Now is the Time for Creative, Smart People to Become Teachers

Last weekend Nancie Atwell was announced as the first winner of the $1 Million Global Teacher Prize in Dubai.  She is an amazing teacher, and incredible woman, and a wonderful choice. Her message of student choice, her service to her students, her approach to literacy, and her representation of the profession are inspirations to the rest of us that work with students every day.

After winning the Prize, in an interview with CNN, Nancie made a comment that has gone viral.  I'm sure you've seen it now.  When asked if she would advise kids to become teachers, she said:

"Honestly, right now, I encourage them to look in the private sector.  Public school teachers are so constrained right now by the Common Core Standards and the tests that are developed to monitor what teachers are doing with them. It's a movement that's turned teachers into technicians, not reflective practitioners.  If you're a creative, smart young person, I don't think this is the time to go into teaching."

And, as much as I admire and respect Nancie, I disagree with her on this.

She's not wrong about the fact that teachers have been turned into technicians.  She's not wrong that the culture in public education makes it difficult for teachers to do what's right for students.  She's not wrong that the way the Common Core Standards are being implemented is forcing teachers to value the content to be covered more than individual student needs.

But, it is the perfect time for creative, smart people to go into teaching.

People choose teaching because they want to make a difference.  They want to help students reach their potential.  They want to create a future that is better than the present.  They want to pass their gifts on to future generations.

People become teachers because they want to change the world.

No teacher I ever met went into teaching because they wanted a easy career. If they did, they are a fool. Teaching isn't easy. It's insanely complicated and hard. The most important things always are.

It's especially hard to be a public school teacher right now for all the reasons Nancie talked about. That's why we need creative, smart young people to flock to the profession.  And, it's all the more reason that we, as teachers, should be encouraging them to do so.  If we don't have an optimistic vision that we can overcome the profiteering off education, the political strife hurting our students, and the short sided view that numbers matter more than children, then who is left to fight for our kids?

Are things bad right now?  Absolutely.  But, the pendulum is swinging.  Parents are objecting to oppressive testing all over the country and opting their children out.  Students are organizing sit-ins and walk-outs all in brilliant displays of civil disobedience because they recognize what's being done to them.  Teachers are organizing to fight against anti-student policies. Just like so many other times in history, passionate people are affecting positive change.

The tipping point is coming.  And when it does, teachers will be in a position to help define what education should be and what learning will look like in an age of information abundance and connectivity. We will be part of the conversation about how education can be a tool to create a better world instead of creating higher corporate stock prices.

When that time comes, we need the most creative, passionate, visionary teachers speaking for us - teachers like Nancie and the other top-10 finalists for the Global Teacher Prize.

If you are a creative, smart young person who wants to be a teacher now is your time.  There's never been a better opportunity to change the world.

Testing: The Enemy of Life-Long Learning

This morning, as I was watching my wife make pancakes for breakfast, I started thinking about the absurdity of testing.  Lori is an incredible cook, but has never once taken or passed a cooking test.  She just learned because she enjoyed it.  She tries new recipes, and we give her feedback on those recipes, which she then uses to learn more.

This got me thinking about how harmful a testing culture is for our students.  I'm not just talking about standardized high-stakes tests, but all tests that are designed to measure learning out of the context for which that learning needs to be used.

Photo credit:  Wikipedia

People always say, "We need tests because life is full of tests."  That's nonsense.  Life isn't full of tests.  It's full of assessments.  As an adult, I can count the number of tests I've had to take since college on 1 hand.  As adults, we do stuff and either succeed or learn to do something differently the next time.  If I make pancakes for my kids, I don't need to pass a test first to do it.  I just make them.  And if they are awful, I either fix the recipe or get asked to make omelets next time. 

That's life.  Trial and error.  

The vast majority of adults don't take tests, but we are constantly tested (assessed would be a better word), and we get lots of feedback. When we prepare kids for a world of taking tests, we don't prepare them for the real world which will require them to process the feedback they constantly get from their assessments. Testing forces them to see things as black and white, success or failure. It teaches them that either they know something, or they don't. It doesn't teach them to learn what they don't know. 

Testing teaches our students not to be the life-long learners that we so often preach about in schools, but upon which we so rarely focus our efforts.  

If we really care about our students being life long learners, we need to start assessing them in a way that encourages them to learn from their mistakes.  We need to move away from a culture of testing and towards a culture of meaningful, relevant assessment that mirrors what students will see when they leave our schools.  

Why Don't Parents Appreciate "Reforms"?

We keep hearing over and over again that recent education "reforms" are good for children.  Proponents of this "reform" movement will say, "Sure, selfish teachers and those nasty unions hate what we're doing, but it's good for students and their parents."

I find that a bit curious.  In my 16 years of teaching I've never had a parent say any of the following things:

• "I really wish my child had more students in their class.  She is getting too much attention from her teacher."
• "My child is too engaged in your class and has too much fun learning.  Please do more test prep with him."
• "I'm really upset that my child is becoming too well rounded.  I'd really appreciate if you stopped teaching her anything but reading and math."
• "My child's school has too many resources, the facilities are too nice, and I hate that it's so easy to learn in that environment.  I wish they would let the place get run down a bit."
• "Kindergarten was terrible for my child.  She would have been so much better off if it wasn't available.  My child would have been so much better prepared for first grade if there was no kindergarten."
• "It would be so much better for my child if they eliminated all of those extracurricular activities."
• "Instead of spending money on children, I wish the school would give more to companies that publish test-prep materials."
• "All that learning time is bad for my child.  I wish you would spend less time letting them learn, and more time testing how much they learned."
• "I love the stress my child feels during the three weeks the state tests are given."

