Category Archives: Blog

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).

School Faces Once Etched Are Forever Memories

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The academic year ended at our local school yesterday.  I watched the row of buses leave the parking lot for students’ final trip home.  Teachers lined the sidewalks and waved.  High school students honked their horns leaving the parking lot and the 23-24 school year behind.  Taken as a whole, it was a celebration of success.  Children were graduated and promoted.  Teachers taught and children learned a year’s curriculum.  Tests had been taken, teams had played, music and theater had been performed, and the community had smiled.  Gradually, the sound of cheering, the echo of horns, and the waving arms stopped and there was the quiet of a June afternoon.  Viewed from the perspective of time, it was the moment when memories begin to overtake the present.

The local Class of 24 numbered 40-plus graduates.  During the month of May their photos and post-graduation plans were displayed on the school’s Facebook page.  Smiling faces with pennants of colleges, universities, tech schools, and armed force insignia foretold the next stories in these young lives.  With 100% assurance, I know that each graduate can name the face of every grad in their Class.  They have known each other as classmates for thirteen or more years.  They learned and grew up together.  That was their story until graduation when the road they shared forked, and they all went their ways.

Frozen in time.

Once graduates wander down the post-school paths they choose, they move farther and farther away from the day when they and their classmates shared a common story.  Slowly, faces and names become images in yearbooks, online photo collections, and frames on bookshelves.  They get a glance now and again awaiting reunions and other gatherings.  And, awaiting a moment when memories flicker and old images become important once again.

Picture taking was and is a ritual of school life.  Every year schools take class pictures.  All students, grouped by graduating class cohort, school activity, and individually, have their photos taken.  Most students smile, even those who didn’t smile often in school approximate a grin for the yearbook.  Photos of an entire grade miniaturize faces making it difficult to discern individuals.  Individual portraits highlight the face and name. 

For me, it is in the class photo of Mrs. Meyer’s home room where all 33 children are shown together in rows. Some are sitting legs crossed on the floor, some on chairs, and the tallest are standing.  This is where I see the classmates I knew well.  Combined with two other sixth grade home rooms, we were the Grant Wood Elementary Class of 1960.  On the date of that class photo, we became locked in time, locked in the image of our smile, the way we combed our hair, and how we cocked our heads trying to look good.  I look at the picture of Mrs. Meyer’s home room and 64 years later I know the name of each boy and girl, and I remember who they were in 1960 as clearly as I know anything today.

The same is true of class pictures from the McKinley Junior High Class of 1963 and the Washington High School Class of 1966.  Each school we attended was larger in enrollment and scope of program, but the significance of faces and names and stories remained constant.  Until June 1966.  That was when our roads forked, and we truly became memories and pictures frozen in time.

So, what happened? 

People and friends, they and me, suddenly disappeared from each other’s lives.

Life overwhelms our attention when we are younger adults.  Work, recreation, and a love life are center stage.  We focus on what is directly in front of us each day with little time or option to look backward or too far forward.  Often, we work for pay checks that last only until the next, scrimp to afford vacation and recreation, and if we have children, our life requires 25 hours each day.  We stay in touch with school friends if we live in proximity, work in similar jobs, and our children attend the same school.  But the roads most of my school friends and I took were none of these.  In our 20s and 30s and 40s we chased our individual American dreams of family and/or career into communities far and wide.  Joe was a physician in Atlanta, Bev was a teacher in Ohio, Marianne was a flight attendant, Jack was an institutional exec in New York, Bill was lawyer in San Francisco, and John, we weren’t sure where John was.  Yet, whenever I thought of the Class of 60 or 63 or 66, it was the pictured face and story of a younger life that attached to that picture.  John was still the epitome of a younger Mickey Mantle – blond and rugged, athletic, and confident.  Bev was still the girl in a knee-length dress, Bobby socks, and her hair tied with a ribbon that I thought of as my girlfriend at Grant Wood.  Marianne, aka Mert, was and always will be an Annette Funicello look alike. 

Facebook and the Internet update stories but not memories.

Facebook and its ilk brought us both the wonder of connection and the depravity of bad actors.  I like the wonder.  By “friending” old friends we now share images and stories of who we are today.  My white hair, wrinkles, and jowls do not resemble the face behind the boy in dark glasses in Mrs. Meyer’s home room picture.  However, as much as I do not recognize myself, I immediately recognize John, Jack and Bev and many of the old classmates that use Facebook.  If we saw each other on the street or in a market today, I am confident I would know their 70+ year old faces.  But I could not know the story of their lives in between, and that is okay with me.

Today I appreciate giving and receiving Facebook posts with my old friends on our birthdays.   We recognize that we are still alive, we celebrate another year of living, and, in a small way, we acknowledge that we have a history.  Our history is bifurcated – who we were in the 50s and 60s and who we are today.  We do not have enough years or energy to catch up on the details in between and those details don’t matter much anyway.

This morning another Joe from the Class of 66 posted about his golf game.  Several times each summer we each post about the courses we have played, that rare day when our score and age match, and the joy we have in just being able to play.  But when his face appears I immediately replace it with his yearbook photo or images of him playing basketball or baseball – he is forever young.

Old friends’ faces do not die, they just fade away.

As I paraphrase Douglas MacArthur’s statement about old generals.  In both cases, I think we got it right.  As long as I live, memories of my school friends will be alive.  They are indelibly etched in time.  I suppose my aging frailties may fray my mental capacity.  I do find it comforting that as the aged lose contact with the present, their memories of years ago remain.  Thanks, old friends, for being my old friends.

