Tag Archives: teaching

The Teaching Profession Desperately Needs Some Linsanity

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ESPN’s Elizabeth Merrill waxes philosophic about Jeremy Lin of New York Knick NBA basketball fame. Her angle? Lin is inspiring legions of young Asian American ballers to rethink what’s possible.

In some classes I teach, I use an activity I created titled “The Making of a Multicultural School.” In the activity students assume the role of teacher leaders who advise me, the principal, on the most important changes to make in order to manage conflict and strengthen teaching and learning at an increasingly diverse, hypothetical high school. First the “teacher leaders” individually rank seven specific challenges nearly all culturally diverse schools struggle with and then in small groups, they share their rankings and work together to establish common priorities. I wrote the challenges by working backwards from a list of multicultural education “best practices” as described in one of James Banks’ many books on multicultural education. Our discussion is always around their rationale for their priorities.

One of the seven challenges, recruiting and retaining a culturally diverse faculty, almost always gets rated as the seventh most important challenge. Meaning in my mostly white, mostly middle class students’ minds, it’s the least pressing issue. This happens over and over. The usual reasoning, a teachers’ attitudes are all that matter.

My students, tomorrow’s teachers, are unable to imagine what it would be like to be a student of color and hardly ever see anyone that looks like them standing in front of the class, a graduate of college, with a professional license, assuming a role of serious responsibility. Janitors, bus drivers, and office staff, sure; teachers and administrators, very rarely. Year. After year. After year. What is the cumulative effect on what young people of color think is possible?

The bad news is far too few Jeremy Lins and Latino and African-American candidates are pursuing teaching credentials today. Meanwhile, the country’s K-12 student body grows increasingly more diverse every year. So the “looks like me” gap steadily widens. To make matters worse, fewer students of color can afford four or five years of higher education even with targeted scholarships and financial aid. Plus the Supreme Court is revisiting decisions that colleges have relied upon to admit moderately diverse classes and states keep ratcheting up teaching licensure requirements and fees.

Many newer state requirements, like content exams in Washington State, are proving nearly insurmountable to too many of the handful of candidates of color who persevere to the final stages of the constantly changing, ever more challenging, teacher certificate journey. These realities don’t bode well for schools hiring and retaining many Asian-American, Latino, or African-American teachers. It also makes it more difficult to successfully implement a multicultural education that inspires all students and provides them with equal educational opportunities. This is doubly true when too many teachers expect less from students of color as illustrated by this highly recommended personal story by Ed Taylor.

There are 3.2 million teachers in the U.S. As many as half are expected to retire in the next decade. Figuring out how to make sure more of those 1m+ are strong Asian-American, Latino, or African-American men and women is among the most important public policy issues of our time. Instead of focusing intently on that, opinion leaders and policy makers are choosing to tighten the screws on today’s experienced classroom teachers. They’ve convinced themselves there’s a panacea for what ails public education—making teachers more accountable for student learning by tying together their students’ test scores, their evaluations, and their compensation.

All of this does not bode well for an increasingly diverse country.

The Achievement Gap—Turns Out Family Income Trumps Race

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Increasingly, the widening gap between rich and poor is in the news. Despite the complexity of the problem, and the fact that inequality has steadily worsened over time, expectations for solving the problem unfairly rest on teachers. Teachers are expected to help African-American and Latino students achieve at similar levels as white and Asian-American ones so that we can compete in the global economy and maintain our standard of living. The repeated refrain to teachers is “close the achievement gap”.

Now social scientists are finding gaps in academic achievement are tied much more significantly to differences in family income.

As reported on in the New York Times recently.

Researchers are finding that while the achievement gap between white and black students has narrowed significantly over the past few decades, the gap between rich and poor students has grown substantially during the same period.

Sean F. Reardon, a Stanford University sociologist, is the author of a study that found that the gap in standardized test scores between affluent and low-income students had grown by about 40 percent since the 1960s, and is now double the testing gap between blacks and whites.

In another study, by researchers from the University of Michigan, the imbalance between rich and poor children in college completion — the single most important predictor of success in the work force — has grown by about 50 percent since the late 1980s.

The changes are tectonic, a result of social and economic processes unfolding over many decades. The data from most of these studies end in 2007 and 2008, before the recession’s full impact was felt. Researchers said that based on experiences during past recessions, the recent downturn was likely to have aggravated the trend.

