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When Trust Is Reciprocal, Great Things Happen

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“In my last visits to your classroom, I was not certain I was in a math class.  You and your students were talking about current events on three consecutive days”, her principal told her.

“It’s my classroom and I will determine what my students do there”, she told her principal.

“All of your students made good progress this year as we look at fall and spring assessments.  Your tier 2 attention to a handful who had some significant gaps last fall really paid off”, her principal said in the last weeks of the school year.

The tension between a principal’s supervision of teaching and student learning and a teacher’s freedom to teach is real.  Principals and teachers each have skin in the game of what is taught, how it is taught, and the outcomes of student instruction.  The tension is a positive force when both parties understand their roles and responsibilities.  Tension becomes negative when either party strays into the other’s role and responsibility.  At its best, the tension is shared, and each trusts the other as a professional.  At its worst, it is a drama and a showdown.

A principal’s role and responsibility.

Principals are the working interface between school board policies and approved curricula and the classrooms, theaters, libraries, and fields where teaching, directing, and coaching take place.  In theory and practice, principals are instructional leaders.  It is important for all faculty to know the why and wherefore of a principal’s role and responsibility.

Principals are legally authorized to supervise teachers regarding the teacher’s curriculum and instruction.  Wisconsin state statute 118.01 directs school boards to “provide curriculum, course requirements, and instruction consistent with the goals and expectations established” in the next section of that statute.  Further, statute 118.24 speaks to the employment of a district administrator and school principals to “supervise the professional work” of the school district.  And statute 120.12(2m) directs school boards, typically through school principals, to “evaluate the effectiveness of each teacher … using either the system established under (statute), or the equivalency process established by rule …”.

School boards use this authority to set the principal’s job description and responsibilities.  One of the universal duties of a school principal is to supervise/evaluate the professional work of the faculty and ensure fidelity of instruction with the school board’s approved curriculum.  This responsibility, as written, does not belong to anyone else in the school district, even districts with significant central office staffing.

“What” principals are to do is enunciated in policy and job description.  “How” they do it is not specified and the “how” contributes to the quality of the tension.  The best analogy is this – teachers instruct children in the classroom and principals instruct faculty and staff in the schoolhouse.  Using this analogy, a principal’s curriculum and instructional strategies are designed to cause high quality instruction in every classroom.  The “how” lies in the principal’s personal and consistent conversation and oversight of each teacher’s classroom work.  Oversight can be a talk over a cup of coffee, a focused conversation about children and their learning needs, provision and discussion of personalized coaching, and informal and formal classroom observations.  A principal’s “how” relates to her personality and ability to keep instructional leadership a top daily priority.  Too often the other principal responsibilities, like student discipline, campus supervision, filling in for absent faculty and staff, and responding to general school problems, erode a principal’s time for teacher talk and classroom visits. 

A teacher’s role and responsibility.

Teachers hold a license to teach specific subjects and grade levels of students.  Typically, school districts provide each teacher with specific students to teach and an annual curriculum to teach to those students.  These are the “who is to be instructed” and the “what is to be instructed”.  There is no language regarding “how they are to be instructed”, beyond the effective educator provisions of WI statute 120.12(2m).  Teachers have a broad reach in their choice of pedagogies to use in their teaching.  This choice is their “freedom to teach” in ways that best meet their contractual responsibilities.

Teachers are responsible for the “how” they teach.  A teacher’s instructional decisions in the units and lesson plans she designs are fully hers.  A teacher’s instructional “toolbox” will contain strategies for direct and explicit instruction, inquiry-based instruction, problem- and project-based instruction, outcome-based instruction.  Each of these strategies can be effective in causing children to learn a curriculum and one strategy may be most effective for the curricular unit being taught.  Teacher’s choice!

The concept of a teacher’s academic freedom is real.  It relates to the teacher’s decisions of how best to cause all children to be successful learners of the school curriculum.  All teachers have freedom in choosing their instructional tools.  Academic freedom, however, does not extend to decisions about what to teach.  The teacher’s contract designates the teaching position and curriculum related to the position.

