and the ability to devise systems which meet these needs

• A reliance on collaborative approaches to solving school and curriculum problems

• The ability to understand the needs of students through the study of data and to utilize that data to create curriculum to meet those needs

• The ability to self-evaluate and collaboratively design, with the help of others, remediation plans for your weak areas

Professionalism is a mind set and a self-image. It controls what you do, how you think and how you define yourself. It’s the driving force behind our evolving techno-economy and defines the image of our technology giants. A professional’s energies are always aimed at goals and they are equally effective whether working by themselves or with a group. Finally, a professional is an effective member of a group with a keen ability to listen and to collaborate.

Yes, teaching has always been regarded as a profession, but can we regard it so in the terms of this definition? Sadly, the answer is no. When today’s highly trained teachers are put into classrooms they are provided with a curriculum, given a methodology they must follow, and told how to conduct their classes and how their efforts are to be evaluated using student grades on standardized tests. For our modern media-centric society, it is more understandable to see the results of teaching – test grades – than it is to understand the changes taking place in the process of educating students. Based on sensationalistic media coverage and constant changes in political direction, today’s teachers have been left adrift in a sea of uncertainty. Afraid of being accused of bad teaching, they have learned to do whatever the authorities order them to do. They follow the textbook/curriculum by rote, knowing their value will be measured by the results of high-powered standardized tests at the end of the year.

What has caused this neglect of the changes in education we have recently been experiencing? Modern American society has been immersed in an ocean of bad press about our failing schools. Throughout this book, we will often refer to the Four P’s of Modern Education: Politicians, Pundits, Publishers and the Press. Politicians listen to the cry for protection of the old ways and write massive laws that circumscribe every aspect of professional education reform. Pundits continually grind out new theories that will correct the errant paths of our schools, and write tomes of their discoveries. Publishers make their living producing ever-newer school texts – with a myriad of support material- and make billions after convincing school districts their materials will be the cure-all that they’ve been waiting for. The Press sells its news and commercial TV time by sensationalizing the perceived downward spiral of our educational system with dark doomsday predictions filled with fear and frustration.

With this constant barrage of negativism, is it any wonder that our teachers have sought the safe confines of teaching the curriculum? Why risk the wrath of a public in an ugly mood when you can avoid scrutiny by doing just as you’re told? Teachers, then, dutifully learn the nuances of every educational trend during teacher training sessions, trudge back to their classrooms and try to placate their masters by implementing what they’ve learned. But obedience never leads to innovation and subjugation never produces change. Before our schools can change and accept the challenges of our new society, teachers have to change the way they view what should take place in their classrooms. They must remember how students really learn and use that knowledge in designing everything they do in their classrooms. They must reawaken their passion for seeking ways for their students to succeed

Overlay this state of affairs on the need for creative, collaborative, thinking adults for our modern society, and you can understand why there is a disconnect between what the public hears and understands about schools and the quantum shifts demanded by the explosion of technology in our society. Teachers-in-training are fed a constant plethora of promises that they will be creative educators, free to explore new ways of helping their students prepare for adult life. But, when placed in a classroom, they find themselves restricted to following every nuance of a prescribed curriculum and are retrained in the methodology that is the current fad. If they want to explore new frontiers in teaching, they must do it surreptitiously, behind closed doors. I have counseled many young teachers to take from teacher training sessions the information and methods that they can use, and go back to their classrooms, close the door and teach in the manner they feel most comfortable using. How many young, creative teachers simply succumb to the system or, regrettably, leave it? How many choose to forge ahead with new ideas, new methodologies, new definitions of success? Paraphrasing the music of the Seventies, how many of these teachers are tired of being dealt from the bottom of the deck of promises and would rather choose free will?

Sadly, a majority of new young teachers succumb to fitting into the teach-test-reteach-retest shackles of education since it is the yardstick with which their abilities will be measured. Headlines blare the upcoming national crisis of a teacher shortage. The press alludes to the low wages of new teachers and the dictatorial rule of unions as the causes of this shortage. I believe the true underlying cause of any local or national teacher shortage is the fact that young, imaginative people do not see public education as a medium for using their creative and organizational skills. What they see and hear on social media leaves them with the feeling that teaching would be a professional straight-jacket preventing them from growing as individuals and from using their natural talents to expand their skills. After watching nine-year-old Sydney Smoot on Facebook slam the Hernando County School Board for using high stakes testing results to define her as a good or bad student, what eager, principled young college grad would place themselves in a system that does just that?

Recently, I was chaperoning a group of high school seniors – all top students – as they did a community service project. I asked them what they planned to study in college and their future life plans. Sadly, not one of the eight students even mentioned teaching or education as a goal in life. That made me curious, so I asked, Why not teaching. It was surprising to hear that none of them mentioned the low salary range of teaching. What they did mention was the drudgery (their word) of teaching, …too many rules and regulations, the lack of freedom and, most telling, …the lack of respect. Little did they know that recent college grads I have spoken to, when asked the same question, gave me, surprisingly, about the same appraisal of their reasons for not going into teaching.

Of course, there are those young people who do choose teaching as a career – although in decreasing numbers. They do so because of an altruistic sense of societal need, because they remember a great teacher in their life or have a relative who was a teacher. Many of this cadre of young teachers, however, soon learn that they must sublimate their personal desire to serve the needs of their students to the necessity of serving the needs of the curriculum, the needs of standardized testing and the needs of the system. Many, however, are lucky enough to land jobs in the new style of school. Some call these schools Professional Learning Communities or PLCs. These unique collections of creative educators have set out to redefine what a PROFESSIONAL teacher is. PLC schools are always led by a principal who is a member of a team of professional educators. School policy is designed collaboratively, classroom assignments and class lists are decided by the team and even the school calendar is developed as a group project. The PLC model does take time for a school to implement since it takes time for the teaching staff to understand and accept their roles as professional educators.

