Tag Archives: teacher preparation

Good Classroom Management is Not Easy; It is a Learned and Practiced Skill and Art

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Teacher preparation in the United States is in crisis mode. There are not enough new teachers each year to replace teachers who leave the classroom. The cold fact is that four in every ten young teachers leave classroom teaching for other employment in their first five years of teaching. “Multiple reasons rise to the top of the list. Student behavior is a leading complaint Long hears from teachers who contemplate or leave teaching, and one he believes is among the hardest to address. ‘I don’t think anyone has the answer,’ said Long, referring to accounts of extreme student behavior targeting teachers that has resulted in physical or emotional harm.” Zachary Long quit teaching and with his wife co-founded Life After Teaching. He helps teachers who want to quit teaching to quit.

https://www.edweek.org/leadership/behind-the-stats-3-former-teachers-talk-about-why-they-left/2023/04

Student behavior runs teachers out of teaching. It is a fact, but it need not be a continuing fact. When we know teachers quit teaching because of unsuccessful classroom management, we need to aggressively improve how we prepare teachers.

When your boat is taking on water, you can abandon the ship, or you can fix the hole in the hull. We tolerate and accommodate the abandonment of classrooms even though we know a huge “hole” in teacher preparation is classroom management.

A review of teacher preparation curriculum in local colleges of education tells the story. Our local university, for example, provides teacher candidates with 72 credits of college course work toward a major in K-9 education. But there is only one three-credit course that teaches classroom management, and it combines learning theories with student behavior. When we know that an inability to manage children in a classroom setting is one of the leading causes of teacher attrition, is this adequate?

EDUC 340. Supporting Learning and Behavior in the Classroom. 3 Credits.

Course provides pre-service teachers with an understanding of how students learn in educational contexts. Learning theories reviewed, & learning strategies to enhance learning and prevent/manage behaviors are introduced and applied in direct interaction with a learner. Course may be repeated 2 times for a total of 6 credits.
Fall and Spring.

No Longer Is It a Hit Them Hard and Often Response

How to organize and manage groups of students is an age-old problem. The first Normal Schools (state teacher prep schools) endorsed corporal punishment for misbehaving students. Students went to the proverbial woodshed where their teacher administered discipline with a paddle. Teachers taught children to behave by fearing physical punishment. Although some schools began banning corporal punishment as early as 1914 it continued as a disciplinary practice in many states in the late 1990s.

https://www.nea.org/nea-today/all-news-articles/corporal-punishment-schools-still-legal-many-states#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20Department%20of%20Education,dropped%20over%20the%20past%20decade.

When a wooden paddle was considered too harsh, teachers used a gym shoe. I saw the well-known design of a Converse gym shoe on the backsides of my male classmates in the 60s.

On the first day of my first teaching assignment my principal gave me a well-worn wooden paddle and told me to use it. When I asked what a teacher should do if a child’s behavior did not improve, he implied I should hit them harder and more often. I put my paddle in a closet.

Student Discipline as Pedagogy

As often as we talked about paddling back in the day, we clearly understood most of our teachers would never raise a hand to a student. They created patterns of good student behavior through good teaching. It was not a matter of experience, however. We knew veteran teachers whose classrooms were unruly and undisciplined and novice teachers whose students focused on learning not misbehaving. Even before I began my teacher preparation, it was clear that good teaching and good student discipline are linked.

Our task in teacher preparation today is to create highly qualified teachers of both curriculum and student discipline. A teacher who will stay in the profession needs to learn both.

Toolbox Preparation for every Teacher

Classroom management is as important as teaching methods. If a teacher cannot focus children’s attention on the curriculum, how can a teacher teach the curriculum? It is a what to do first dilemma – teach teachers how to teach or teach teachers how to manage children as learners. Both are equally important, and each needs equally strong emphasis.

Field experience tells us that fitting a student management philosophy to a teacher is like fitting shoes. One will feel better, wear better, and be more satisfying than all others. Therefore, teacher prep programs must teach teachers a variety of philosophies and strategies so that a teacher can find a personal plan that refines student behavior and enhances student learning.

The CESA 7 (WI) Teacher Development Center treats Instructional Methods and Classroom Management as toolbox courses that every teacher candidate, regardless of the license sought, must master. In Classroom Management, candidates study several behavioral management philosophies and strategies that allow the candidate to develop a personal and philosophical “fit” to their classroom management plans.

