Tag: great teaching

A Tale of Two Schools

Posted on | by Sam

(This article originally appeared in Education Week.)

There are two current storytelling efforts about two different schools that, if you’re not careful, might feel like the American version of a tale of two cities.

In the first, a 10-part video narrative about a year in the life of the Mission Hill School in Boston, we’re treated to the best of times: a place where every children is known and cared for, where learning is experiential and engaging, and where the adults are both extremely skilled and highly collaborative.

In the second, a two-part This American Life series about a high school in Chicago, we’re given a glimpse of the worst of times: a place where 29 current or former students were shot the previous school year, where some students spend their entire high school careers avoiding social relationships out of safety, and where every member of the football team has dodged gunfire at least once in their young lives.

On one level, these two stories do provide some stark, uncomfortable contrasts: at Mission Hill, there are good days and bad days, but on balance the school is steady, secure, and consistently supportive of its students. And at Harper High School, there are moments of personal transformation, but on balance its students are forced to survive in a Sisyphean environment filled with fear and uncertainty.

On another level, however, the stories of Mission Hill and Harper High provide the rest of us with a clear message about the state of public education as it is – and as it ought to be. In fact, it’s impossible to hear these two schools’ stories and not see three clear implications for school reform going forward:

1. Our nation’s schools need to do a lot more than improve reading and math. It’s fitting that Harper High School is a “turnaround school.” That means the U.S. Department of Education has given it an additional $1.6 million annually “in order to raise substantially the achievement of students.”

If you haven’t been paying attention, anytime you see the word “achievement” you can just replace it with “standardized reading and math scores.” In other words, the only explicitly stated goal of our federal turnaround funds is to raise student performance on tests. That’s not just myopic – it’s tragic, particularly when you hear the story of Harper High and you meet young people like Thomas, a young man who had witnessed multiple murders, and who already worried he would hurt a lot of people soon.

Not surprisingly, the story’s reporters met Thomas in the school’s social work office, where he was usually found. “Sometimes I just need to talk to somebody,” he tells them, avoiding all eye contact, “and that’s why I come here.”

Don’t get me wrong – every school in America should set high academic standards for their students. But let’s be equally honest about something else: in communities like Thomas’s, young people often have just two places to escape to – the streets or the school. And when we threaten the ongoing existence of safe havens like a social worker’s office – as Harper will be forced to do when its looming budget cuts take effect – we increase the likelihood that Thomas will take a wrong, perhaps deadly, turn.

2. Our nation’s children all need the same things. It’s impossible to watch the Mission Hill series and not see the value of ensuring that every child feels known, loved and supported by at least one adult in the school. Once again, this is a foundational element of the schooling experience that transcends academic content. As Mission Hill 3rd grade teacher Jenerra Williams puts it, “You have to know them to teach them well. And once you do, you just naturally become their advocate.”

We see the same lesson at Harper High, where social worker Anita Stewart says goodbye to a young person running off to class with these words: “You are a person. You are valuable and you matter.” Indeed both of these remarkable educators understand something the bulk of our education policies chooses to ignore: that unmet social needs become unmet academic needs.

This observation should inform everything from how schools are evaluated to how teachers are prepared. Once again, however, our desire to engender measurable school reform on a political timetable (as opposed to one that actually reflects what we know about how organizations can implement lasting changes) has left us with empty discussions of schools that “boost performance” and teacher preparation programs that act as if a deep understanding of child development is a luxury, not a necessity. And once again, we can do better.

3. Our nation’s teachers need and deserve our support. There’s no escaping the fact that in the last several years, we’ve painted a general picture of America’s teachers as lazy, protected, and inferior. But the stories about Mission Hill and Harper High reveal a different picture: of adults who are highly skilled, highly committed, and highly valuable to the communities they serve.

To be sure, there are teachers out there whose unions have protected them from sanction, and whose ability to impact the lives of their students has long since passed. I had some of these characters as colleagues, and in my experiences working with schools around the country for the past decade, I would say they account for no more than 5% of the profession.

By contrast, the educators we see and hear at Mission Hill and Harper are masters of their craft, and models for us all. They are more than heroic; they are ambassadors of a profession tasked with the most important goal of a democratic society: to help children learn how to use their minds well, and how to harness the power and uniqueness of their own voice.

For these reasons, A Year at Mission Hill and This American Life are exactly the sorts of stories about public education we need. In Boston, we see a school in which both old and young are struggling to actualize a Dewey-esque reflection of the ideal learning environment; in Chicago, we see a school in which both old and young are struggling to escape a Dystopian reflection of our national culture of violence. And in both schools, we see personal stories of hope and transformation, and a real-life reflection of the social and emotional foundations of a healthy school.

The rest is up to us.

OK, Obama Won. Now What?

Posted on | by Sam | 2 Comments on OK, Obama Won. Now What?

It’s official. Barack Hussein Obama has been re-elected.

Now what?

