Tag Archives: professionalism

Deja Camaraderie

Posted on by
Reply

I sat at a back table in our school cafeteria yesterday listening to chatter.  The tables were ringed by teachers and support staff and custodians and administrators having lunch and talking – together.    Round cafeteria tables with attached benches put everyone knee-to-knee facing into the table group.  Veteran teachers in their fourth decade of work in our school sat and ate with newbies – our first-year teachers.  The boisterous conversation sounded like the room was full of kids on a school day.  Nobody stood to shush the loudness; nobody was bothered.  This was great!

We are back.  Not just back for the start for a school year, but back in the regaining of a sense of school that evaded us for the past several years.  We are back to being a school.  These words do not dis our school and our recent work.  They recognize a change in our being a school.

I read stories about schooling and education daily.  Writers of school news this summer have focused on the many issues that trouble public education in 2022.  Reinforced by contacts around the state, we know there are too many schools without a teacher for every classroom.  Educators and parents worry about the mental health of children and, rightfully, about the wellness of school staff.  Words like burn out and fatigue abound even before the first lesson of the school year is taught.  Our school is not immune from these.  They will haunt us and our work for some time to come. 

On this Tuesday, the second day of teacher work before school starts next week, it did not appear that the “news” paints our work.  Strolling the hallways and looking in different classroom doors, I saw and heard high school English teachers talking with our tech director about “set ups”, a math teacher talking with a special education aide about students who will need assistance, and our counselor “checking with people”.  Grade level teachers in the elementary wing had children in school last week for a “smart start” for our youngest students, several school warm-up days, and they were talking about what they learned from those children.

A large group of new and veteran staff met in the gym for training in non-violent intervention.  This Friday all school employees will be trained in trauma sensitivity.  The schoolhouse feels like long ago college life in the days before classes started with everyone “moving in”.  There is an air of casual busy-ness, an informal professionalism, and a common focus. 

Covid stressed us beyond our fears for personal health.  It attacked every aspect of public education and how school treats with children, parents, and the community.  It also attacked personal and professional relationships inside the school.  In addressing many of these pandemic-related challenges, we exposed and surfaced organizational issues and tensions that troubled our school.  Things known but not talked about need airing out.  Without detailing the work, we are engaged in repairing these injuries.

At an after-school meeting of a school board committee yesterday, teachers, coaches, and a school parent sat with the superintendent, a principal and three board members to talk about campus issues – the softball field, gym scoreboards, and available space.  Each person contributed experience, perspective, needs, and possibilities.  They will recommend action to the board, money will be spent, and improvements achieved.  And, they will continue to meet because they have work to do. Collegiality prevails.

The all-staff lunch caused me to remember the best of before-school-starts experiences from years past and I saw that positiveness alive in our cafe.  A single aspect of positive-plus was that our school board members grilled the hamburgers and veggie burgers for the all-school lunch.  They smelled of charcoal smoke and charred meat when they joined the staff at the tables.  They were applauded.

We have a feeling of deja camaraderie and it is welcome.  We are back!

Collegiality and Camaraderie In The Time of COCID

Posted on by
Reply

There have been few times in public education when educators have required professional association more than we are experiencing in the Time of COVID.  While health protocols require us to be socially isolated not only from children but from each other, we have a tremendous need for professional conversation – to share the challenges and solutions of schooling, leadership, teaching and learning, and supporting others in our school.  We need to hear and see the real-life work of our peers, and to uplift each other personally and professionally.  The combination of personal and professional stressors can become an overwhelming burden.  We need the strength of professional association now.

More than anything else, professional association tells an educator “You are not alone!”.

Take Away

The metaphor that we are in a war against COVID is not trite.  It says it all.  It provides the context for behaviors and expectations in which a war is waged.  War is not our normal condition.  We are seldom prepared for it.  War is not a democratic process.  It is imposed by forces outside our consent.  In a war, everything that is usual and customary can be discarded by daily reality or by decree.  Usual practices are replaced with emergency measures.  War requires our acquiescence to arbitrary and unusual rules.  We may rebel against the emergency measures until we or those close to us become war casualties and then our rebellion seems futile.  A pandemic is a wartime culture.

Wartime builds alliances and in the Time of COVID professional associations can be an educator’s best source for multi-alliances.  These alliances are necessary because wartime culture quickly disorients everyone into “we and they” groups and “me, all alone”.  Traditional and distinguishing differences between groups in our schools – teachers, administrators, office staff, custodians, food service, drivers, children, parents and community residents – want to remain although their continuation can paint people into actions and statements which may seem oppositional to each other.  The real and perceived threats of COVID to the personal health, the financial health, the community health, and the professional health of every person becomes the most important issue for each person – personally.  While the war against COVID is waged widely in every community in our nation, its impact is unbelievably personal.  Every person has a valid right to say “COVID or the threat of COVID has affected me/my …”.  No one is unscathed.

Professional association helps us gain perspective by aligning our circumstances and stories with others who work “in our shoes”.  They tell us that, indeed, we are not alone and that others like us are scathed yet continue to do our work toward a non-COVID future.

