Good Teachers or a Good Education
Hi Jonah, I have a question about the teacher tenure debate. I am currently in college and when thinking (back) to my high school experience, two types of teachers stand out in my mind. The first were the teachers that worked really hard, they were often young, inspired and inspiring. I liked being in their classes and I felt like they really taught me things. Then there were the teachers who had become disillusioned with teaching decades ago, used the same lesson plans year after year and seemed to show up just so that they could collect their check. Isn't it "undemocratic” to protect these teachers?
Sebastian R.
Montreal Canada
Thank you for the questions, Sebastian. Teacher tenure is a complex debate with logical arguments on both sides. Teachers do not want to leave their fate in the hands of administrators and policy makers who do not necessarily have the firsthand knowledge of what goes on in the classroom and whose priorities can change with political whims. Administrators and policy makers believe that teachers should be held accountable for their teaching and want to be able to hire and fire teachers based on a teacher's ability to perform up to the standards that the policy makers and administrators set.
There are two major problems with this debate. First, there is very little respect and even less trust between the two sides of this debate. The second problem is that the "debate" itself misses the point.
This debate represents teachers as the sole representative of all that is wrong with our education system. The way this debate is set up, we are made to believe that the problem with our schools is that there are too many bad teachers. The fact is, the problem with our education system runs much deeper than the quality of teachers we have. When we put the entire onus to “fix” this system on the teachers, we are ignoring the responsibility that we all have to demand better structures and more innovative thinking around educating our future generations.
Too often when we think about our educational experiences we think about that one great English teacher we had in high school, or that middle school Science teacher who opened up worlds of exploration for us. These special teachers stand out in our minds and the lessons we learned from them stay with us all our lives. But we also remember them because our time with them stands apart from the majority of our school experience.
In fact, many of us disregard the majority of our schooling and refer only to these stand-out teachers when we think back on those years and what school did for us. We excuse the hours of boredom, wishing only that we had more classes with that one great teacher, wishing that more teachers could be like her.
When we grow up and hear about “bad” schools and students who are “failing,” it is easy for us to think that the solution to the education crisis is better teachers. We think, “If only those students could have had my 9th grade history teacher; he was so inspiring, I bet he could get them to graduate.”
So we say, “Let's pay teachers more so 'better' teachers will go work in 'bad' schools.” We say, “Let's grade teachers and hold them accountable for their students' test scores." We say, “Let's fire bad teachers who don't meet these standards.” And then we don't say anything else. Now I'm not against having high expectations for our teachers; we need to create better teacher training and ongoing professional development that raises the bar of the profession. And I am certainly not against paying teachers more.
The problem I have is that we stop the conversation at the role and responsibility of the individual teacher. We forget to talk about everything else that makes up our educational experiences. We forget to talk about school structure. We forget to talk about after school programs, sports teams and summer camps. We forget to talk about our families. And we forget to talk about all of the informal, unstructured relationships we had with peers and mentors. All of these things are part of our educational experiences, not just our one or two great classroom teachers. So if we want to create a better educational system we need to talk about all of those components of a valuable education.
Keep the questions coming,
Jonah
-I(tm)d rather know some of the questions than have all of the answers
Posted in on Jun 18, 2010 - 11:12 AM
In this post Jonah deconstructs the teacher tenure debate and calls for a change in the way we think about stand out teachers.Hi Jonah, I have a question about the teacher tenure debate. I am currently in college and when thinking (back) to my high school experience, two types of teachers stand out in my mind. The first were the teachers that worked really hard, they were often young, inspired and inspiring. I liked being in their classes and I felt like they really taught me things. Then there were the teachers who had become disillusioned with teaching decades ago, used the same lesson plans year after year and seemed to show up just so that they could collect their check. Isn't it "undemocratic” to protect these teachers?
Sebastian R.
Montreal Canada
Thank you for the questions, Sebastian. Teacher tenure is a complex debate with logical arguments on both sides. Teachers do not want to leave their fate in the hands of administrators and policy makers who do not necessarily have the firsthand knowledge of what goes on in the classroom and whose priorities can change with political whims. Administrators and policy makers believe that teachers should be held accountable for their teaching and want to be able to hire and fire teachers based on a teacher's ability to perform up to the standards that the policy makers and administrators set.
There are two major problems with this debate. First, there is very little respect and even less trust between the two sides of this debate. The second problem is that the "debate" itself misses the point.
This debate represents teachers as the sole representative of all that is wrong with our education system. The way this debate is set up, we are made to believe that the problem with our schools is that there are too many bad teachers. The fact is, the problem with our education system runs much deeper than the quality of teachers we have. When we put the entire onus to “fix” this system on the teachers, we are ignoring the responsibility that we all have to demand better structures and more innovative thinking around educating our future generations.
Too often when we think about our educational experiences we think about that one great English teacher we had in high school, or that middle school Science teacher who opened up worlds of exploration for us. These special teachers stand out in our minds and the lessons we learned from them stay with us all our lives. But we also remember them because our time with them stands apart from the majority of our school experience.
In fact, many of us disregard the majority of our schooling and refer only to these stand-out teachers when we think back on those years and what school did for us. We excuse the hours of boredom, wishing only that we had more classes with that one great teacher, wishing that more teachers could be like her.
When we grow up and hear about “bad” schools and students who are “failing,” it is easy for us to think that the solution to the education crisis is better teachers. We think, “If only those students could have had my 9th grade history teacher; he was so inspiring, I bet he could get them to graduate.”
So we say, “Let's pay teachers more so 'better' teachers will go work in 'bad' schools.” We say, “Let's grade teachers and hold them accountable for their students' test scores." We say, “Let's fire bad teachers who don't meet these standards.” And then we don't say anything else. Now I'm not against having high expectations for our teachers; we need to create better teacher training and ongoing professional development that raises the bar of the profession. And I am certainly not against paying teachers more.
The problem I have is that we stop the conversation at the role and responsibility of the individual teacher. We forget to talk about everything else that makes up our educational experiences. We forget to talk about school structure. We forget to talk about after school programs, sports teams and summer camps. We forget to talk about our families. And we forget to talk about all of the informal, unstructured relationships we had with peers and mentors. All of these things are part of our educational experiences, not just our one or two great classroom teachers. So if we want to create a better educational system we need to talk about all of those components of a valuable education.
Keep the questions coming,
Jonah
-I(tm)d rather know some of the questions than have all of the answers
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