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Esprit de Corps Elevates Teacher Capacity to Cause All Children to Learn

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Noble purpose and fraternity.  These are two aged concepts, yet they are the time-tested bonds uniting a band of people committed to a cause and to each other that allows them to move the proverbial mountain while others around them shovel gravel.  They are words that, if you must speak or define them to others, place the listener outside the circle of understanding of the power and force of esprit de corps. 

Esprit de corps is real.

What is it that causes collaborative work to reach a recognized higher plane of excellence?  As a French language term, esprit de corps is associated with both fictional and real-life manifestations.  We conjure D’Artagnan and the three musketeers yelling “One for All and All for One” and charging the guards of Cardinal Richelieu in the Alexander Dumas novel.  We hear the Marine Corps motto of Semper Fidelis (Always Faithful) and remember actual stories of courage in battle that are part of American lore.  Beyond Musketeers and Marines, how does esprit de corps apply to the work of teachers in a public school?  Or does it not?  I believe it does.

Esprit de corps cannot be manufactured.

We too often believe that teamwork and team management are the same as esprit de corps.  They are not.  I do not dis the value of teamwork.  Teaming adds the values of group membership, agreed upon group goals, concerted collegial work effort, and team recognition.  We form teams readily for our recreational activities, sports, and non-sports.  We team for organizational fund raising.  We team for a great number of spontaneous reasons – almost like crowdfunding – that draw us together for a short-lived purpose.

Organizational gurus work the circuit of conferences and book signings touting their recipes for increasing TEAM.  A common plan for increasing organization teamwork looks like this.

#1 – Know and communicate your clear WHY?

#2 – Create and communicate your value system

#3 – Live by your own values

#4 – Create a common aim

#5 – Hold a siege

#6 – Be aspirational

#7 – Celebrate

# 8 – Eat together

#9 – Communicate with passion

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nine-secrets-creating-culture-esprit-de-corps-within-your-brown

If real esprit de corps can be artificially manufactured in this way, why then do we keep talking about low employee morale and trying to find the next magic bullet that will align employees to employment purposes?  Why do we look for the next guru and keep attending the next conference?  Because true esprit de corps is not manufactured, it is birthed and continuously nurtured.

Teaching as a calling.

When interviewing teacher candidates, I often ask “Is teaching your calling?”  “Calling” is another of those seemingly antiquated concepts, yet it is a feeler question to discern those who understand what it is to be innately drawn to a purpose greater than employment.  It exposes a teacher’s intrinsic motivations to teach.  The “called” are passionate about teaching.  A candidate who understands the question typically hesitates to ensure she heard the question correctly and then explains how her itch to teach cannot be satisfied with scratching – she needs to teach to fulfill her greater needs.  This is not to say that all teachers must feel the calling to be successful teachers; they do not.  There are many teachers who cause children to learn and consider teaching their job not their passion.  An intrinsic passion to the noble purpose of teaching is a fire that burns brighter in the called and pushes them to do more than their job without questioning why.

Fraternity + passion = esprit de corps

Add fraternity to passion and the seed of esprit de corps is born.  The fraternity may begin with two teachers with similar assignments seeing themselves not as individual teachers in separate classrooms but as partners in the same assignment.  Collaboration and mutuality build fraternity.  Sharing concerns, combined problem-solving, and the enjoyments of success based upon passionate commitment build fraternity.  Fraternity often begins with the tangibles of friendship and grows to the intangibles of brother- or sisterhood. 

Cadre building is a contributor to nurturing esprit de corps.  Strong cadres form themselves when individuals identify their common cause.  Cadres can be differentiated from spontaneous or assigned teams by the bonds of their fraternity.  Perhaps, a cadre is a super team, a team that exceeds teaming because its members are bonded with esprit de corps.  Building a cadre of impassioned teachers is easy – you just give the time and opportunity and this key question – “what should we do?” – then let them go. 

Some argue that cadre building begets favoritism and the separation of faculty into factions.  I argue that every organization that achieves significant purposes over time contains a cadre or cadres of impassioned persons at its core.  Nurtured by institutional goals, cadres of impassioned persons are the heart of esprit de corps.  Consider the school organizations that are recognized as high performing, elite, exemplary – you choose the word meaning extraordinary – and you will find esprit de corps, cadre strength, and impassioned work at its core.

