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Terry Smith
Quincy, IL
I'm an experienced teacher of elementary students and university education students.
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Terry signed the petition | -
Terry commented on the article |Nice study but shallow.You say: "Perseverance matters most in finding great teachers. Perseverance with teaching methods and routines, perseverance in maintaining students' focus in class, and perseverance demonstrated through exhaustive lesson plans..."
Great teachers - this unrealistic expectation of great teachers being required in all classrooms defies statistics on populations in any professional area. Greatness is the exception, not the norm. People are on a journey of growth, some way ahead of others, but the distributed result is what makes a great system.
Methods and routines- if we assume that education is a commodity, that students are receptacles to be filled, this makes sense. Note: teaching does not = learning. Deep Learning happens under special circumstances of which teaching methods are a small part. The chance to "be" and to "do" has more to do with learning than most other things being crammed into curricula in the name of higher test scores. However, meaningful, experiential learning situations are more difficult to implement, to grade, and to attach to testing criteria.
Being active in meaningful situations is critical to cognition and learning. Brown, Collins & Duguid, in Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning state: "Too often the practices of contemporary schooling deny students the chance to engage the relevant domain culture, because that culture is not in evidence." "Thus, students may pass exams (a distinctive part of school culture) but still not be able to use a domain's conceptual tools in authentic practice. "Consequently, contrary to the aim of schooling, success within this culture often has little bearing on performance elsewhere."
So if Teach for America people need way more than perseverance and structure, they need knowledge of how learning happens, not of how test scores rise. The test score hikes please Washington politicians, governors, and others who depend on elections and propaganda to justify themselves and further their careers. And as long as we have highly publicized congratulations of anyone working on testing or helping to make all teachers Great, the public will become more and more misinformed on the real needs of education, on real approaches that will help their children learn and succeed. For a telling perspective on government understanding of education/teachers, look at this blog by Anthony Mullen, Teacher of the Year. http://ow.ly/UL3Z
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Terry commented on the article |Excellent writing, Ira. I have been phrasing and rephrasing these sentiments to my teacher peers and to administration for a long time. I hope your human analyses of education over these past few days will be heard. The data units called "students" or "pupils" are, as some of us have discovered, kids living their lives, not competitors in a game of world economics.
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Terry commented on the article |
Katherine,
I understand what you are saying. I run a project-based classroom, but that doesn't mean that individuals are not allowed to be individuals. Forced group work is a misunderstanding by teachers who are following "programs" to implement this or implement that. In a well facilitated project, kids have lots of choices, time for solitary design, times for reading alone, times for joining or not joining the group. As well, there are other times when knowledge needs to be shared, help is needed, some kids watch while others do things, and roles are switched back and forth throughout the process. This is dynamic and allows what we call differentiated learning, or allowing multiple intelligences to evidence themselves. Overall, the socializing is key to the group effort and the constructed project knowledge. Done right, it is an enjoyable experience. If forced by a teacher, it become not enjoyable. -
Terry commented on the article |I taught in Texas for 5 years and watched the rise of TAAS and NCLB, and all the while partially affected by the religious conservatism, bur more involved in the liberal side of life from the Austin perspective. I have often wondered how long it will take for good old boy-churchiness to go one step too far ... this might just be it. Seems to me that whether people are for prayer in school, intelligent design, or whatever, more and more Texans are becoming enlightened as to everyone really having the right to choose, but not be told by the state what is right and wrong or godly or ungodly. Is Texas truly in any real guiding position for the rest of the country? I don't think so.
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Terry commented on the article |If someone would interview all of the people who went into teaching only to discover that it wasn't anything like they thought, we might begin to really paint a picture of what we don't need in the teaching profession.
We *do* need people who are there for the long term, who grow with the territory and reflect on the impact they are having, and begin to develop an organic connection to what it means to be in the presence of learning.
This is no easy task, and it requires perhaps more intellect that people might believe - to really be a teacher, to really help learning to occur in another human. Just being a ready volunteer, with a noble heart is hardly the criteria for succeeding in this profession.
One might make a comparison (with a little levity here) to dentistry and say, "I really want to help people have better teeth, so I'm going to be a Dentist for America."
Okay. Send in the well-meaning college kids and let them work on your teeth, or your children's teeth. Not going to happen.
So how are they qualified to teach? Do they understand how learning occurs? Do they understand that the kids they will face in the classroom have none of the background experiences or built-in scaffolding as comes with a middle to upper class upbringing - and do they understand what a barrier that difference in upbringing and lack of parenting really means?
Do they know how to create a learning situation attractive to their students, how to reach their students, how to find the internal thing that drives each kid?
John Dewey believed that students learn as they are attracted toward situations matching their internal needs, and if this inner key is not unlocked, then the learning never really gets underway.
Is it then, okay, to drop a TFA into a classroom and give him or her the opportunity to "learn the ropes" at the expense of all the kids who need a good teacher in the room?
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Terry commented on the article |
My in-school observations tell me that more time in school will do nothing to help kids. It is what we do with the time we have - stop the maniacal herding of kids from room to room; involve them in discussions or projects or activities that make some sense in the current world. Watch how fast they progress when they are interested in what's happening. Their relationships with mentors and teachers will prosper when time spent makes sense - the doing shows that the caring is there.
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Terry commented on the article |There is so much evidence that increasing time in school for students is unrelated to student achievement, even when measured solely by inadequate tools such as standardized testing. More time in class is not what needs to happen. Humans have attention limits. The drop out rate is one indicator that the school day is already too long for some students. The quality of education is not linked to time in a room - it should more properly be seen as the enlightening experiences, conversations, exposure to quality material, and contemplation a student goes through in the process of interacting with interested peers and creative, knowledgeable teachers.
The problems of low reading skills, of high dropout rates, poor parenting, or teen pregnancies are not ones that will be addressed, solved, relieved, eased, or erased with longer school days to artificially boost scores on international or national tests.
What exactly is the educational goal with any discussion to increase classroom hours to raise student achievement? Why are our politicians so concerned that international test scores are higher than those of our students? It is clear that more time in a school building does not make for increased student achievement. A higher quality of education is needed, and that should be the direction of the national discussion, not a discussion of quantity. -
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