Gifted Teachers Cause Indelible Effects

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Every adult who attended public school knows the truth of this statement:  there are teachers and there are gifted teachers.  We are taught by the former, but we are inspired and grow at the feet of the latter.  Gifted teachers are extraordinary human beings.  It is the nature of their extraordinary being that makes them gifted teachers.

What do we know?

A school faculty is much like a professional baseball team.  While all pro ballplayers met a high standard of screening to make the team, there still are significant differences between players who hit .250 year after year, the league average, and those who hit .300, a threshold for Hall of Fame candidates.  An MLB roster has 28 players.  A successful team lists an all-star or three, several players with all-star like statistics, and twenty or so who are steady and dependable players.  The combination of steady and dependable players and a few all-stars content for league pennants.

Most teachers in a school faculty are .250 players.  Day in and day out they are present and prepared to teach their assigned curriculum to children in their classrooms.  Day in and day out they don’t make significant teaching errors.  In the same days, they also don’t teach many supernal lessons that light up student learners or cause children to have “Aha” moments.

Some may read this a putdown of many teachers, but it is not.  The strength of public education is the steady and solid work of regular classroom teachers.  They are how we know and understand reading and writing, history and geography, math, art, music, PE, and speak at little Spanish.

Most teachers on a school faculty may be good at several skills sets for quality teaching; a gifted teacher elevates the performance of skills sets because of innate qualities of insight, perseverance, effectiveness of intellectual inquiry, empathy, and friendship.  These qualities certainly lie within regular teachers, but they remain fallow compared to the same qualities that burn brightly in a gifted teacher.

Game changers.

Children know.  They know their teachers who light them up on a frequent or daily basis versus their teachers who turn on the classroom lights and say, “Take out your books”.   A teacher who lights up children is a pathfinder to deeper learning.  Their insights into curriculum and pedagogy are 3D.  They know the sequence of facts and ideas and skills children need to learn to climb Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning Objectives, but they don’t stop at Remembering and Understanding.  They push harder with “Tell me more, explain that in your own words, how is it similar to and different than”.  Their students are used to the “so what and now what can you do with this” questions.

I marvel at the fact that gifted teachers, real game changers, don’t know who they are.  They just are.  They are unconscious of the ways they teach and relate to children. 

I am told that mathematics is the creation and use of elegant solutions to explain our world.  Simplicity and insightful are words that few strugglers with trigonometry, like me, understand.  Yet, I watch gifted math teachers help children to patiently unravel a math problem into understandable questions in their native language.  Gifted math teachers teach students to see the math question within the forest of words and digits on the page.  Insight is understanding what one is being asked to learn and the ability to state it in simple terms.  These teachers see problems, not just mathematical problems, differently and they teach children to see and think differently.  It is a gift.

My favorite band teacher is just a boy in man’s clothing playing his horn.  When he wears a tuxedo and waves his baton, his bands make wonderful music.  He is best, however, when he sits beside a child and together, they model and practice, model and practice, model and practice.  He slowly builds musical skills and the ability to read and interpret musical scores until children fit into an ensemble of players and then he gives them more difficult pieces to play.  He personalizes and perseveres and never quits on the individuals who are his band.  He grows musicians through patient and skillful instruction.  It is a gift.

“So what?” and “what do you mean by that” are the kinds of questions that cause many children to hunker down behind the child sitting in front of them hoping not to be called on.  Lots of hands go up when a teacher asks questions about facts; not so many when the questions require deeper inquiry.  A love of intellectual inquiry tolerates children who are reluctant to share and whose sharing contains inaccuracies.  Gifted inquirers know that these can be teased out and corrected.  It is the chase for understanding and reasoning they pursue.  Gifted teachers also know that children can learn in the periphery and listening to how one child sews together a reasoned response helps others with their own.  A gifted inquirer will smile and applaud louder for the unexpected yet slowly developed thinking of a reluctant sharer more than for the quick and always on point response of another child.  Chasing a well-reasoned and thoughtful response is a gift.

Some children come to school to learn to read, others to play an instrument, and others for the joys of recess and athletics.  Every child should have their own “go to” place in school.  I smile now thinking of an art teacher whose empathy for children caused him to seek out all children who had not found their school place.  He caused them to be artists and then to be proud of their artistry.  I remember him in his layers of baggy clothing and Birkenstocks helping a student with charcoal find depth through shading and a student at a potter’s wheel find the feel for drawing a vase out of a lump of clay.  It is easier to teach children who have a sense of who they are; it is more difficult to teach children who are lost in themselves.  His gift was in turning on the lights within wandering children.

Every child is different with a combination of admirable qualities and some things that cause us to shake our heads.  I watched a gifted science teacher who never shook his head because he focused on admirable qualities.  His teacher’s affect was as inviting as new snow and his expectations for student learning were as elevated as snow capped mountains.  It did not take students long into a new school year to know that his reputation was real.  He accepted who they were, found their strengths, and every day helped each child to build their understanding of Biology and AP Biology and computer science.  He was never in a hurry but, with his patience, caused all students to engage and learn.  Like Mr. Rogers of TV fame, he built students up and, in that building, taught them.  It is a gift.

Indelible effects that last a lifetime.

At their 50th reunions, alums invariably share stories about their school experiences and the teachers who taught them.  The passage of time has a way of rounding corners and evening out the particulars alums remember.  It is difficult to assign causation between a student’s schooling and their life at the age of 70.  However, the language and the tones change when alums talk of an exceptional teacher whose insight, perseverance, effectiveness of intellectual inquiry, empathy, or friendship made such an indelible imprint that it lasted 50 or more years.  The ability to cause such lifelong effects is a gift.