I still haven't finished the New York Times Sunday Magazine cover story from last weekend about the importance of training -- not just hiring (or firing) -- teachers to be effective in the classroom, but have already noticed a couple of Chicago angles, including a quote from a DePaul University teacher grad who didn't feel prepared and a quote from someone at CSU that asserts teachers are to some extent born, not made. The gist of the article is that the teaching profession is too big to revamp by hiring new or different kinds of teachers, or firing really bad apples, and so the key is to help teachers already in the classroom be effective if they aren't already. What'd you learn from the article, or like, if anything? Are there any other Chicago connections I've missed or not gotten to yet? Building
A Better Teacher
Filed under: Teachers & Teaching
I have not read the article but I do support the idea of trying to improve teachers and firing only after that effort fails. Can you imagine the president supporting the firing of police because they failed to eliminate crime....wholesale firing of teachers is just as ridiculous.
There seem to be a lot of these type articles of late. Research that seems to repeat a lot of what theorists (Piaget, Bloomberg, Socrates) have already stated. According to these articles, these theories only work in practice if:
You're teaching 6th or under
You're in an environment where the truly disruptive are actually dealt with (read charters [or very good publics])
At least that's all I can see from the myriad examples of rookie "all-stars" that I read about in these pieces.
@cklaus.
Did you even read the article before dissing it? I suggest you should. It has a number of excellent points. #1 is that classroom management is paramount to effective teaching and is disregarded in education classes. The author also talks about VERY specific behaviors for the teacher that can (and DO) minimize behavior problems. #2 that an effective teacher should be well educated themselves, and not just in their own discipline. I read this in last week's NYTimes, began the article with a skeptical view and finished it convinced that the author was spot on. Do read it before you offer an opinion.
Mentoring teachers to inspire them works wonderfully. There must be limits where a teacher that just doesn't work out can be relieved of their duties.
The class sizes in my school are already in the mid-40s. Does that mean we'll be heading into the 50s next year? Inquiring minds want to know.
thanks for weighing in about the budget -- the conversation (and the budget details) are all being discussed over here:
http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/district-299/2010/03/am-news-budget-woes-science-fail.html#comments
i know it's sort of arbitrary, but let's keep this thread focused on teacher training, support, etc.
This is a good article that articulates the process which many veteran teachers use automatically. It's called task analysis. That being said at the end of the article the the first year teacher who was called "brilliant" by Lemov had earlier during her lesson "even sent a disobedient student to the dean
Teacher training never prepared me for what to do when 90% of my freshman algebra students still couldn't add, subtract or multiply integers and I still needed to get through the Algebra I curriculum. Nor did it tell me what to do when half of one of my classes is perpetually suspended or in jail. Is there a class on "catching up the suspended student"?
That's an interesting question. What do you do there? Seems to me you either downlevel the instruction level to the mean and therefore cheat the student(s) who are prepared for the material, or you teach at level and fail the half of the class that's unable or unwilling to catch up on their own time.
my belated take on the article, for what it's worth -- would teachers really want (be able to use) PD along the lines of what lemov and ball are advocating? would principals and districts want to pay for it? and, most important, would it work on teachers who weren't seeking out or signing onto the program voluntarily?
Media: Building A Better Reporter
07cover_span-sfSpan-thumb-200x243-96961 Some belated thoughts about the substance and the delivery of Elizabeth Green's recent New York Times Sunday Magazine cover story, Building A Better Teacher.
First, the kudos. It's a great accomplishment and a strong story over all. It shows tremendous effort, curiosity, and smarts, and took amazing persistence to see it through. The history of the profession is clear and well-written. The characters of Ball and Lemov (particularly) are brought to life. The snippets of classroom observation are vivid. The focus on what to do with existing teachers is a welcome antidote to too much attention given to issues such as selecting, evaluating, and culling teachers. Like I'm sure many other education writers, I wish that it were my story.
That being said, there are some serious problems and minor annoyances that undercut the piece and raise questions about its findings and usefulness.
MINOR QUIBBLES
Like Malcolm Gladwell and others, Green juices up her characters' mundane and sometimes obvious ideas by repeatedly describing them as hidden and secret, emphasizing their intricacy and specificity (with numbers, for example), and giving things Important Sounding Names (capitalization!). Ball and Lemov do this enough themselves, it's a shame Green seems to be aiding them.
It's considered fashionable in some magazines like the New Yorker for reporters to insert themselves into a story at some point along the way, but I found Green's repeated and not particularly necessary mentions of her presence to be distracting. Is this a Millennial thing? I don't know. I'm technically not a Boomer but this self-referencing from whippersnapper Green makes me irritable and sleepy. First I must floss.
MAJOR ISSUES
As with a recent Atlantic Magazine article on TFA, there's a troubling absence of criticism. Green's characters (and her story, over all) are essentially arguing for a massive expansion and re-engineering of a certain kind of teacher training. There are many out there who would say that more PD, or Ball and Lemov's kind of PD, are not the answers. Many teachers would balk at the notion of more PD, or the hyper-particularity of the PD that Lemov and Ball espouse. But Lemov and Ball don't really disagree all that much, and the closest we get to a truly opposing view is a former critic, Tom Kane. Access kills, like I always say. Too much access is nearly always fatal.
As with many other stories written about education issues, there's frighteningly little discussion of key issues such as cost, implementation, and political viability. Even if Lemov and Ball have indeed discovered the Holy Grail of teacher training, it still has to be paid for, delivered widely while retaining quality, and sold to lawmakers and other such folks who are pulled in a hundred different directions and might or might not like the sound of more (if better) teacher training. The Obama administration's request for teacher training may be doubled but it's still pitifully small. Training's simply not a top tier issue on the current reform scene, but the reader's left unclear and might think that it was the next big thing.
http://scholasticadministrator.typepad.com/thisweekineducation/2010/03/media-building-a-better-reporter.html
Donna
Sounds like you didn't read the article and are just venting.