Leadership nurtures esprit de corps then gets out of the way.

If esprit de corps can be a powerful force in schools, why doesn’t it exist everywhere?  Simply stated, esprit de corps flourishes where school leadership also is driven by noble purpose and fraternity, understands its dynamics, and gives these time, resources, and opportunity to work.  Although it seems that leadership sublimates the cadre, it does not – leadership nurtures cadre work, including giving earned and appropriate internal and external recognitions.  Cadre work can outgrow the apparent work of leadership, and this is the pivot point at which leaders and cadre collegial extend their excellence or leadership extinguishes the cadre.  It is a control issue.  Nothing kills esprit de corps more than the artificial controls of leadership operating for other purposes.

Too often leadership and their cultural design cause teachers to become independent contractors working in isolation in closed-door classrooms.  This is a real phenomenon in school historically and today.  It is too easy when this condition exists to do nothing and allow education to sink into mediocrity.

Every period of excellent in student outcomes is associated with teacher esprit de corps.

In hindsight, we can identify many schools that enjoyed a “golden era” of student successes.  Peel back the layers and you will find an esprit de corps that flourished with enlightened leadership and a band of teachers whose passion and fraternal instincts caused them to excel in the noble purpose of teaching.

Now that you have elected new board members, make them be trustworthy

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Public trust is given to school board members and that trust must be repaid through the members’ informed and active governance of our schools.  Boardsmanship is an active not a passive trust.

It is spring election time, and two school board seats are on the local ballot.  There are no other school district issues to be decided.  If the past informs the future, less than 30% of the eligible voters will decide the two people who will be part of our seven-member school board.  As a generalization, this is the usual pattern of school board elections – 30% or fewer of eligible voters decide who governs our school district.  The generalization does not hold when there is a school referendum or money on the ballot.  Two years ago, almost 70% of eligible voters cast ballots on big money referendum questions and for the persons running for board election that spring.  Dollars and cents issues raise more voter interest than electing who governs our schools. 

Continuing in a predictive mode, fewer than 50 of the voters in the school board election will attend a school board meeting in the next year.  Some of the 50 may physically attend numerous meetings, but fewer than 50 names will appear in person.

That said, how does the public go about the work of trusting elected school board members?

Explicit and implicit trust.

Wisconsin statute 120.12 defines school board duties.  The first two duties set the expectations.  These are –

  • Management of the school district, and
  • General supervision.

Board members are responsible for the “… possession, care, control and management of the property and affairs of the school district…” and are authorized to “… visit and examine the schools of the district, advise the school teachers and administrative staff regarding the instruction, government and progress of the pupils and exercise general supervision over such schools…”.   Subsequent sub-sections of the statute define the scope of sub-duties.

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/120

In the care, control and management of the school district, there are three top order priorities.  These are –

  • Safe and secure schools.
  • Defined curricular instruction leading to quality student outcomes.
  • Inclusive extra-curricular programs, including athletics and fine arts.

These are non-negotiably explicit.  All issues of safety and security race to the school board agenda demanding immediate attention.  Everything from violence on the campus to drop off time on school bus routes to locks on bathroom stall doors is explicitly a board member’s concern.  Failure to resolve any of these issues invites public furor and assurance that someone else will be elected when member terms expire, if not petitions for recall elections.  The public at large explicitly trusts board members to ensure safe and secure schools.

Issues of curricular instruction and extra-curricular programming, though explicit, ignite very selective groups of the public and seldom the public at-large.  Offending the football boosters will not ignite boosters of phonic-based reading or the Art Club.  Yet almost every school activity, curricular and extra-curricular, has a support group that explicitly trusts the board to be positive in its actions affecting their interest.  The connections between moms and dads, alums, and community members wearing school colors are vital to ongoing school culture and future ballot initiatives.  No board member wants to be singled out for offending a support group to the point that the group becomes active in campaigning against school programs and initiatives.  Special interest groups throughout the school community explicitly trust board members to support their interests.