When it comes to public education, let’s start by recognizing that Race to the Top was well-intentioned — and ultimately out of step with a truly transformational vision of where American schooling needs to go. Yes, we need better ways to improve teacher quality and capacity; no, we can’t do it by doubling down on what we currently measure. Yes, we need to find a way to ensure equity across all schools; no, we can’t do it by ignoring the ways in which schools are inequitably funded and resourced. And yes, we need to ensure that every young person is prepared to be successful in life by the time they graduate; and no, we can’t do it by continuing to assume that the endgoal of schooling is a discrete set of content knowledge at the same time the new Industrial Revolution is removing all the barriers from knowledge acquisition — and accelerating the need for an essential set of lifeskills and habits.

The definition of leadership I offered in American Schools is the ability to balance a distant vision (“One day . . .”) and an up-close focus (“Every day . . .”). Great organizations, whether they’re schools or Fortune 100 companies, see, nurture, and respond to both mission and vision in everything they do. That’s the tension. That’s the art. And that’s the way to ensure that we’re not just solving the practical problems on our plate; we’re also working towards the aspirational goals that animate our efforts.

In Obama’s first term, we received a series of education policies that addressed the problems on our plate; and we were driven by a mission to perfect our ability to succeed in an Industrial-era system that no longer serves our interests.

What would a healthy tension between vision and mission look like in an ideal second term when it comes to public education? I’d suggest three things:

1. Vision (“One day, every teacher in America will be a special education teacher.”); Mission (“Every day, every school and teacher preparation program will work to deepen its capacity to prepare teachers for the 21st century classroom and its emphasis on greater personalization and customization.”)

Let’s begin by stating the obvious: every child has special needs, and every child deserves an Individualized Education Plan (IEP). Here’s something else that’s equally obvious: we are responsible for creating the “short-bus” stigma around special education, and we can change it.

Finland is instructive here. By investing deeply in the capacity of its teachers to diagnose and address the individual needs of children, Finland helped ensure that, in effect, every kid ended up in Special Ed. This removed the stigma, so much so that by the time they reach 16, almost every child in Finland will have received some sort of additional learning support. We could do the same. President Obama can’t require traditional and alternative teacher preparation programs from overhauling what they do, but he can certainly put public pressure on them to do so. And individual schools and districts can certainly shape their own professional development calendars with an eye toward that long-term vision, and a step toward the short-term goal of equipping teachers to become more fluent in the full range of student needs.

2. Vision (“One day, every child will be equipped to use his or her mind well and in the service of a more just and harmonious society.”); Mission (“Every day, every school and classroom will identify, and assess, the skills and habits it believes its graduates will need in order to use their minds well and in the service of a more just and harmonious society.”)

As I’ve said before, it’s time for teachers to stop defining themselves as passive victims of the policies of No Child Left Behind. It’s been a decade, and no one has stopped us from identifying — and then piloting — a better, more balanced way to assess student learning and growth.

Actually, that’s not true. The New York Performance Standards Consortium has been doing this for awhile now, and with great results. Individual schools like The Blue School in New York City or Mission Hill School in Boston have been doing it. And forward-thinking districts like Montgomery County in Maryland are exploring ways to do it more.

What are the rest of us waiting for?

The future of learning is one in which content knowledge stops being seen as the end, and starts being understood as the means by which we develop and master essential skills and habits — the real endgoal — that will help us navigate the challenges and opportunities of work, life and global citizenship. This future will require us to do more than merely give lip service to the skills we value; it will demand that we find ways to concretely track and support each child’s path to mastery, while maintaining our awareness and appreciation for the nonlinearity of learning and of human development. And the good news is the art and science of teaching and learning are not mutually exclusive. We can do this. In fact, many of us have already begun.

3. Vision (“One day, it will be universally agreed-upon that education in America is a public good, not a private commodity.”); Mission (“Every day, every policymaker and decision-maker will repeat this vow: whatever the most privileged parents want for their children must serve as a minimum standard for what we as a community want for all of our children.”)

In America, we hold two definitions of freedom in creative tension: the first is the capitalistic definition, in which freedom means choice and consumption; the second is the democratic definition, in which freedom means conscience and compassion.

This will never change; our challenge will always be to manage the tension between the two in ways that serve both. But it’s foolish to unleash choice and consumption in American public education and expect that it will deepen our capacity to exercise conscience and compassion. We can either see education as a private commodity or as a public good. And we must choose.

That doesn’t mean we need to get rid of charter schools or choice; in fact, I’d say it’s undeniable that almost every great school I’ve visited has become great in part because it had greater freedom to chart its own path. But it does mean any investments in school choice need to be proactively made in light of the original vision of charter schools, and that we stop pretending that schools with smaller class sizes, better-trained teachers, and richer learning options are only appealing or viable for the families of the wealthy or the well-located. Simply put, a great learning environmentis challenging, relevant, engaging, supportive, and experiential — no matter who the kids are, and no matter where the community is located.

If I were in charge, those would be my marching orders.

What do you think?

(This article also appeared in the Huffington Post.)