Candidates study and are assessed for their knowledge and understanding of five philosophies and strategies. They know the basis and background of each, their authors, and field studies of their applications. Candidates must know the following:

  • Choice/Logical Consequences
  • Discipline with Dignity
  • Assertive Discipline
  • Social Justice
  • PBIS

As an “apprentice” teacher development program, teacher candidates are employed by a school district and enrolled in the TDC. From day one they are classroom teachers under the supervision of school principals, mentors, and CESA 7 supervisors. CESA 7 enrolls candidates from districts throughout Wisconsin; districts that know CESA 7’s reputation for quality instruction and personal support given to of its apprentice teachers. The TDC licensing program requires four semesters of teacher prep coursework, daily teaching, and synthesis of TDC instruction into classroom applications.

Classroom Management and Instructional Methods are the first courses candidates must complete in their licensing program. The CESA 7 candidate supervisor emphasizes and guides apprentices to engage their students in the teacher’s learned classroom management design. This “guided” implementation sets up the relationship between learning and behavior and expectations for both the teacher’s and all students’ commitment to both.

Support of Novice Teachers is Critical

A second most common reason for teachers to leave teaching is their perceived lack of professional support. It starts with a principal and administrative structure that is hard pressed to meet daily crisis demands and leaves new teacher support as a low priority.

The Learning Policy Institute says, “New teachers who do not receive mentoring and other supports leave at more than two times the rate of those who do.”

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

The CESA 7 TDC answers this dilemma with constant support from its classroom-visiting supervisors, a 24-7 online project specialist, and a curriculum and instruction consultant. TDC experience shows that its staff often understands and responds to candidate classroom problems before the school principal is aware of a problem.

Unlike IHEs that supervise student teachers during a clinical semester only, the TDC conducts supervisory observations and counseling throughout the candidate’s enrollment. Through this process, principals and TDC supervisors see, critique, and guide the development of each candidate’s classroom management practices. TDC teachers do not guess at student behavioral management. Candidates apply the methods they studied, use informed supervision, and refine strategies that work. And, they have ongoing professional feedback on the effectiveness of their classroom management.

The Big Duh!

We know that good teaching and good classroom management go together. We know that positive professional and administrative support is essential for novice teachers. We know that too many teachers leave their chosen profession too early because of problems with student discipline and a perceived lack of professional support. We know that novice teachers who learn and implement good teaching and good student discipline programs are more likely to continue their careers as classroom teachers.

When we know these things as true, teacher preparation programs must fix the hole in our teacher development programs that lead to teacher resignations. We can fix these problems and children can have the prepared teachers they deserve.

Being Taught By an Unprepared Teacher Is a Mathematical Certainty

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The shortage of qualified teachers in our schools is real and if it has not touched children in your school yet it will.  I remember Andrews, the naval architect in the movie Titanic, saying to Captain Smith, “Titanic will founder (sink).  It is a mathematical certainty, Sir”.  He was not believed.  The Titanic was supposed to be unsinkable!  So, it is with less than prepared teachers in classrooms.  A school’s statement of “a quality teacher in every classroom” has the same credibility as believing the Titanic could not sink.  Your children will be taught by unprepared teachers; it is a mathematical certainty.

A shortage of teachers had been a long time coming, but it always was coming.  It always was a story of numbers.  Today there are more teaching jobs posted than candidates and the gap in this trend is widening not narrowing.  Principals in the 80s and 90s could unabashedly expect between 50 and 100 applications for a posted teaching position.  In 2022 too many postings for teaching positions did not stir a single application. 

Four reasons are engineering our shortage of classroom teachers.

  1. Starting a career in education is economically difficult to impossible.  The disparity between the cost of a college degree and teacher certification and a teacher’s salary during the first ten years of employment turn people away from becoming teachers.  Too many teachers are burdened with college debt and their salaries are inadequate for meeting today’s cost of living and debt payments.  Debt is driving teachers from the classroom and preventing others from a career in teaching.
  2. Public confidence in public education was dramatically damaged by the pandemic.  The work of classroom teachers was not the issue.  It was the political battleground of school closings, required quarantining, masking and vaccination, and the failure of remote and home-based learning that constantly grew parental hostility to public schools.
  3. The continuing inequality issues inherent in education have not changed.  As a correct generalization, children in wealthier communities and well-financed schools receive a better education and educational experience than children in impoverished and under-financed schools.  Everything from student-teacher ratios to midday snacks to enrichment field trips hinges on financing.  It is hard to recruit teachers to teach in under-supported schools.  These schools are plagued by a lack of prepared teachers.
  4. More teachers are retiring and resigning than are graduating from teacher preparation programs of any design.  Interestingly, we have enough people with a teaching license to place a prepared teacher in every classroom.  We do not have enough licensed teachers who want to teach.