What about children?  Is there an explicit trust between board members and the children of the school district?  Yes but no.  The words “child” and “children” appear hundreds of times in state statures regarding school governance.  The education of children is at the center of the school board’s work.  Yet children are seldom vocal or present when the board does its’ work.  At best, children are explicitly referenced yet the bonds of trust are all implicit.  And children do not vote.

While no board member wants to actively and publicly deny a child or group of children their wants, board members do it all the time.  And they don’t know it when they do it.  A change in school lunch vendors and the foodstuffs they supply will be applauded by some children and despised by others.  Pizza, for example, a staple of school cafeterias changes when vendor contracts change.  Few children will speak about decisions to change brands of toilet paper, yet every child is affected. 

On a larger arena, decisions about grading scales, graduation requirements, prerequisites for course selections are discussed by the board in committee and board meetings, yet few children asked how they would vote, if they could.  Children implicitly trust board members to make positive policy decisions on their behalf.

Trust is as trust is perceived.

Trust is visible.  Board members need to be seen in the schoolhouse and at school events.  Their presence in school may seem mundane, yet their lack of presence infers no personal experience, observation, or first-hand information.  I always questioned a board member who took a strong position at a board meeting about the math curriculum yet had not observed teaching and learning.  Relying on data is okay but combining data about unacceptable student performance data combined with observations of real teaching and learning in the classroom makes a winning argument.  A board member greatly increases her perception of trustworthiness when she says, “I saw how frustrated our teachers and students are with how the publisher presents pre-Algebra.  Our current text materials are not clear and direct in scaffolding required pre-Algebra skills.”  Even though an administrator may say similar things, when a board member makes these statements, they enact their trustworthiness by not being reliant only on what they are told.

Some may say board members’ presence in the school is intrusive.  In fact, the Wisconsin Association of School Board handbook for board members downplays board member visits during the school day.  “Trust the school administration”, the WASB advises.  Board presence during the school day is not a distrust but partnership between the superintendent and the board.  A secure superintendent invites board members to visit school; an insecure administrator does not. 

Trust is vocalized.  When a person meets a board member in an aisle at the grocery store or at the gas pump, and asks a school-based question, board members are given a prime-time opportunity to display and build trust.  “I am open to listening to you.  And I am open to telling you what I think.”  The rules of confidentiality always apply, but outside of forbidden topics, talking with others when they want to talk with with a board member builds mutual trust.

Perception is reality.

Lastly, newly elected board members are expected to go through an acclimation phase.  However, from day one of their term to their last day, the public is always watching.  Board members are constantly measured by how others perceive their work.  While we expect new members to learn, the perception of how new members go about their learning, and how they become fully engaged builds the reality of how much they are trusted.

Be trustworthy to be trusted.

Classroom Interactions Are Soccer Touches – Quality Touches Create Scoring Opportunities

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(This is a reposting from December 14, 2018. I repost this because the ability to create quality teacher and student interactions is needed even more today in 2024 post-pandemic schooling.)

“How many touches did you have?”

“How many were quality touches?”

“And, what did you do with your quality touches?”

I listen to kid-talk about their soccer game. I did not play soccer, so I am learning by watching and listening. A touch is a player getting a foot to touch the ball for a pass, shot, dribble, trap or tackle. I have learned that a tackle in soccer is not a tackle in football. Everything in soccer revolves around touches. Touch the ball and make good things happen.

The kid-talk is genuine. They are very candid in declaring or describing a good touch and in explaining how a touch failed. Interestingly, they talk about the importance of seeing ahead – how their preparation for a touch needs to be viewed by the next two or three touches to follow. Few touches immediately result in a score, but a quality touch in a sequence of quality touches can lead to a score or keep an opponent from scoring.

The same questions can be asked about what happens in a classroom at school. Causing learning is all about touches, of a different yet similar kind.

“How may interactions did a teacher have with a student?”

“How many of these were quality interactions?”

“And, what did the teacher and student do with their quality interactions?”