This, then, is the true task that our education establishment must put on the front burner: the Public Education bureaucracy must embrace this new professionalism and infuse it into all school systems across the nation. They must help all teachers begin the retrospective analysis of what they do in the classroom. After years of being told what to do, it will take teachers time to reach down into their souls and begin nurturing that creative instinct they’ve always possessed. Like relearning how to play piano after dozens of years avoiding the instrument, as I did recently, they will encounter many sour notes along the way. Soon, however, they will remember the skill and be able to create symphonies of learning in their classrooms.

The other great battle in this revolutionary transformation in what teaching means, will be the necessity to re-educate the general public about the new direction in which education is moving. We must wean the public and press from their simplistic reliance on published test scores to determine the quality of their local schools. We must provide the media with new tools of measurement with which to gauge the success of our new schools. We must demand that all laws affecting education make professionalizing what teachers do in the classroom and in their schools the key element in that legislation. We must demand that teachers are trained in teacher preparation programs that provide opportunities for them to create new and possibly daring approaches to helping their future students prepare for the ever-changing society and economy they will face upon graduation.

*******

Why did I choose teaching? I really don’t know. It was certainly an acceptable profession for a PK –preacher’s kid – but it didn’t have the glamour of an architect or a doctor. Are certain people born to be teachers? Nothing in my growing up years indicated that I had an affinity for teaching – in fact, I often struggled in school. Did I teach because I possessed no special skills with which I could earn a living? My college grades were commendable – two years on the Dean’s List, scholarship for five years, a semester in Europe. Maybe it was fate, or God’s Plan or the conjunction of the planets, but in January 1966, there I was in front of thirty-five restless seventh grade students in a self-contained classroom (no changing classes), with no windows and no air-conditioning. What was I to fear? I had three years of college education classes, a semester of practice teaching and two credentials in my hand. What possibly could go wrong??

As I look back through those forty years of teaching, I realize now that teaching is an ever-changing landscape, a variety of triumphs and failures, an environment in which you have to be a quick learner and flexible every moment. Most importantly, you must love what you’re doing, cherish your successes and strive to overcome your failures. You must truly be a people person, able to deal with a crazy-quilt of personalities of peers, parents and petulant students. The ultimate challenge, however, is to realize that you really can affect positive changes in your students – that you are there for a more important task than pouring the required information into a child’s head so they can regurgitate it on the test. Your task is to help your students yearn to learn, to help them enjoy exploring and investigating, to begin trusting their ability to improve their own skills. It will also be a journey of discovery, of finding out who you really are.

As soon as I found out the realities my school’s neighborhood and the truth about my students’ needs, slowly I began to move away from accepting what the state, the district or the principal demanded as the Word of God. I began to see that all the needs of my students were not fulfilled by the State Curriculum, that tests didn’t fully measure the successes my students made in overcoming challenges in their lives. I began to understand that all the things my students needed to learn were not ensconced only in a textbook, a curriculum or a state test. I came to realize that the percentages on a test scores read-out did NOT define a student as a success or a failure. I began to believe that, if these kids needed a new horizon, they would need to leave their sheltered classrooms to be able to see it. I began to fight for my professional rights in the classroom when those rights were constricted by layers of a palpably unconcerned bureaucracy.

This, then, will be a series of teaching vignettes, a collection of teaching stories that I hope will entertain you, educate you, engage you and perhaps even anger you. Although they are my stories, they are all teachers’ stories. Along the way, we will share experiences, hopes and convictions. Why do this, and why do it now? Simply, we must provide classroom teachers with a model of what a dedicated, creative teacher can do to change the way students are taught and how schools are run. Let’s provide young college grads a reason to consider teaching not as a fallback choice if all else fails, but as a first choice. Let’s convince them to consider teaching as a profession in which they can dedicate their creativity and energy to promoting changes in the system. Let’s help our political leadership to begin looking at creative professionalism as a cure to the malaise into which public education has fallen. Let’s allow the general public to regain their trust in the efficacy of our Public Education System. Most of all, let’s help everyone appreciate the need for a strong, forward-thinking public education system in today’s America. I will repeat this often: The American education system has to teach students the curriculum - What to think. But, more importantly, it must teach students how to think, how to create, how to be problem solvers.

Being a true Jeffersonian, I believe that the very underpinning of our democracy is based on a free and public education. Our public education system was developed as the great leavening agent of a democratic society. From the beginnings of our nation, education was never thought of as a tool of indoctrination telling students what to think. It was designed as a tool for expanding a student’s horizon by helping them learn how to think. If we forget this crucial point, we are turning our backs on the very foundation of our nation. The answer to the current discomfort toward our public educational system is not to condemn it, disparage it, abandon it. Rather, we must put all our energies into improving it and returning it to its status as an honorable profession so that once again our best trained young people are drawn to its challenges – and to its rewards.

The Beginnings

Ohio in the forties. Two young boys, having contracted rheumatic fever, lay in bed. But they can get better treatment out in California! Mom was arguing with Dad. Some sort of medicine – sounded like Oreo cookies – was being tested there and the doctor had said we needed the warmer, dryer weather of the West Coast to help us get better. Weeks later, with our old near and dear toys packed around us in the back seat of our blue Nash, we set out along the Mother Road, Route