Nevermind that the problem is complex and it’s completely unrealistic to expect teachers to close the achievement gap on their own. If you’re a teacher expect the “close the achievement gap” mantra to be updated.  In the updated version teachers will be expected to help students from poor, mostly single parent homes (or series of apartments or homeless shelters) achieve at similar levels as middle-income and well-to-do students.

The Most Constructive Ways to Praise Children

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Carol Dweck, a Stanford researcher and prof has written extensively about how parents should and shouldn’t praise their children.

She writes:

A certain amount of praise for children is positive, but I think many parents tend to over praise their kids, especially with the wrong kind of praise. We did a survey that found that 85% of parents believe you must praise your child’s intelligence in order for them to have self-confidence, but in fact, confidence isn’t really built this way.

Most young children have so many things that they love and enjoy that they don’t really need a lot of praise to be encouraged to do these things. A parent might share the child’s enjoyment and get into it with them, but kids don’t need a lot of praise for things they already enjoy.

The danger with praising children when they don’t really need it is that it sends the message that what they’re doing is for you rather than for them. Children will then stop asking themselves if they are enjoying what they are doing and start looking at whether or not they are being praised for it.

I must have botched this big time because when Second Born played youth soccer she’d inevitably kick the ball, turn to find her mother and me with the precision of a Moslem seeking Mecca, and just beam. Run, make a pass, pivot towards parents, lose track of opponent, smile ear to ear. Repeat. Dweck probably would have dwecked me because I tended to give a thumbs up. Later on, when it reached the point of ridiculousness, I told her to just play ball and I quit affirming her when she glanced. The damage was done though, the Pavlovian “have to make parental contact” mania continued. Come to think of it, I still give a thumbs up before and after high school and college swim races.

She explains a common pitfall:

Many parents praise the wrong things. They’ll praise the child’s intelligence or talents thinking they’re giving the child confidence and faith in his abilities. For example a parent might say: “Wow you’re so good at this,” “Look what you did–you’re so good at this.” Praising intelligence or talents pleases children for a moment, but as soon as they encounter something that’s difficult for them to do, that confidence evaporates. What happens is that when things are hard they worry that they don’t in fact have the intelligence necessary to accomplish the task, and in the end they lose self-esteem.

From there, what we find is that their confidence evaporates, children stop enjoying what they are doing, their performance plummets, and they’ll lie. When we asked what score they earned on a test 40% of the kids who were praised for their intelligence lied about their scores. We found that when you praise a child’s intelligence, you equate their performance with their worth. If a child’s been told “Wow, you’re so smart, I’m so proud of you” for something he’s done well, when he doesn’t do well he’ll try to protect his ego and instead of being honest and addressing his mistakes, he’ll cover them up.

Okay, if that’s the wrong way to praise children, what’s the right way? Dweck:

The alternative is praising kids for the process they’ve used. For example, you might praise their efforts or their strategy by saying: “Boy, you worked on that a long time and you really learned how to do it,” or “You’ve tried so many different ways and you found the one that works, that’s terrific.”

You’re essentially appreciating what they’ve put into their performance to make it a success. With this method of praise, if kids hit a setback they’ll think “OK, I need more effort or a new strategy to figure this out.” We found that when these kids run into difficulties their confidence remains, their enjoyment in the task remains, their performance keeps getting better, and they tell the truth.

If a child does something quickly and easily, like getting an “A” on an assignment that you know wasn’t very hard for them most parents will say: “Wow you’re so smart you didn’t really have to work at this,” or “Wow you’re so good at this, you got it right away.” Instead, I suggest people say “Well that’s nice, but let’s do something where you can learn a bit more.” It’s really important to not equate doing something easily with being smart or “good at it.” If a child has a hard time with another assignment she’ll start thinking: “I didn’t get it right away–I had to struggle– I made mistakes– I’m not good at this– I’m not going to do this,” and the original praise ends up discouraging the child later on.

Everything worthwhile requires some amount of struggle and some coming back from mistakes. The best gift you could give your child is for him to learn how to enjoy effort and embrace his (or her) mistakes.

Dweck’s insightful parenting recommendations apply to educators, coaches, babysitting grandparents, anybody connected to pipsqueaks. Here’s a former, closely related post titled “The Two Types of Self-Esteem“.