Like watching soccer, I visit classrooms to watch and listen for how a teacher causes each child in class to learn in that specific period of instruction. Unlike my viewing of soccer, I know what quality touches or interactions in a classroom look, sound and feel like. I look for a teacher’s intentional touches.

  • Questions or statements a teacher directs at the class or at a particular group of students to cause them to think and respond, to apply a problem resolution and share their solution with classmates, and to ask questions or make statements to set up the next questions.
  • Questions asked of a specific student to elicit a specific response.
  • Kicked questions that use one student’s response to seek agreement or disagreement from another student or to ask for add-on thinking from successive students.
  • Questions that are not to be answered immediately, but after more information and thinking have been exposed.
  • Questions that expose students’ readiness for the next teaching.

I listen for student questions and statements that expose what they know and can do with confidence, what they are unsure of, and what is just plain misunderstood. And, I listen for the teacher’s responses, the touches that reinforce, build confidence, clarify and correct. This type of interaction is essential. If there is a strong sense of teamwork between students and their teacher, I expect to hear these touches all the time. If there is no trust between students and their teacher, students will not risk exposing their uncertainties.

The sociometrics of classroom interactions are fascinating and telling. When the interactions ping-pong around between teacher and students, kids are scoring all the time. When the interactions are stilted, contrived, unidirectional, and closed, there is little scoring. Students just wait for the quiz or test without confidence that every student is able to share in a good score.

Interactions can be questions, as shown above. Interactions can be visual looks of support and reinforcement, quizzical looks that ask a question without words, a physical proximity that says “I care”, a kneeling down next to a child’s chair to make a conversation private, and a smile to say “well done.” A tally of the interactions between a teacher and all the students in a class rises to the thousands every day. How many are quality interactions?

For teachers, the ability to make quality interactions is a learned and acquired skill set. It is intentional within a teaching and learning design. It is mentally rehearsed. It is practiced often enough that students will risk their engagement. Good interactions beget more good interactions. Quality interactions are the heart and soul of good teaching.

Every now and then, I hear teacher-talk that sounds like kid-talk about their soccer game, talking about how well a teaching episode felt as a result of quality interactions. Teachers know all about quality and no-quality touches with students.  The task is increase the number of quality, diminish the number of no-quality, and improve the likelihood of student scoring.  Goal!!!!!!

Suspending Reality Can Cause Learning.

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When a teacher suspends reality for the duration of an instructional unit, children have few limits to their learning.  Suspension opens possibilities for each child’s thinking and doing that the conditions of instructional normalcy and “same old” can limit.  While not quite make-believe, a suspended reality induces creativity and alternative thinking, and invites exploration and risk taking.

Close your eyes and listen.

A classroom is Never-Never Land for children when a teacher learns how to suspend reality.  She doesn’t need Tinkerbell’s dust.  As mistress of her teaching domain, she says, “Close your eyes and listen” as she walks around the classroom placing things on the tables around which children were seated.  “We are now in a place long ago when people just like you were trying to understand how to count their possessions and the things they saw in their world.  They knew there was more than one of almost everything, but they did not have any ideas about how number them.  When you open your eyes, you will find two piles of things on your table.  Your first job is to find a way to tell me how you determined how many things are in each pile.  Your second job is to tell me how you can combine the objects in the two piles into one pile without recounting them.  And your third job is to tell me how you can remove some of the items in the larger pile so that you have two equal piles with some items left over.  When you have completed each job, you will explain your thinking and reasoning to me.”  She waits while silently counting to 30.  “Oh, there is a slip of paper next to your piles with these three jobs listed.  And I expect that each table may have differing yet very appropriate explanations for me.”  She waits while silently counting to 15.  “Now open your eyes and begin.”  If children have questions, she answers the children at their table directly and not the entire class.

Problem-based learning (PBL)

I first encountered suspended realities at teacher workshops in problem-based learning at the Illinois Math and Science Academy in the late 1990s.  Our workshop team was so enthused we pursued more training and then organized a district training in PBL so that all teachers, no matter their assignment could add PBL to their instructional toolbox.  We were into building instructional toolboxes.