What do we know?

Professional associations abound for educators.  There are national associations with state affiliations for every educator depending upon professional assignment, subject area specialty, school level, and student disaggregation.  I want to quickly acknowledge the national and state associations and move to the more essential value of local and in-school associations.

A quick Google provides these examples of national associations for educators. There are hundreds more.

  • National Science Teachers Association
  • NEA
  • American Federation of Teachers
  • Council for Exceptional Children
  • International Reading Association
  • American Educational Research Association
  • AASA
  • NASSP
  • NAEP
  • WASB
  • ASCD
  • Phi Delta Kappa
  • National Art Education Association
  • American Association of Physics Teachers
  • Association for Middle Level Education
  • National Council for Teachers of English
  • National Council for Teachers of Mathematics
  • National Council for the Social Studies
  • National Association for Gifted Children
  • ASCD
  • American Association of School Librarians
  • ISTE

Read, watch, listen, and engage.  Our ubiquitous, digitized world allows us to be professionally connected wherever we are.  I, for one, read/watch/listen and write every day.  Most often, I am not able to mass my minutes to do so.  I use the odd 10 to 20 minutes throughout the day to start, stop and finish an article in a journal, podcast, audio clip, YouTube, or post.  My IPad and phone keep me professionally connected.

More importantly for in-school educators!!

It is the in-school, down-the-hall, faculty and staff associations that will carry an educator through the pandemic.   No one in a professional association’s editorial offices knows your working conditions like the person in the classroom, office, or workstation next door to yours.  Professional publications inform, uplift, and motivate.  But, no one outside your campus understands exactly how your Pandemic Plan affects your daily ability to do your professional work and how it affects you – professionally.

Why is this thus?

I am reminded of the binding camaraderie that develops when first-year teachers enter a school or when a first-year educator bonds with an experienced mentor.  The group of first-year teachers find each other and share with each other in ways that transcend friendship.  In their immediacy, it is the sense of a common rookie status to create each person’s professional entity.  Rookies flock together because us they lack the assumptive knowledge that comes with experience.  They build their knowledge by talking and sharing with each other.  In later years, the sense of trust derived from their rookie seasons keeps them close as professionals. 

This binding also takes place when a person new to an assignment aligns with an experienced mentor.  Their connections transcend time.  My mentor of 50 years ago and I still share e-stories.  We have insider knowledge and history that no one else shares.

I observe this camaraderie among teachers, custodians, secretaries, teacher aides, principals, district office staff – it is universal.  It is personally and professionally essential.

Every educator is a rookie in this pandemic.  No one has assumptive knowledge based upon prior pandemic experience and all are seeking mentors.  This pandemic requires educators to build their camaraderie through the personalized and everyday reality of facing and overcoming large and shared problems.  The insider relationships fashioned now will blossom even more in the post-pandemic.

To do

  • Re-establish the strengths of best collegial practices.  Tell others what you are doing, how you feel about your work, and how you are dealing with the pandemic pressures.  The root definition of the term collegial is a shared responsibility among colleagues or peers.  Today, it is a responsibility to share.  Stressful times call for an increase in collegiality not a decrease.  Talk to each other, if not in person through phone calls, text messages, and e-writing.  Colleagues talk with each other.
  • Move from collegial to camaraderie – there is a difference.  Colleagues live in the professional world and comrades live in a more personalized professional world.  The pandemic is making every story very personal.  Mind the difference and use it to your mutual benefit.  You will not be comrades against the world, but comrades against the ways that COVID are causing you to work as educators.  This commonality helps to allay the feelings of separation and working alone.
  • Be strengthened by the affirmation of your peers.  Most Pandemic Plans create closed office and classroom doors with little to no opportunity for physical proximity.  There is no gathering in a common prep area, a lunchroom, or a staff meeting room.  Hallway and parking lot talk are not inappropriate – just not safe.  Take time to share your professional work with others and listen/watch others share with you.  This is no time for silent observation – affirm each other’s work.  The more you affirm others, the more affirmation you will receive.
  • Build trusted and reliable voices.  In our state, teacher unions and local associations helped to build professional connections.  While legislation neutered unions, it was not a death knell to the need for professional collectivism.  Educators may not choose to certify in order bargain as a group, but they can join as a professional voice.  The isolation caused by mitigation protocols that demand isolation can give rise to misunderstandings and misinterpretations.  Trust requires conversation.  Conversation requires a willingness to speak and to listen. Trust your collegial voices.
  • Work in the big picture window.  The first order of schooling is to educate children.  All other discussions support that order.  There really are no “Yes, buts…”.  Accept this and then work out the details. 
  • Build the future.  Schooling in the post-pandemic will not snap back to the pre-pandemic.  New knowledge, skills, and dispositions about education are developing and these will need to be accommodated in post-pandemic education.  Professional voices will be necessary to sculpt this newness into future practices.  If we can bring our collegialism, camaraderie, best and affirmed practices, collective voice, and big picture thinking to these issues, a post-pandemic education will serve our communities and their children well. 