[I’m indebted to Alisa Stoudt on Education.com for most of this post.]

Education Story of the Year—Jon Kitna Returns to Lincoln High School

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In professional sports, the media spotlight tends to shine on the knuckleheads for whom there’s no shortage. That’s why Tim Tebow became a pop culture phenom. Fans long for players they can cheer for on and off the field.

Jon Kitna is Tim Tebow minus the blinding spotlight. A devout Christian, who after playing quarterback for four NFL teams over fifteen years, just retired. Here’s his top ten salary years from largest contract to smallest.

SEASON TEAM BASE SALARY SIGN BONUS CAP VALUE SALARY POSITION
2001 Cincinnati Bengals $ 500,000 $ 4,000,000 $ 1,501,440 $ 5,501,440 Quarterback
2008 Detroit Lions $ 2,950,000 $ 3,500,000 $ 5,875,000 $ 5,000,000 Quarterback
2006 Detroit Lions $ 1,450,000 $ 3,500,000 $ 2,375,000 $ 5,000,000 Quarterback
2009 Dallas Cowboys $ 1,400,000 $ 2,000,000 $ 4,000,000 Quarterback
2004 Cincinnati Bengals $ 1,000,000 $ 2,375,000 $ 3,190,000 $ 3,377,500 Quarterback
2003 Cincinnati Bengals $ 2,625,000 $ 3,626,600 $ 2,626,600 Quarterback
2002 Cincinnati Bengals $ 1,500,000 $ 2,501,260 $ 1,501,260 Quarterback
2007 Detroit Lions $ 1,450,000 $ 3,500,000 $ 2,875,000 $ 1,500,000 Quarterback
2000 Seattle Seahawks $ 1,371,000 $ 1,373,600 $ 1,373,600 Quarterback
2005 Cincinnati Bengals $ 1,000,000 $ 2,188,820 $ 1,001,320 Quarterback

source—USA Today

Instead of spending his retirement counting and trying to spend his millions, Kitna’s taken another job. Part-time math teacher at Tacoma, Washington’s Lincoln High School and full-time football coach. Teaching and coaching at his inner-city alma mater has been his wife’s and his plan all along. He’s excited to begin fulfilling his real purpose in life. Giving up the cushy, glamorous life of hanging with Tony Romo and Jerry Jones on chartered jets for late night lesson planning, apathetic math students, footballers used to losing, and slow, lengthy Friday night school bus rides on jammed freeways. Remarkable.

Sad that a story like this is left to his local paper and this humble blog. Every one of the country’s sports writing cognoscenti should be leading with Kitna’s story. How he was a screw up at Lincoln High School. How he drank way too much at Central Washington University, cheated on his present day wife, committed to Christianity, and turned his life completely around.

Whether you’re religious or not, Kitna’s commitment to service should inspire. Here’s a short video of Jon talking about his vision for the team. Football excellence as a means to more important ends. After watching the vid, I’d be happy to coach the coach on how to set personal faith—public school boundaries.

Here’s hoping he inspires a generation of students and athletes. I will be watching Kitna’s second career whether the media shines their light on him or not. And I’ll be cheering lustily for him, his team, Lincoln High, and the larger community.

More here.

The Purest Form of Teaching

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One-on-one tutoring.

I was thinking about that while mountain biking with Lev Vgotsky in Capital Forest recently. Well not literally with Lev, figuratively.

Literally, I was cycling with Lance, one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. Sometimes though even the nicest guys have a devious core. Lance took me on a trail clearly outside my zone of proximal development.

He said it was a relatively mild Cap Forest trail which means I really suck. I went down twice, once I laid it down fairly gently into the dense shrubbery lining the super muddy 18″ wide trail and another I went over the bars. In this pic you can’t really appreciate how much blood is flowing from my knee and ankle under the layer of caked on mud. Badass, I know.

Blud and mud

I told mi esposa, una professora de Espanol, it was like dropping a Spanish 1 student in the center of Mexico City.

One of the central challenges of teaching well is adapting one’s curriculum and methods to students’ widely divergent preexisting knowledge and widely divergent skills. That is what non-educators don’t fully appreciate about teaching.