Although our training was only to add a possible teaching tool for each teacher, we still experienced the usual change theory pathway of new programs.  Our goal was professional development and pleasingly we experienced many teachers who found value in a new teaching strategy.  Interestingly, our secondary teachers adopted PBL more quickly and thoroughly than our elementary teachers.  ELA, social studies, and science teachers, some veterans, and some early career teachers, modified selected units for PBL applications.  Each teacher embedded initial instruction, modeling, formative assessment, and instructional adjustment in their PBL units, but these came at different places and times in their unit’s progression compared to their usual unit designs.

Twenty-plus years later veterans of our PBL training still display aspects of suspended realities.  They have refined their applications, made the teaching tool more their own, and use it wisely to cause children to learn.

Student-centeredness causes learning.

The big Duh! of suspending reality lies in the acceptance of student-centered thinking and outcomes.  Teachers assure that key skill sets, content, and concepts are taught and learned during suspended reality.  Post-assessments indicate that student learning in PBL or suspended reality units is as strong if not stronger than in traditional directed instruction units of learning.  The real differential is in student engagement.  When children understand the power that “you explain it me” it allows them to create answers, solutions, and outcomes, opens their willingness to think beyond “usual” and past “this is how I usually act/think in class”, and their level of excitement and “I can do” accelerates. 

We can only smile proudly at the conclusion of a suspended lesson or unit and a child demonstrates learning of the academic content and skills, an ability to hold out an individualized product, explain a solution that both makes sense to her and to her teacher, and be independent of other children or groups of children.

Using tools to cause children to learn – isn’t this why we became teachers of children?

When you ask a question what do you really want to know?

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Asking questions is a component of every instructional strategy.  A learning outcome may focus a teacher’s instruction, but it is the questions that drive student learning.  Some questions are raised by the teacher, and some are raised by students.  Some questions get answered and others just dangle.  At the end of the day, every assessment of the quality and quantity of what a student learns begins with questions.  To wit, when you ask a question, what do you really want to know?  Lastly, when do you stop asking questions?

Joe Friday told us, “Just the facts”.

Most teachers today were born after Detective Joe Friday on TV’s “Dragnet” gave us his famous command of “Just the facts, Ma’am, just the facts”.  Ironically, his command is at the heart of what children are asked to learn historically and today in their school lessons.  Just the facts.

In the story of the Three Little Pigs, there are a lot of questions to ponder.  Some are facts.

  • What materials did the pigs use to build their houses?
  • What happened to the house of straw?  What happened to the house of sticks?  What happened to the house of brick?
  • What happened to the wolf at the end of the story?

A teacher can be content when children understand the facts of a story.  These are the journalist’s Five W’s – Who?  What?  Where?  When?  Why?  And an H – How?  Once children satisfactorily understand these questions, a teacher may end the lesson.  In fact, most lessons end there because much of our curriculum and teaching is just about facts. 

Every question begs a next question.

A good question is like a key in a lock.  It opens up doors that lead deeper into the story.  Of the Five W’s, it is the Why that most readily leads to a next tier of questions.

  • Why did the first pig build a house of straw?  And why did the second pig build a house of sticks?  And why did the third pig build a house of bricks?
  • Why was the wolf interested in these pigs?

Next tier.

  • Why was the story of the three pigs told told to children?  Or what is the moral of the story?

Next tier.

Consider your life.

  • Which little pig best portrays you?
  • Who are the wolves in your life?

Next tier.

  • Consider socio-economic classes.  Now, retell the story using the poor, the middle class, and the wealthy.  Put the story in the 1930s and the Great Depression and retell it.

Next tier.

  • What life lessons can you draw from the story of the Three Little Pigs?
  • Create a catch phrases or slogans characterize this story.  Something like – had work pays off.

Know when to stop asking.

A good story or rich plot or complex event is a deep well of questions and teachers can draw from such a well until the proverbial cows come home.  But enough is usually enough.  A good use of questioning brings us back to the learning outcome that focuses initial instruction.  In the movie “Moneyball”, the character Billy Beane taught us, “…when you get the answer you’re looking for, hang up the phone”.  Good curricular design and good teaching knows when a teacher has gotten the answers the teacher is looking for and thus ends the lesson.