Shared responsibility for learner outcomes.

At the end of the proverbial day achievements in student learning are the responsibility of both principal and teacher.  School boards and superintendents smile when student achievement demonstrates growth but look for faults and blame when achievement is not what they expect.  Then, principals are teachers share the hot seat. 

In the post-pandemic the relationship between principals and teachers has been stressed.  Some students readily re-engaged with school.  However, other students returning from remote instruction and those who fully disengaged from school instruction demonstrate a wide range of patterns in daily attendance, lost or forgotten learning, and socio-emotional problems.  Finding solutions has not been easy.  Schools with positive principal/teacher relationships sorted issues, tried solutions, and adjusted solutions together.  In other schools, disconnected students only added to the tension.

One of the indicators of relationships is teacher attrition in schools.  The patterns of principals and teachers who are leaving public education or seeking different school districts are closely related to their feeling of partnership and collaboration. 

Trust is earned.

In the decades of my experience as a teacher, principal, superintendent, and school board member, I found that trust is a reciprocal relationship.  To be trusted, one must trust.  The quickest way to create mutual trust is to recognize and honor the interfaces of roles and responsibilities of others, personally engage in consistent and constant professional conversation with every employee and celebrate not just enjoy the synergy of the environment.  When teachers trusted my leadership, they relied on me to trust them to form positive relationships with students and to use all their instructional tools to cause all children to learn.  Also, we trusted each other to always work for the best interests of our students.  Trust does not need to be complicated.

Synergy in a school is not openly discussed as much as it should be.  Call it a special place in time, synergy or the good times, happens when everyone from the superintendent to teacher to custodian to bus driver is in synch with each other.  It is when all the stars of the school universe congregate together and shine.  I observed good times that lasted from months to years.  “Lasted” is the operative word.  Schools that are recognized for excellence enjoy the synergy that creates excellence for a period but then those stars of the universe begin to drift.  People retire or move on to other positions.  Teaming that coalesced for effective work becomes individuals left to carry on.  The new personnel, as good as they may be, just don’t jive as well.  Schools still can be successful in their programs, but that special aura of camaraderie does not last.

When everyone in the schoolhouse seems happy, trust is never discussed.  When there are troubles, lack of trust is the first word spoken.  Troubles quickly divide personnel by roles and mutuality and reciprocity are abandoned.  Distrust becomes the byword.

So, what are we to do?

At their core, teaching and principaling share this similarity – they are callings.  Those who are called have an innate motivation to work with children and to help in shaping children’s lives through learning.  When we discard all the other issues of public education and recognize our mutual calling, understand the roles and relationships of a school’s organization, and place ourselves in our role with a commitment to contribute to the school’s commonwealth, it is relatively easy to synthesize a successful school.  It is when we add back all the other issues that the work becomes difficult.  So, keep it simple.  Know and build trust in each other.

Inspired Principal + Teacher Cadre = Change Agency

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Effective school leadership is a lonely voyage without collaborating partners.  When a leader understands distributed leadership and emboldens a cadre of like-minded colleagues to use their knowledge and skills to advance a school mission, loneliness turns into camaraderie.  A cadre of comrades is a powerful change agency.

Time and theory do not favor change.

In the usual pyramidal hierarchy of school personnel, a principal is assigned as its executive leader and all faculty and staff ultimately report to the principal.  When a school board recruits, selects, and hires a principal, they usually see the new principal as a change agent, a leader who will use new thinking and strategies to improve the school.  However, change does not happen with a vote.  Change is hard work.

Once seated, most principals have less than five years to implement the changes the board envisioned.   The average tenure of a school principal is 4.5 years.  Of the five reasons the National Association of Secondary School Principals identified for principal, two are directly tied to time on the job and change theory. 

  • Inadequate preparation and professional development.
  • High stakes accountability policies.