For example, take a high school swim team with 45 swimmers, 15 or so who swim on a club year round, 15 or so who only swim during the season, and 15 or so who are starting from scratch. What do you do? “Excellence” advocates might suggest cutting the “bottom thirders” but public school teachers don’t have that liberty. So what do you do when some seventh graders read, write, and ‘rithmetic at a 2nd grade level and others at the 12th? Then, for good measure, add in English Language learners, students with special needs, and well, maybe teaching is harder than it first appears.

In one-on-one tutoring it’s easier to figure out what the student knows and can already do, and therefore, it’s easier to adjust one’s material and methods in light of their zone of proximal development. Given that, maybe we should redesign our middle and high schools based upon one-on-one tutoring.

Probably unrealistic because people are so resistant to change. People would protest: we can’t have students coming and going from campus all the time; we can’t have students lose in the community; scheduling would be impossible; we can’t expect administrators, district bureaucrats, and parents to pitch in; we can’t expect students to be responsible and work more independently; we can’t redesign report cards; and we can’t do anything that disadvantages our students in the college application process.

Here’s how it might work. We wouldn’t need nearly as many administrators dealing with crowd control and discipline issues. So we take most of their walky talkies and deputize the majority of them as tutors. Same with district bureaucrats. We also deputize responsible adults in the community to both supervise student interns engaged in service-learning and to serve as tutors. We also ask parents to sign on as tutors in an academic, voc-ed, or life-skill area of their choice—Spanish, math, construction, baking, tax preparation, bicycle repair.

Some parents either won’t be qualified to, won’t be available to, or won’t want to participate, others may volunteer to tutor not just their children, but others too. For citizens that volunteer regularly, we could reduce their property taxes like Colorado did for seniors who volunteered in schools. Minimum expectations for community-based tutors could be detailed and teacher-leaders could design internet-based “how to tutor” modules and train them.

At high schools at least, we would also add in a layer of peer tutoring. Every student would be guided through a process of picking an academic subject (writing persuasive essays or solving algebraic proofs), extracurricular skill (competitive debate, swimming), or vocational ed set of skills (cooking or basic car maintenance) that they would be expected to teach a few of their peers. Again, teacher leaders could design internent-based “how to tutor” modules for students and teach peer tutoring first thing in the school year.

We’d completely rework the traditional bell schedule. At any one time, an expert swimmer would be teaching a beginner how to breath during freestyle, an advanced violinist would be teaching a beginner proper feet position and posture, an accomplished math student would be explaining to a less accomplished one how to solve for “x”. Upper and lower tracked students would interact regularly.

At home, in school libraries, and in community libraries, students would spend about half of their time reading, writing, and preparing for tutoring sessions.

Teachers would spend half of their time tutoring in their specialized academic areas and half as mentors supervising the tutoring network of ten or twenty students who they will get to know particularly well over the course of working with them for all three or four years of middle or high school. Thoughtful teacher supervision of each individual student’s tutoring network will be critical. This approach to teaching and learning would only work if the sum of the disparate tutoring experiences equaled more than the individual parts.

In any one day, a student would meet one-on-one with an adult in or near their home, with another adult somewhere in the community as a part of a service project or internship, with a few peers in school both as teacher and learner, and with a few teachers both to be tutored in core academic areas and to synthesize what they’re learning from all of their different tutors. And again, in between tutoring sessions, they’d be reading, writing, and preparing for upcoming sessions.

Crazy? Maybe I did hit my head on that over the handle bar number I did.

Serena Williams, Teachers’ Strikes, Personal Experience

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Midway during her US Open Final match against Sam Stosur, Serena yelled “Come on!” while hitting a blistering forehand winner. Points are supposed to be replayed following accidental yelps, but since this one was clearly intentional, the line judge followed the rules and awarded the point to Stosur. Stosur went on to upset Williams who unraveled and yelled “You’re out of control,” and “Really, don’t even look at me,” and my personal favorite, “You’re a hater, and you’re just unattractive inside.” Williams was fined $2k on Monday which I’m sure will inspire her to take a long hard look at her insides (sarcasm).

On Monday on ESPN2 two analysts debated the line judge’s decision—Jemelle Hill, a youngish, always thoughtful African-American female sportwriter, and Skip Bayless, a pasty white*, cocksure, middle aged male who is almost always the debate aggressor. The exchange was interesting viewing because Hill focused exclusively on William’s gender, never referencing her ethnicity. In essence, she argued that since MacEnroe’s epic outbursts (hilarious picturing Mac wrapping up one of those with “and you’re just unattractive inside”) men have gotten away with far, far worse on court behavior. She added that Andy Roddick’s US Open outbursts were at least as bad as Williams. Bayless wasn’t buying it insisting it was a pattern with Williams and that she got what she deserved and should be banned from next year’s Open. What? Hill kept coming back to the obvious double standard, and surprisingly, to Bayless’s credit, he conceded the point at the end of the segment.