State legislators are responding to constituent school districts declarations of teacher shortages by modifying statutory requirements for a teaching license.  To meet legislative direction, state departments of public instruction are creating a “buffet” of alternative strategies for awarding a teaching license.  Sadly, the buffet is becoming more of a snack bar.  These “buffet” options:

  • Incrementally reduce the requirement of a baccalaureate degree in education as the benchmark for a teaching degree.  Teacher licensing based upon a BA degree requires a candidate to have completed a broader array of course work in English, mathematics, science, and the social sciences.  This background education provides teachers with contextual information that more completely teaches children the “why and wherefores of answers” and not just if an answer is correct or incorrect.  Reducing background academic knowledge reduces the quality of instruction and learning.  Without adequate background knowledge teachers are unprepared.
  • Focus on how to teach and not how to teach children.  For example, a Career and Technical Education (CTE) certification program allows a candidate with a BA in a technical field and more than three years working experience in that field to complete a minimum number of instructional courses to qualify for a teaching license.  Too often classroom management, child psychology, testing and assessment, and teaching children with educational challenges are not included in CTE preparation.  Teachers who do not understand children are unprepared.
  • Eliminate student teaching.  The American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence (ABCTE) offers a teaching license based upon virtual course work and exams.  No student teaching is required; if you can pass tests, you can teach.  ABCTE says so.  The practicum of student teaching is how unexperienced teachers become prepared.  Without student teaching, children are guinea pigs for unprepared teachers.
  • Keep reducing teacher preparation to place an adult in the classroom.  Legislation is pending to allow a person with an associate degree and experience as a Teacher Aide to be eligible for teacher training.  Legislation is also pending to allow a person with a high school education to work as a substitute teacher.  This returns us to 1900 when an 8th grade graduate could teach elementary school and high school grad could teach secondary school.  It is the Cadillac of unpreparedness.

There is some hope for the future as school boards increase teacher compensation.  There is some hope as the federal government attempts to reduce student debt.  There is some hope as schools return to the look of pre-pandemic stability.  There is some hope that public confidence in public schools will return to a positive value. 

But trends, like the Titanic, do not change course easily.  A course correction for the Titanic or a public institution takes time to affect and during that time more harm is inflicted.  While it was a mathematical certainty the Titanic would sink due to a rip in its hull, the employment of unprepared teachers need not sink public education.  If we value public education, the trend toward the employment of unprepared teachers will reverse itself.  But it will take time, if we value public education.

Are We Prepared To Do What Needs To Be Done?  Sometimes But Not Always!

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“What are you prepared to do?”, gasped the dying Sean Connery character in The Untouchables.  His cut-to-the-bone question begs answers as educators struggle today with meaty problems.  We know the problems facing educators; they are abundantly clear.  We even know viable resolutions.  The real issue is this – are we prepared to do what is required to achieve what we want?

Take your pick of these:  How should schools fill the gaps in student achievement, some attributable to the pandemic?  How should schools treat diverse gender identification?  How should schools respond to the politics of book banning and curricular pruning?  What is public education’s response to state funding of church-based schools?  How should a school respond to racism, prejudice, and discrimination in its community?  What are parent rights in the education of children beyond choosing a school for their enrollment?  How do we re-instill trust in local public schools?

What do we know?

These and other problems exist, and they afflict our ability to successfully prepare all children for adult life.  Most are tangential to teaching and learning yet their presence gets in the way of our daily work with children.  Each begins with school governance and filters it down to affect classroom application. 

These are not the easy problems of physical infrastructure, such as not enough classrooms or outdated HVAC systems.  Once difficult to resolve, we would take on several of these old facility problems in place of one that is new.  The new problems are social-cutural-political-economic swamps buttressed by special interest activism.  No politely discussed hammer and nail solutions will resolve today’s issues of in-your-face demands of “I want what I want regardless of what you say” confrontations.

Our history reflects three responses when public education perceives a significant problem.  These responses are listed in the order of their usual employment, most often to seldom ever.

  • Complain about the problem, draw attention to it, then acquiesce to the status quo, accommodate the status quo, and do nothing.
  • Ignore the problem.  Continue doing what schools usually do hoping the problem will either go away or some other authority will resolve it.
  • Find a high ground position to resolve the problem, create a consensus stakeholder solution, and move from the current status quo to a new, hopefully improved status.

