The world of the classroom teacher is not what it once was. Use all three tenses of the word change – past, present and future – and you are describing the status of a teacher in any classroom in the United States. In the comparative, today’s teacher is not the same as your mother’s teacher and tomorrow’s teacher will not be the same as yours. The future of teaching is not what it used to be and educational leadership is trying its darnedest to help the person known as a teacher transform into her next and her successive iterations.
My wife and I watched butterflies recently while walking in a nearby state park. A butterfly is transfixing; a swarm of butterflies is visually stupefying. They were beautiful and bewildering. But, watching these beauties peeked our aging memories. How long does a butterfly live? Is the butterfly we watched in late August the same butterfly that migrated from Mexico or thereabouts to Wisconsin last spring? So, sitting on a rock wall we Googled and were reminded that the answers are a matter of weeks and “nope”. A year of butterflies is comprised of four life cycles. We were watching the third, I think. This butterfly did not migrate from nor will it migrate back to Mexico. It was born locally, is living locally, and will die locally, but not before laying the eggs of the fourth annual cycle of butterflies, those that those will migrate south and lay the eggs of next year’s first cycle. Butterflies? So, what does this have to do with teaching?
Teachers must transform or their current status as a teacher will perish, metaphorically speaking, just like the third cycle butterfly we watched fly out over the waters of Green Bay will perish. The transformation of a teacher is a change from an older skill set through the chrysalis of professional development to newer skill set. If not a more beautiful teacher/creature, butterflies are more beautiful than caterpillars, what will a transformed teacher be after this transformation? That is a chrysalis question!
From reading much of the daily political and professional literature regarding mandates and demands for educational reform, the key word in a changing teacher’s world is “effective”. I will now proceed to overuse the word “effective” in the context of the mandates and demands. Tomorrow’s teacher will be more effective in causing children to be better learners and higher achievers that today’s teacher. The term effective relates to qualitative differences that may or may not be quantified but will be observed and recorded. Almost every program that educational leaders are examining to assist in transforming teachers includes the phrase “… a more effective teacher…” or “…more effective teaching practices…” In “administrative talk”, effective refers to the credibility and reliability of what the teacher does to cause children to achieve measureable learning.
How will we know that a transformed teacher is a more effective teacher? By their effects. If we place learning on a scale of 1 to 1oo and consider any aspect of child learning as the aspect of interest on that scale, teachers are responsible for moving the needle of measurement forward from the current status to an improved and greater status tomorrow. The particular aspect may be academic learning, such as reading and comprehending complex texts or quantifiable problems using mathematics. Or, it may be performance-based learning, such as in music, art or theater. Or, it may be social learning, such as the ability to collaborate and effectively work in groups. Moving the needle may refer to an immediate gain in learning achievement, as in causing annual growth, or it may refer to learning over time, as in causing all high school graduates to be college and/or career ready. In all matters related to teachers, the requirement is that teachers become more effective in causing positive changes in learning. No matter the aspect of education, the finger of change points to the teacher to be “the” causation of moving the needle that measures learning status. Effective teachers move the needle.
So, what will happen in the teacher chrysalis that will turn today’s apparently less effective teacher into tomorrow’s more effective teacher? In simple terms, it will be the same causation that teachers are expected to affect in their classrooms. Educational leaders and professional developers will be required to cause improvement in a teacher’s skill sets so that effective use of those improved skill sets will cause improved student achievement. Not yet close to answering the question of what happens in the chrysalis? Consider these two transforming agents.
First, the teacher must become a more effective learner of effective teaching practices. I used the word twice in the last sentence for a purpose. There is no getting around the fact that the teacher alone is the most significant element in changing teaching practices. Think of it as volition. If the teacher wants to, the teacher will. In the past, volition was soft. A teacher may or may not have chosen to change or even to engage wholeheartedly in professional development. Their professional life was not on the line. Today, volition is hard. In order to be an employed teacher, a teacher must be an effective user of effective teaching practices. Like the butterfly cycles, the soft era of teacher evolutionary change has ended and the hard era of teacher revolutionary change is upon us. The chrysalis of professional development is not optional nor is it for the lighthearted. Caterpillars do not exit the chrysalis stage as caterpillars.
Second, teachers will need extreme coaching in order to effectively learn new skills sets for teaching more effectively. Why coaches? Because it is nigh unto impossible for a working teacher to become a changed teacher alone. The reason that help is necessary lies in this analogy. Try competing in a marathon and somewhere between the 6th and 20th mile learn that you don’t have a powerful enough kick to beat your competitors to the finish line. The only way to develop a powerful kick is to practice “kicking” or sprinting for half miles at a time while you run the marathon. Even though you can’t stop running your marathon, you must execute a series of sprints so that when you near the 25th mile you can kick to the finish line. Impossible! For a marathon runner, but not for a teacher. This is what the mandates for teacher reform are demanding. A “teaching” teacher who must become a more effective teacher while teaching children in her classroom every day and being held accountable for their learning achievement. This is why expert/coaches are essential.
Coaching provides the necessary and discreet focus on a set of teaching practices while the teacher teaches. During coaching episodes that take place within a normal teaching day, the expert/coach gives the teacher direct instruction, observed practice, insightful and clinical feedback, clarifying instruction, and validation for the effective use of an effective teaching practice. Some wonder why a teacher should not be expected to make these transformations alone, without coaching. They can’t because of the dual and contradictory demand that they conduct ongoing teaching of their assigned students and curriculum while at the same time learning new strategies for teaching those same curricula and students. They can, however, with the assistance of episodic coaching, clinical but not evaluative training, and time and assistance for inserting newly learned effective teaching practices into their ongoing teaching. And, that is why educational leaders are adding coaches to district personnel rosters.
Now, the hard work begins. Educational leaders must do what they are hired to do – make an informed decision, give direction and provide resources. It would be easy and fully unfair to say that tomorrow’s effective teacher must be effective in all of the new aspects of teacher effectiveness accountability. Administrators must make the hard decision of prioritizing the skills sets of effective teaching practices they will require a teacher to learn and practice. It is fair to assign different skill sets for different teachers but it is not fair to assign all skill sets to any one teacher or all teachers collectively. It is most fair and reasonable to point at one skill set at a time so that over time a teacher effectively learns improved effective teaching practices. Administrators must use backward design to cause this – children will demonstrate higher achievement as a result of their teachers using more effective teaching practices as a result of professional development between teachers and expert/coaches that was prioritized and supported by administrative actions.
Administrators must be careful not to hire token coaches or coaches without mandates. A token coach is a single or handful of trainer/coaches hired so that the district can take credit of having hired coaches to assist the professional development of district teachers. Token hires will not get the job done. A coach without a mandate is hired to cause an untold number of changes in an untold number of teachers. A mandate is the administrator’s accountability line with a coach – “you are hired to cause these teachers to learn and use these specific effective teaching practices.” Expert/coaches with clear mandates can cause the required effects.
What an incredible and exciting time in the life of a teacher. Change is and will happen. Change will be most effective if it is the natural result of a change process that is well thought out, well designed, well administered, well coached and well learned by effective teachers. The chrysalis is a magical place for changing a caterpillar into a butterfly. The chrysalis of change for effective teaching can be just as profound.