Hill was far more insightful and persuasive than Bayless, because, I’m assuming, she has direct, first-hand experience with gender and race-based double standards in her professional life. She knows it as soon as she sees it. I wish the moderator had asked Jemelle if she thought Serena’s race also impacted the public’s (and Bayless’s) stronger negative reaction to her outburst. But I digress.

Tacoma, Washington teachers are on strike. Among the issues, the district wants greater flexibility in moving teachers from program to program and school to school to better meet the needs of struggling students. Teachers want continuity and are fearful of one superintendent or one principal arbitrarily moving them from year to year. I hope I’m wrong, but given the stagnant economy, high unemployment rate, and growing antipathy for public unions, I predict the teachers will struggle to win the community’s support.

Also, only a very small percentage of the public has direct, first-hand experience with the challenges of public school teaching. Just as Bayless struggled to see a gender double standard in professional tennis, the public can’t see things from the teachers’ vantage point. I empathize with the teachers. Few people, even if they freely chose to enter the profession, would passively and indefinitely accept their modest (and reduced) pay, their increasing class sizes, and their district and schools’ top-down management.

I hope the public union vitriol is tempered, the conflicts can be resolved, and the strike is short for the students and families it will definitely inconvenience.

* Just as African-Americans are able to use the “N” word, I can use the “PW” phrase because I am PW.

Misunderestimating My Students

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Been out-of-sorts at work lately. The technical term is “professional funk” or PF. I’m disillusioned with the direction K-12 and teacher education are going and I feel disconnected from too many of my colleagues. As a result, I’m putting more time and energy in my non-work life.

This semester even my teaching seemed a bit off kilter. Classes are organic, constantly shifting entities. I’ve learned lot about teaching over the decades, things that increase the odds of me having success, but when students know and like one another and decide to engage with the content, it’s easy to create positive momentum, and like an orchestra conductor, direct a successful class. By “success” I mean students learn challenging content and skills they value while enjoying the process.

Similarly, when students don’t know one another and go through the motions, it can be a semester-long uphill battle to create positive momentum and an enjoyable, successful class. This semester my first year writing seminar was of the uphill variety. Even mid-semester, when I’d arrive right before class, everyone often sat waiting in complete silence. Class discussions were lopsided, with the same half of the class doing all of the work. Their initial writing assignments revealed a few strong writers and more than normal weak ones.

I didn’t dwell on my PF and kept on keeping on. It took longer than normal to create rapport and I never felt that we truly clicked. Did they like my amazingly clever short stories about my first year college daughter like the time her high school science teacher accidentally lit her dress on fire? Was that muted chuckle out of politeness? To make matters worse, a few of them couldn’t believe the marks I gave them on their first papers and obsessed about grades all semester.

All in all, I didn’t feel too successful especially when late in the semester one of the more energetic students said “I have to talk to you after class.” Modern College Student texts, she doesn’t talk, especially face-to-face with her professor, so I looked forward to learning what was on her mind. “You talked too much during class today. I didn’t feel listened to. It’s like you said at the beginning of the semester, good discussions require active listening otherwise some people give up. Momentary silence is okay.”

“Thanks for taking the initiative to call me on that,” I replied. “I appreciate it and I apologize. I’ll try to do better in the discussion or two we have left.” Simultaneously, I thought, “Why don’t you just take this letter opener and jam it into my heart and put me out my misery.” I pride myself on being a very good discussion leader, and on this day, I couldn’t even hang my hat on that.

Normally, teaching is the best antidote for PF. Interacting with students in the classroom cancels out mind numbing faculty meetings, difficult to work with colleagues, and university politics, but this semester I had a particularly resistant strain.

Then I read my writing students final essays.

Suffice to say, to borrow from W, I “misunderestimated” them. They found the course both interesting and helpful.

Here are two examples in their own words, one from the only student courageous enough to get up in my grill and critique my teaching in person.