An effective leader of organizational change understands the concepts, requirements, steps, and time required to move an organization from what they have been doing in the past to what they will be doing in the future.  “In Gallup’s experience, organizations that work on changing company culture typically see the strongest gains in three to five years”.  But it takes seven to eight years for changes to be institutionalized as the ongoing company tradition.  “Mr. Principal, your time is up!”

https://www.gallup.com/workplace/471968/culture-transformation-leaders-need-know.aspx#

Decisions and actions taken by a single person that affect an entire school, although inspired and informed, have so many strikes against them from the get-go that it is unlikely any are accomplished.  A Stanford University report reiterates the findings of the Effective Schools research of the 1980s – the principal is the focal point for leading all school improvement efforts.  However, according to McKinsey studies, “70% of change initiatives fail”.  Change theory alone places a single leader against a status quo supported by those who are invested in past practices and the initial wall of resistance dooms most change efforts.  Moving from a single person leading change to collaborative leadership is essential for increasing the likelihood of success and cadre development is a principal’s best friend.

Cadre not committee.

Cadre or committee?  There is a difference.  Cadre members are committed to outcomes not school politics.  Although picked by the principal, as cadre members their voice is equal to the principal.  There is no deference given to the input of the principal.  Where committees discuss and recommend a principal’s school improvement actions, cadres members share with the principal in doing the work of school improvement.  The key is empowerment.  The difference is action versus discussion.

“Empowerment for teacher leadership is not an act of assigning roles of conferring authority but is rather a state of mind – teacher leaders embrace greater responsibility for the culture and work of their school and profession.  Teacher leaders and administrators in both formal and informal roles recognize the power and synergy that arises from a spirit of genuine collaboration – culture in which the contribution of each person is valued and respected.”

https://www.nea.org/resource-library/great-teaching-and-learning/recommendations/teacher-leader

Committees are a traditional school structure.  Whether standing or ad hoc, committees are balanced by faculty and staff representation.  Often committee membership is open only if a current member leaves.  And committee chairmanship is privileged.  Good ideas and talents too often are lost in the games of committee politics and the mechanics of chain of command decision making.

“What we know is that instructional-leadership teams, such as district and building leadership teams, have internal struggles with status because school-based leaders are member of the team, and that often means that teachers around the table do not want to speak up and challenge their supervisors.”

https://www.edweek.org/leadership/opinion-what-are-the-elements-for-a-more-impactful-focused-school-leadership-team/2021/08

Cadres are different.  Cadres lead by example, exercising individual strengths that contribute to improvement goals.  The principal is a member of the cadre, stirs the discussion, and leads the search for research-based ideas for cadre consideration.   Unlike committee structures that recommend and wait for approvals, cadre members act on consensus.  The cadre’s job is to advance and polish good ideas, create pathways within the faculty for understanding new ideas, and coaching professional development to implement school improvement.  Principal approvals are baked in because the principal is a cadre member.  It may sound camp, but the Three Musketeers’ “All for one and one for all” describes the best cadres.

Every school faculty has its in-house innovators; teachers who are out-in-front of the rest in trying new teaching, pushing for higher student performance and getting positive results.  Their colleagues know who they are.  Too often these “all stars” languish with a lack of leader recognition or diminish because they seem to compete with short-sighted administrators for the school spotlight.  Outcome-minded principals don’t see them as competitors but as co-leaders.  They encourage innovation and engage their “all stars” in constant conversation about “what ifs”.  With collegial conversations, it does not take long for partnering to begin.

Cadre leading with mindfulness.

This may be read as a cadre highjacking school leadership, but it isn’t.  The principal, the school board’s school leader, keeps cadres mindful of their mission. 

When a principal creates a leadership cadre, each person in the cadre is empowered and mutual respect is the only politic.  The cadre keeps its mind on these five steps for changing their school.

  • Aspiration.  What new outcomes are needed to improve the school? 
  • Assess.  What is the current status of these outcomes?
  • Architecture.  What “small step trainings” are required to change the current status into the desired systems and culture?
  • Act.  Rehearsing and scheduling the who does what, when, and how much of cadre-led PD.
  • Advance. Institutionalizing the new outcomes into the school’s way of life.