The big duh!

The pandemic will subside due to the alliances of medical resources and the alliances of people committed to living and working through a war on a disease.  The devastating tragedies of death and illness will be mourned for years to come.  Honoring and never downplaying these, today’s children require all educators to stay the distance.  Their future depends upon the quality education we provide during the pandemic.  The quality of our associative work today has a direct bearing on the education of these children.

Professionalism Is As Professionals Do

Posted on by
Reply

School conversation, the serious flavor, between teachers and administrators and school board members often leads to the topic of treating people as professionals. Whether the talk is about teaching and learning, school policies and practices, salaries and benefits, or inclusion in decision-making, the idea of “treat me as a professional” becomes a filter for sifting ideas. I listen for it. Someone in the conversation ultimately invokes the word “professional” like a trump card in a game of bridge and others in the group are immediately tarnished with “unprofessional”. Some years past, the phrase was “I’m for our kids”. Whoever said it first took the high ground and all others were in the dirt. “Whoa”, I say. Professional treatment is a 360-degree proposition. To be treated professionally requires all to act professionally.

To paraphrase Forest Gump, “Professionalism is as professionalism does”. The only high ground is an idea or practice that is best practice and that is illuminated by professional study, consideration and action. To mix the metaphors – professionalism is the tide that raises all boats. It is not an ethereal that we blindly tip our caps to. Professionalism is in our actions, our words, our work and our expectations. It is in our commitment to the constant improvement of teaching and learning and to those engaged in this work. Yes, Forest, professionalism is what professionals do.

In the early 70s professionalism was more of a lower-case word. College graduates prepared for the profession of teacher anticipating a career of causing children to learn. However, at that time, college graduates entering their first classroom were employees in an employer-dominated era. Where allowed, strikes and work stoppages and no salary or benefit improvements were tools too often used by educational professionals against other educational professionals. In 1970 my first days as a teacher were spent “on strike” and I have not forgotten the sense of waste as the education of children was held hostage to professionalism.

I do not want to overgeneralize negatively about our history, because there also were many wonderful achievements accomplished through professional collegiality. However, when push came to shove and it did, differences arose that separated us into two or more camps of professionals. The tide raised only some boats while other boats were left tied to docks of status quo.

In my observation, professionalism is not a thermometer that we check daily or occasionally. Being professional is not fluctuating weather in the schoolhouse. It is not related to good or better or improved treatments of employees by employers, or conversely, to the attitudes of the supervised to their supervisor. Professionalism does not live when employee salaries are increased or benefits are expanded and it does not die when monies for salary and benefit enhancement are not available. Professionalism is not factored by class sizes or supply budgets. Professionalism is the doing, the process of talking and creating understanding and the constant commitment to educating children that binds educators as a profession.

I look for four tell tale signs of professionalism.

  •  Listening. Professionals take the time to personally listen to each other. The sense of hearing provides each of us with the greatest amount of information about our world and surroundings every day. We hear things unconsciously, because that is how the sense of hearing works. Listening is different. It is intentional and focused and conveys connection. I am listening to you tells me what you want me to know. Given, a lot of our conversations are inane. Yet, when one person actively listens to another, listening conveys the value of communication and shared communication is essential for professionalism to thrive.
  •  Continuing education. This is not graduate degrees for all, but it is education beyond formal education or initial training for all. Professionals intellectually consider the what, why and wherefore of their work. They conscientiously try to become more informed, better skilled and more expert in their field of work. Schools help by supporting job-related continuing education and training for all employees. Professionals take this one step further by being personally vested in their own improvement.
  •  Appreciation. There is nothing more rewarding in the schoolhouse than to be recognized and appreciated. No person in the school in any role is on the fast track to fame and fortune. Few in the schoolhouse receive much recognition for their work inside the school outside of the schoolhouse. That is why in-school appreciation is essential to its professionalism. The first step of appreciation is knowing each other’s name. When employees pass each day like ships in the night, there is no appreciation. Being recognized by name is such a small thing with such a big reward. The second step is a thank you, now and again. Thank you for the work you do; your work and you are recognized and valued. If you don’t understand this try it. Appreciation begets smiles and smiles join people together.
  •  Commitment. Professionals are not day jobbers. They are invested in the meaningfulness of their work over time. They personally evaluate the quality of their work and strive to keep their performance, no matter what the job, at the highest level they can. I have observed superintendents and board members work as hard to wordsmith a policy or proposal as the building and grounds supervisor and cleaners work to keep school restrooms clean and sanitary. Their commonality is their intrinsic desire to “do good work” that converts every employee into a school professional.

Think about your workplace. Are you listened to and do you actively listen to others? Are you personally and is your school equally engaged in your learning to be an expert in your work? Do you know that you and your work are appreciated and do you appreciate those you work with and their work? Are you collegially committed to making your school the best it can be? If you have four answers of yes, Forest Gump’s words apply to you in a most positive way.