• An excellent result of this course is that I enjoy writing again. When I was in elementary school, there was nothing I enjoyed more than composing. By the time I was in high school essays had become a chore. Luckily, this course has altered that attitude. Maybe it is a product of the confidence or maybe it’s because I enjoy the course theme, but I enjoy writing again. Not only have I learned about education from this course, I have learned about myself and I now know that I am capable of accomplishing more than I would have ever imagined.

     • Beginning the semester, I wasn’t convinced that my voice rang through my writing. I was effective, but not creative. In hindsight, I believe this was due to a lack of confidence in my own ideas. I really related to Frank McCourt, author of Teacher Man, his autobiography of his teaching career in New York City. While Frank was slowly developing confidence in the classroom, I was becoming sure in my own convictions, abilities, and ideas. This growth may not be evident to my professor or classmates in my writing, but I believe it was evident in our class discussions. I never feared speaking initially, but rather had trouble defending my ideas when challenged. I remember during one of our first discussions on Educating Esmé, the class was disputing Esmé’s obligation to respect authority. I was raised to believe that respect for authority is implicit, but many students disagreed with my point of view. I took their criticism personally and ceased defending myself. Over the last fifteen weeks, I have become more confident expressing and supporting my opinions. Now, I am really thankful for a classroom of diverse, opinionated students who tested my beliefs. This external confrontation led to an internal cultivation of character and confidence. This new found voice may not yet be obvious in my writing, but I hope to continue to nurture it. 

I’m glad I misunderestimated how the class went.

Their papers were a moving reminder of how fortunate I am to have a job that affords me the opportunity to make a positive difference in young people’s lives.

The Causes of Burnout

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Teachers, nurses, and social workers start out with wonderful idealism and enthusiasm for making a positive difference in people’s lives.

Why do too many of them lose enthusiasm for their work over time? Why, in worst case scenarios, do some even grow to dislike their work? Why aren’t work environments more encouraging, humane places where employee’s idealism and energy is encouraged, nourished, harnessed, and sustained?

People succumb to burnout as a result of some combination of these variables:

1) They are poorly prepared for challenging work settings. For example, teachers who are unable to manage large groups of students experience tremendous stress day in and day out. Stress that translates into fatigue, which contributes to negativity, which unattended to, leads to burnout.

2) Pragmatic work problems predominate so larger philosophical questions of purpose go unasked. Absent meaningful discussions of mission and purpose, people gradually lose touch with their work’s importance. This leads to a “going through the motions”, and eventually, burnout.

3) In negative work environments, a tipping point occurs when a critical mass of employees succumb to deficit models of thinking. For example, deficit-minded teachers often complain, “These students will never achieve, their families don’t value education, their community is dysfunctional.” Cynicism trumps hopefulness. Co-worker’s negativity rubs off and some teachers begin eating lunch alone. Inevitably, idealism and energy wane.

4) Adversarial relations with superiors and ill-conceived top-down directives cripple many people’s sense of efficacy. Once they conclude, “I have limited control over my school, hospital department, or casework,” their idealism and enthusiasm plummet.

Point two relates to this blog’s updated purpose which reads as follows:

This blog is about slowing down and being more reflective. Pressing Pause is devoted to substantive discussion about education and contemporary life. It’s for people who find meaning in essential questions, ambiguity, conceptual thinking, and nuanced discussions. A virtual college seminar or digital retreat based upon open-ended questions upon which reasonable people disagree.

I have a hunch that lots of people are desperate to rekindle their idealism and enthusiasm not just for their work, but life more generally. My hope for this blog in 2011 is that I can connect with more of those people and that together we can rekindle our idealism and find greater enthusiasm for making a positive difference in our own and other people’s lives.

Seniority-based Teacher Layoffs

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Thanks T for this article, “UW study questions seniority-based teacher layoffs“.

Should school districts facing serious budget shortfalls lay teachers off based on relative seniority? Tough one.

Rather than riff on the costs and benefits of seniority-based teacher layoffs, I want to highlight two underlying issues that education policy makers are ignoring.

First, what does it say about the state of teacher professional development and the profession more generally that many of the youngest teachers are the most effective? Learning to teach well is a challenging and complex process, the same is true I suspect for learning to be an excellent pastor, lawyer, accountant, or legislator. When we choose a surgeon for a complicated procedure we want to know how many times she’s performed it.