There is nothing magic in these 5 A’s.  They work because they are systematic.  Cadres tackle each step in its turn.  And the resulting changes are accumulative.  The more a cadre uses this plan, the more their colleagues will trust the cadre’s work.

https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/how-to-double-the-odds-that-your-change-program-will-succeed

Principals lead cadres with mindfulness.

Historically, a school principal was the lead or “principal” teacher.  When a principal forms a cadre of leaders, the principal once again is the lead teacher.  Once a cadre forms, a principal must exercise team leadership and coaching mindfulness because cadres need nurturing.  Educators are human and trying to change the status quo of a school can take its toll on the cadre.  When cadre comrades observe the principal exercising the following mindset, they find it easier to persevere.

These ideas are part of a principal’s mindset.

  1. Prioritize – do a few things well
  2. Communicate – do it always and in all ways
  3. Trust- relinquish some control and build relationships
  4. Collaborate – do better together
  5. Celebrate – do it frequently and freely

https://ascd.org/blogs/5-ways-to-build-staff-leadership-in-your-school

Be the change!

Change from the top down is a mighty struggle with a low success rate and loses its efficacy the more it is used.  Change from within using a cadre as its agency has a much higher success rate and is repeatable.  Principals become one with the change when their investment in camaraderie results in cadre leadership. 

To Stop Teacher Shortages and Attrition Pay More and Support Better

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“Is the grass really greener elsewhere?”.  Many teachers consider this question at several times in their careers.  Actually, the question is not worded correctly.  “Is the grass where I stand green enough for me now and for my future” is a better question.  The resounding answer for too many teachers is “There is little grass where I stand, and it is not green enough!”

Teachers have choices and they are making the decision to leave their first profession.  “According to the WI DPI’s analysis, about 4 out of every 10 first-year teachers either leave the state or the profession altogether after just six years (39.4% of new teachers), and only 68 percent of aspiring educators who complete an education preparation program were ultimately employed in a Wisconsin public school”.

https://dpi.wi.gov/news/releases/2024/education-workforce-crisis-report-analysis

State the conclusion first and then develop its reasoning.

Educational leaders and politicians have bemoaned the realities of teacher shortages for decades; however, moaning has not changed its reality.  In Wisconsin, legislators continue to modify the requirements for obtaining and keeping a teaching license believing that this will attract and keep teachers.  Their heads are in the proverbial sand.  It is the conditions of the profession not the entry requirements that are the problem.

Instead, make changes in two of the most critical elements of the profession: compensation and supervision.  First, make and fund a $70,000 starting salary for teachers in every district in Wisconsin irrespective of their current state funding or property values.  After a probationary period of five years, make the continuing salary point $85,000 and let CPI dictate annual increase thereafter.   

Second, guarantee every teacher has adequate principal support and supervision.  Adequacy means that a principal has a face-to-face conversation with the teacher every week and is in the teacher’s classroom at least once every two weeks.  Overkill?  Hardly.  Instructionally proficient teachers will welcome the increased principal presence because the principal will see and know how good they are.  Students will understand there is no distance between teachers and principals relative to student behaviors and discipline.  Instructionally underperforming teachers will profit from the principal’s guidance for improvement.

Why these two remedies?  Because they address two of a teacher’s most pressing concerns.  Is my compensation enough for me and my family to satisfy our needs and some of our wants?  And does my boss know and care about my teaching and the children I teach?  When we answer these two concerns positively, all the rest of the minor career irritants can take care of themselves.

It is easy to dismiss these two steps will because they will cost more money than currently is spent on education.  On the other hand, the constant loss of teacher talent and the constant expenditure of school time and expense in recruiting and on-boarding new teachers every year has equivalent costs.  We should stop paying the cost of teachers leaving begin paying the costs for teachers staying.