You would think if these "reforms" were making our schools so much better that parents would be more aware of the great changes going on.  Maybe they just don't know what's good for their kids as well as legislators do.

I don't fight against high-stakes standardized testing, budget cuts, allowing for-profit charter school management companies to siphon public school funds, and the influence huge test-prep corporations have over legislators because I'm a member of a teacher's union or because I am worried about my job.  There's a much more important reason.

Like every other teacher I know, I chose my career because I wanted to help help kids find the potential inside themselves so that future generations are better than mine.  I want kids to love learning, and to develop their talents so that they have every opportunity to be successful in their lives.  Like every other parent I know, I want the same things for my own children. 

I fight because "reform" is stealing the future from our students and my children.

A Sad, Absurd Contrast

Last night Educon opened with a panel discussion on innovation.  I spent an hour and a half watching and learning from that discussion in Philadelphia with a teacher in Australia through the power of 21st century technology.

Earlier in the day my students used the same technology to spend an hour and a half in front of a computer taking a district mandated multiple choice benchmark exam.

If absurd misuses of 21st century technology such as this continue to be commonplace, should we really be perplexed when our students graduate unprepared for the world in which we will send them?

Educon 2.4 Panel - Photo Credit: Flickr/kjarrett

Student Learning vs. Student Evaluation

Image: Paul Gooddy / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Is it more important for us as educators to foster learning, or to evaluate our students?  I would bet that the majority of teachers would agree that our primary purpose is to promote learning.  I would hope that teachers prioritize teaching and learning over judging and evaluating, even if our current educational system doesn't.

For this reason, I am often perplexed by the push back on the idea of re-testing students.  I'd love to not give tests and focus on simply assessing student learning without grades, but that's not possible in our current system.  If a student doesn't learn something or tests poorly, isn't it my job to do what I can to remedy that?  Shouldn't I make sure that student learns?  Shouldn't I see this as a sign that I should give them more assistance, re-teach them, or get them some other sort of help?  Wouldn't it be beneficial to that student to have someone demand they actually learn instead of letting them go through school without doing so?

I've heard the arguments against re-testing, and I am yet to hear one that makes sense to me.

Re-testing allows kids to be lazy.  If they failed it's because they didn't study.

Perhaps the student's poor initial grade was due to lack of studying.  I refuse to use their laziness as an excuse to not fullfil my mission as a teacher.  It is my job to help them learn, not to punish them for laziness.  Then again, maybe they weren't lazy.  Maybe they didn't study because they were wondering where their next meal was coming from.  Or whether Mom would come home drunk that night.  Or whether their Dad's parole hearing was going to go well.  Or whatever.  It is not my job to judge.  It is my job to promote learning.

There's no re-testing in the "real world"

Really?  You don't think that doctors learn from their mistakes?  Or that teachers don't have lessons that fail miserably?  Or that artists never create works that are less than their best?  Or that those who work in sales never have days where they don't close a deal?  Or that lawyers never lose a case?  Life is full of failure.  Learning from one's mistakes is much more important than avoiding failure.

If you allow a kid to re-test and they get a higher grade than one who doesn't, that's not fair.

As I said above, assessing learning is much more important to me than assigning a grade.  "Assessment" and "grading" are not interchangeable terms.  When we use them as such, we are implying to students that assigning a score to them is more important than what they've learned.  They start to jump through hoops to get praise and good grades instead of making connections because that's what we are training them to do. Sure, the practice of re-testing might make it harder for kids (or their parents) to feel superior to others because they are a "straight A student", but is that really a bad thing?  Maybe the school can save some money on the "My kid is an honor student and yours is dumb" bumper stickers.

There's no time to re-test.  I've got to cover X, Y and Z.  Plus, what would I do with all the other kids?

There's no doubt that having a classroom where you are meeting the needs of all the students is difficult. It can be done, though.  I've had many classes where I'm sitting with a small group of kids who need more help while other groups of kids who already have proven they understand the topic are recording a podcast about it, developing a narrated slide show, using web 2.0 apps to produce content for our wiki, or sharing their learning in other ways.  The best part is that the content being created by the groups who already understand can be used as a way to study for the kids in the group who need more help that night.  Had I not taken the extra time to re-teach and allow for re-testing, some of my students would have never learned what they needed to, and others would have never had the opportunity to teach it, which deepened their understanding.  To me, not doing this in order to "cover" other topics that my students may or may not learn before moving on to "cover" something else seems destined to leave gaps in understanding for most kids.  

I guess it all comes down to how you view teaching.  If we are the deliverers of instruction, and it is the students' responsibility to learn, then there is no reason to re-test kids.  It's a nice, convenient way to look at things because it takes all the responsibility for failing students and places it upon students and their parents.  

Of course, if my job is to teach students and make sure they learn, not re-teaching and re-testing doesn't make sense.  Sure, there will still be students who struggle.  Maybe there are factors outside of my control that are preventing them from learning.  But taking this point of view ensures that their struggles won't be because of me.