At what age do teachers do their best work? I suspect it’s about four to five years in which often means late twenties. This is an indictment on the poor quality of most teacher professional development and the profession. For most teachers there tends to be a dramatic, challenging, and rewarding learning curve over the first four to five years; followed by a plateauing; and then sometimes, a fatigue-based tailing off.

National Board Teacher Certification was intended to address this problem by rewarding the very best teachers with added responsibilities and challenges like mentoring new teachers, teaching methods in local schools of education, and creating exemplary curriculum for others. It’s been partially successful at best. School districts are incredibly conservative and consequently loathe to rewrite National Board teachers’ contracts.

Second, and this may surprise, but with a few important caveats, I’m more open than union leaders to efforts to compare and contrast teachers’ relative effectiveness. A recent front-page article in the New York Times about the Gates Foundation’s efforts to evaluate teachers influenced my thinking. I liked that the system doesn’t rest exclusively on students’ standardized test scores, but on video-tapes, student surveys of their teachers’ class environments, and other variables. Also important, it doesn’t appear to pit teachers against one another. Not perfect, but much better than traditional merit-based teacher evaluation pay plans.

But what Gates and other policy makers aren’t thinking nearly enough about is whether or not their video-tape/value-added-based teacher evaluation proposal is going to convince more outstanding undergraduates to commit to K-12 teaching careers.

Historically, teachers have understood the profession’s primary trade-off—less money, more job security; however, the story of the recent past is one of steadily increasing teacher accountability and decreasing job security. Meanwhile, compensation remains unchanged. Granted these are tough economic times. Numerous states have to make serious budget cuts. Still the fact remains, few of the best undergrads even consider teaching as a career. I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t expect the Gates Foundation’s current work to change that.

Especially strong undergrads who are considering teaching are less concerned about rigorous teacher evaluation systems than they are their modest salaries. And that’s the problem, the Gates Foundation offers no ideas on how to improve all teachers’ compensation.

Teacher Appreciation

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Classrooms are organic entities. Each class session contributes in some small way to negative or positive momentum.

This fall my first year writing seminar titled “Teaching’s Challenges and Rewards” began positively and then got better and better. It was a great group of young adults who got to know one another during orientation. From the beginning they decided to give my more student-centered course design and informality the benefit of the doubt.

I lead discussions one and two, and then they paired up and took turns co-leading discussions three through ten. The first pair did a great job preparing their guide, facilitating the discussion, and setting the bar high. Afterwards, I detailed exactly what they had done so well thus nudging the bar even higher. And during that first discussion I purposely sat on the floor, out of sight of most of them, to ensure it would truly be their discussion.

Did their writing improve? For the most part yes as they’re in the process of detailing in their final papers.

One of the students was a Portland hipster who was committed to becoming a nurse. I liked her a lot. Mid-semester she confided in us that she spent a lot of her senior year in high school hiking in and around Portland. She was personable, a thinker, and always had nice insights.

A few weeks ago, after class, she asked if she could talk to me. Turns out she was troubled because the course content had gotten under skin. Now she explained, “I think I want to teach secondary science more than I want to become a nurse.” I told her she had time to learn more about both and that it was a win-win situation, she’d be a great nurse or teacher, both important, selfless professions. Complicating her future was rewarding.

The students’ final papers are trickling into my inbox. Several have added notes like this most recent one, “Thank you for teaching such a wonderful class in my first semester at college! I really enjoyed my time, and I look forward to the next three and a half years I get to spend at this university. This was a very interesting intro class and you were a very good professor to have! I appreciate all of your hard work!”

That’s not meant to be self-congratulatory. I share it knowing I can’t take much credit for the course’s success. It was a great course mostly because they always came prepared, they interacted thoughtfully with one another, and they worked hard on all of their papers. There wouldn’t have been a whole lot I could have done if they came unprepared, refused to engage one another, and threw their papers together at the last minute. If this sample of young people is any indication, I’m happy to report the world is not going to hell in a handbasket.

I also share it to highlight how much easier it is to teach adults. It’s rare for elementary, middle, and high school students to write or tell their teachers how much they appreciate them. That’s why K-12 teachers deserve much, much more of the public’s respect. Instead of scapegoating them for a litany of social and economic problems over which they have little to no control, we should compensate for their students’ who too often take them for granted by acknowledging the importance of their work, tangibly honoring it, and making sure they know they’re appreciated.