As a school superintendent, our district practice was to begin each new teacher to our district with a salary amount large enough that salary was never an issue with the teacher’s ongoing job satisfaction.  Money issues aside, we then could constructively work on teaching and learning.  A second practice was for administrators to purposefully connect with every teacher and staff member weekly.  We were a small school with a superintendent and a principal, but our priorities were clear.  A purposeful connection was non-negotiable and not a discussion of the weather but a conversation about instruction, curriculum, assessment, and student performances. 

Interestingly, some teachers still will leave their profession and they probably should.  But it will not be for lack of compensation or administrative support and supervision.  The truth is some teachers should not be teaching and they need to find that out for themselves.

The conclusion is reached because green differs among professions.

People are comparative shoppers by nature.  As we compare cars in the parking lot, houses by neighborhoods, or vacations by the amount of beach time, people also compare professions by salaries.  A first-year teacher in Wisconsin observes these two facts about her profession. 

The average first-year salary for teachers in Wisconsin is $48,520 and in the nation is $46,590.  These are averages with 50% of teachers, first year and veteran, earning less.

https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/First-Year-Teacher-Salary–in-Wisconsin

In comparison, the average starting salaries for other careers is

  • Junior civil engineer is $67,795.
  • Junior chemical engineer is $62,229.
  • Junior systems engineer is $67,489
  • Business development representative is $67,934.
  • Junior accountant is $49,745.
  • Junior supply chain analyst is $56,457.
  • Entry-level software engineer is $73,584.
  • Junior developer is $69,547.
  • Junior network engineer is $66,138.
  • Construction manager is $76,625.
  • Project manager is $76,949.
  • Site engineer is $85,454.
  • Risk analyst is $76,869.
  • Research associate is $54,806.
  • Data analyst is $65,681.

https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/pay-salary/college-degrees-with-the-highest-starting-salaries

The grass really is greener somewhere else at the start of a professional teaching career.  Teachers do not approach the starting salaries of other professions that require a baccalaureate degree and training.  Further, the difference is magnified over time.  By the time teachers and other professionals are in the 35 to 45 age brackets, the difference in salaries between these same professions will be $60,000 or more per year.  This status has been fact for decades.     

The shortage also is driven by a lack of collegians enrolling in colleges of education.  Enrollments dwindle every year as more and more employed teachers bail out on teaching.    Comparatively speaking, neither beginning nor continuing a career in teaching pays the bills as well as salaries in another profession.

The significant change to a $70,000 starting salary and an $85,000 post-probation salary point irrespective of district will cause collegians and veteran teachers to reconsider their professional decisions.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/02/best-and-worst-paying-college-majors-for-graduates-aged-35-to-45.html

The conclusion is reached because there is more than dollars that causes teachers to leave the profession.

Money matters, but there are other factors we need to acknowledge and address in order to stem the tide of teachers leaving the profession.  A study by the Learning Policy Institute cites these five factors for teachers leaving the profession.

  • Inadequate Preparation – Beginning teachers with little or no preparation are 2 1⁄2 times more likely to leave the classroom after one year compared to their well-prepared peers.
  • Lack of Support for New Teachers – New teachers who do not receive mentoring and other supports leave at more than two times the rate of those who do.
  • Challenging Working Conditions – Teachers often cite working conditions, such as the support of their principals and the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues, as the top reason for leaving.
  • Better Career Opportunities – More than 1 in 4 teachers who leave say they do so to pursue other career opportunities.
  • Personal Reasons – More than 1 in 3 teachers who leave cite personal reasons, including pregnancy and childcare, as extremely or very important in their decision.

https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/sites/default/files/Teacher_Exodus_Infographic.pdf

An improved and greener professional career derives when teachers are supported and recognized for their good teaching and their causing children to learn.  The caveat to this step in supporting teachers is that principals need to time and resources to be educational leaders for teachers.  A principal trained in curriculum and instruction is wasted sitting in an office writing out discipline reports.  Most student discipline is routine and can be administered by a dean of students or admin-assistant.  Most campus supervision can be successfully provided by paraprofessionals.

The Big Duh!

We have a teacher shortage for two reasons.  Our educational system and cultural mindset do not place a high enough monetary and appreciative value on teaching.  Because the system does not value teachers, teachers do not value the profession.  Change the valuing by paying teachers a professionally comparative salary and ensuring adequate administrative support and supervision.  What we value highly receives more of our continuing attention.

The second reason for teacher shortage is that we keep doing the same inane things in the hope that more people will want to teach and then remain classroom teachers.  Stop mucking around with licensing.  Instead hold high and higher standards for a teaching license.  We don’t value what has been devalued.  Make the profession one of higher standards and more people will value it more.

What the heck!

If we cannot do these two things to enhance the profession, then turn all schools into PK-12-day care centers.  The average annual salary for full-time daycare workers in Wisconsin is $27,640.  There is a new goal for politicians who do not value public education.

https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/Childcare-Salary–in-Wisconsin

Summer Is Time for Refreshing Teachers and Refreshing Lesson Plans

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Pre-service days for teachers before the start of the school year are the worst of all times to even consider revising lessons plans for the month of September.  If you are not refreshing lesson plans while you have the time for refreshment, your students will get last year’s lessons, like or not.

Almost always last in pre-service days – lesson plans.

Looking at lesson plans is almost always the last thing teachers do during pre-service days.  Many meetings and making a classroom physically ready for children are always in conflict with lesson planning.  Be smart and remove the conflict by doing your lesson plan review in early August.

Consider the following:

  • Things move too quickly during a school day and week for a teacher to review, evaluate, and adjust existing lesson plans.  Your lesson plans today are exactly what they were when you last taught them.
  • Big question – will you teach this unit and/or this lesson again?  If not, stop here and begin new unit/lesson plan writing.

Look at the unit as a whole and lesson plans in their details.

  • Was the lesson as planned effective as initial instruction?
  • What adjustments did you make while teaching the plan?
  • What did your formative assessment feedback tell you about your plan?  Did it cause learning?
  • What adjustments were necessary for challenged children?  Special education?  Els?  Did your adjustments clarify/correct and cause learning?
  • What tier 2 interventions were necessary to ensure all children were ready for the next lesson/rest of the unit?
  • What do you know about the children you will teach this year that need to be accommodated in your existing plan?

Do this checklist work for each unit and lesson plan you will teach in September.  Better yet, complete this checklist for every unit and lesson you will teach in the first semester. 

Pre-service days address district and school needs before teacher needs.

Most schools provide their teachers with three to five days of contract time before the first day of school.  (More on that in a minute later.).  The concept is that a teacher can do all things necessary in these pre-service days to start instruction on day one.  For most teachers, this is equivalent to the proverbial putting ten pounds in a five-pound bag.  District-wide meetings, school meetings, and grade level or departmental meetings are usually scheduled on the first day of pre-service.  Just when teachers want to be in the classrooms, they are seated in auditoriums and cafeterias to hear district administrators introduce new faculty and staff and cheerlead for new programs and initiatives in the district.  Afterward they traipse to school meetings where intros and explanations are made regarding how the new programs and initiatives will play out at the school level.

The PTA- or booster-provided lunch is spaced between larger meetings and smaller grade level and department meetings.  Perhaps a teacher sees her classroom in the late afternoon on day one.

Pre-service days are essential for teachers to understand student challenges.

In the second and third days, teachers attend IEP and 504 Plan and ELL meetings to understand the accommodations last year’s teachers, administrators, parents and advocates wrote for implementation this fall.  In most of these, a teacher collaborates with special education teachers and aides, counselors and the school nurse, and ESL teachers.  There may also be individual meetings with student parents. These are detailed and require close teacher attention.

Reviewing class lists to identify and become prepared for known student learning needs is essential.  If a teacher does not establish an acknowledgement of these with challenged students on the first days of school, these children drift into the “she doesn’t care about me” world of student-hood.

Classrooms require time and sweat.

Throughout pre-service days teachers either wait or try to schedule time with the school technology staff to get their classroom technologies running.  If new technologies have been installed, the wait and time it takes to get running take even longer.

Making a classroom ready for children is a major pre-service task.  If a teacher is returning to the same classroom she used the prior year, time is required to “unpack” what she put away the prior June.  If a teacher is assigned to a new classroom or the teacher is new the school, then the entire classroom setup starts from scratch.  Moving desks and tables and chairs, arranging learning centers, placing classroom routine information on bulletin boards is sweat work.  Elementary grade teachers do much more student readiness work than secondary teachers.  All told, this work eats up two to three workdays.

Throughout pre-service days teachers either wait or try to schedule time with the school technology staff to get their classroom technologies running.  If new technologies have been installed, the wait and time it takes to get running take even longer.

Making a classroom ready for children is a major pre-service task.  If a teacher is returning to the same classroom she used the prior year, time is required to “unpack” what she put away the prior June.  If a teacher is assigned to a new classroom or the teacher is new the school, then the entire classroom setup starts from scratch.  Moving desks and tables and chairs, arranging learning centers, placing classroom routine information on bulletin boards is sweat work.  Elementary grade teachers do much more student readiness work than secondary teachers.  All told, this work eats up two to three workdays.

The Big Duh!

Districts and schools never schedule enough contractual time for teachers to review and adjust units and lesson plans after they are taught and before they will be taught again.  It is educationally sinful, and it is our reality. 

Knowing our realities means that summer is the only rational time for a teacher to review, adjust, and plan.  It is easy to say, “If my district/school does not consider this to be important work, why should I?”.  In a saner moment, you know that your review and adjustments are needed if you are to cause all your students to be successful learners this coming school year.  Assemble your best refreshing drink, your most casual clothing, spread out your units and lesson plans and get at this essential work in August.

Educating Problem Solvers

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Public education exists to fill the needs of the commonwealth.  In the 1800s it was citizenship and immigrant assimilation.  In the late 1800s and early 1900s it was the need for literate industrial employment.  In the mid-1900s it was national security.  In the late 1900s and early 2000s it has been national and international economics.  Along the way there has been a layering of social and humane purposing for educational programming, but they never were the fundamental drivers of educational policy.  Today our nation needs to educate children to be informed problem solvers.  We face cataclysmic issues of climate, economic, social, political, and ethical distresses.   It is not enough that educated graduates can read, write, compute, and have an abundance of knowledge.  These are nothing if they are not put to a purpose. We need our next generation to be educated in problem solving.

Problems du jour.

“Plastics”, Mr. Robinson told Dustin Hoffman’s character in The Graduate.  The future he said was in the plastics industry.    Today Mr. Robinson rightfully could say “Water”.  There are places on our planet where there is not enough or no water.  Drought!  Simultaneously, there are places where rainfall and flooding are deadly and ruinous and places where rising sea level erodes and overwhelms homes, towns, and cities.  Flooding!  As a natural resource, its scarcity and overabundance are causing humans to change how and where they can live.  In its extreme, drought and flooding are killing us.  We need a generation who are prepared to work the problem du jour – water – not just chase the hot trend du jour – plastics.  If today’s Benjamin Braddock, Hoffman’s character, needed advice on what to do with his college diploma, a good answer would be “problems with water”.

But water is not the only problem needing solving.  If not water, then childcare – the scarcity and cost of childcare devastates young families.  Or, elder care – the costs of Medicare and Social Security are multiplying the national debt.  Or, affordable housing.  Or, ethical government.  Or, aligning immigration to employment.  Or, and the list goes on.  We face a multitude of problems that live at the local, state, national, and global levels.  We have problems that divide us into those who are affected versus those not.  That is a problem unto itself – our problems divide us, they do not unite us.  We need problem solvers.

A new mandate – active problem solving.

Mandates are needed.  In the 1960s President Kennedy gave our nation a mandate to go to the moon.  We did.  In the later 60s President Johnson signed mandates to change the national view of civil rights.  For a while, they did until we let problems of special and personal interest get in the way.  In the early 2000s, President Bush mandated NCLB and reading and math became our national school focus. 

At the state level, the Wisconsin legislature recently passed Act 60 to mandate financial literacy and Act 20 to require phonics-based reading instruction.  Public education is a function of state government, and our educational mandates are embedded in the statutes.  Once law, mandates must be implemented.  Making mandates is not a state problem; making the right mandates is.

Locally, school boards mandate.  During the pandemic, school boards mandated masking, mitigation, and virtual learning.  Some mandates were popular and others were not.  School boards approve policy and policies are their mandates. 

Mandates make things happen.  

I challenge every school district administrator to use UbD (Understanding by Design) techniques to create a district-wide, 4K-12 problem solving curriculum.  This backward design process begins with a statement of the graduation outcome and then describes the programming to achieve the outcome.

Why start with local school districts?  Because they can act unilaterally and usually apolitically.  Partisan state government is either gridlocked or bent toward partisan issues. 

The local school outcome of interest is – all graduates are informed problem solvers.  Informed means three things.  Each graduate –

  • understands multiple problem-solving strategies and how they work,
  • has an informed “BS” detector and can filter out all the (B)bias and (S)special interests that surround our significant problems, and
  • is motivated to persevere until a problem solution is working.

Mandates are really easy.  It just takes courage to understand that what becomes law or policy gets done.  Therefore, if you want something done, mandate it.

If the current status quo is not working, change it.

A reader may say, “Our school curriculum is already overloaded.  We cannot add a new program to our overworked faculty and students”.   True.  And the answer to that statement is brutal.  The current school curriculum maintains the status quo.  It educates children to fit into and be part of the current state of the world.  Public education, as it exists now, is always behind the curve of our problems.  It extends the life of problems; it does not help in solving problems.  That is why courageous mandates are required at the school board level.  Legislative processes at the state and national levels take forever making most solutions so lost in the problem they have little chance of changing anything.

This is not a difficult proposition, if there is a will by educational leaders to act.  All they have to do is ask these simple questions. 

  • Are our current systems working positively and aggressively to fix or alleviate the crises we face today? 
  • Are today’s graduates skilled enough in problem solving to fix or alleviate these crises?
  • Are children in the elementary and middle school grades learning problem solving strategies?

The answer is not “yes”.

Start here.

Every child receives instruction in the social studies in our 4K-12 curriculum.  The traditional scaffolding of United States history in elementary, middle school, and high school with specific courses in US government or civics and economics only builds common background knowledge for all.  There is no purposeful application. 

The C3 Framework for Social Studies Standards is a game changer in terms of repurposing a social studies education.  The C3 Framework adds this singularly unique focus –“preparation for a civic life”.  The structure of this curriculum includes this mandate – how will students use their learning to purposefully engage in their community and state as informed and skilled problem solvers.  The purpose of social studies is engagement.

The College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards: Guidance for Enhancing the Rigor of K-12 Civics, Economics, Geography, and History

A proper school board mandate is to approve the C3 Framework as the basis for district social studies instruction.  Abandon curriculum that only prepares graduates for a game of Jeopardy.  At grade level, this means children in 4K-12 annually will learn developmentally appropriate inquiry skills to ask problem-based questions and learn about civics, economics, geography, history, and the behavioral sciences.  The focus is not knowledge for knowledge’s sake, but knowledge and tools for critically looking at community and state issues and developing age-appropriate conclusions.  “This is what we should do…”.

The commonwealth.

Our local communities and state are so intertwined that the old concept of commonwealth is more important now than ever before.  Our problems are large and forbidding so our approach to problem solving must be equally new and bold.  The commonwealth needs problem solvers not gawkers lamenting why problems never get fixed.  Public education can provide a next generation of informed and trained problem solvers.  Instead of Generation (whatever letter comes next), let’s create Generation PS (problem solvers).