In recent months, I added a fourth response. 

  • In the face of personal attacks on school leaders shaping policy and program as demanded by public demonstrators knowing they do not represent most of the community nor what is best for educating children.  Avoid trauma at cost!

I believe that our traditional school board governance with professional educational leadership knows what they should do to resolve contemporary, hot issues.  George Orwell told us “All issues are political issues”.  Once again, he got it right.  Knowing what should be done in the face of “all things are political” is a new and troublesome quandary for our apolitical school leadership.  “What are you prepared to do?”, is the question of our day.

A case in point – achievement gaps in reading.

If prepared to do what is necessary, we can.  Gaps in student achievement in reading and math preceded the pandemic and were worsened by the pandemic.  The answer – stop doing what is not working and start doing what will work.  Our state history of dealing with reading achievement gaps was to acquiesce to traditional reading association lobbyists keen on retaining whole language, blended language, and “three cueing” techniques.  Historically, we chose to complain and then do nothing when the same old reading instruction did not move the reading gap needle.  Instead, our legislature passed a bipartisan reading bill, Act 20, that makes the science of reading principles the official reading curriculum for all children.  The Act directs the DPI’s new Office of Literacy to improve new teacher preparation, veteran teacher professional development, and install regional coaching systems to ensure all children all children are being taught using the science of reading principles.

Kudos to Rep. Joel Kitchens and others for authoring the bill and persisting against traditional opposition to passage of Act 20.

Gaps in math achievement.

A similar fix is available for filling traditional and post-pandemic gaps in math achievement.  Stop hiring teachers who were good at math as students.  Hire teachers who are proficient in pedagogies for teaching math and mathematical reasoning.  Too many veteran math teachers were intuitive math students in school.  They can demonstrate and explain how they solve math problems, but they cannot explain the mathematical reasoning in ways that non-intuitive children understand and need to apply. 

Principals have observed the difference in these two types of teachers for decades and cherish their pedagogically proficient teachers. 

Our problem is that while high school math teacher licensing requires a baccalaureate major in mathematics, 4K-8 teachers are generalists requiring minimal post-high school study in mathematics.  As instruction in algebra and geometry concepts creeps further into elementary school, few teachers are prepared to explain the math reasoning behind the concepts.  Students are then underprepared in understanding why solutions for algebra and geometry problems work when they sit in secondary school math classrooms.  As math becomes more complex, their programmed responses to simpler math result in failed test questions.

Are we prepared to insist that every teacher of mathematics must be prepared to teach mathematics not just do mathematics?  Complaining or ignoring the problem is not an answer.  Creating a high ground consensus of IHEs, local school leaders, and parents can cause a viable resolution to a problem that currently is stuck in the same old, same old.  We know what to do and how to do it, if we are prepared to fix the problem of gaps in student math achievement.

Other problems and school sorrows.

The solution story for Act 20 resembled a physical infrastructure problem.  We identified a problem, studied solutions, presented, and debated a proposal, ironed out points of disagreement, and concluded with a positive, consensus resolution.  Other contemporary problems are not so easy.

School is a complex social, cultural, political, economic, and sometimes educational, organism.  It is authorized by our state government and run by a local government, our school board.  Once the most even keeled of governance venues, grass roots school board meetings have become battlefields.  This is especially accurate for social, cultural, political, economic-blended issues.  Consider these:

  • Requests to ban books and materials in school libraries and classrooms.
  • Non-traditional gender identification.
  • Access to school restrooms and locker rooms by students requesting non-traditional gender identification.
  • Non-traditional gender identifying and gender-changing student participation in gender-based athletics and activities.
  • Use of flags and other identifying symbols other than the US flag, state flag, and other official symbols.
  • Assertions of a parental right to override school board policy or school regulations based upon personal demand.

During the pandemic and afterward we observed school boards mired with social, cultural, political, economic issues brought by parents in conflict with CDC guidelines, local health departments rules, and school policies.  No one had a game plan or standing policies and in their absence every ruling a school applied was subject to protest.  Heated arguments were common, and few settled for “we agree to disagree” settlements.  The pandemic grew activism based upon personal points of view.

In the post-pandemic, arguments about vaccines and mitigation shifted to gender identification and gender-based books and school materials, gender transforming student participation in school sports, and the use of non-national and state flags and symbols in school.

Individual school districts used one or more of the four problem responses listed above, some with more success than others.  With the start of the 2023-24 school year, conflict on these issues will not dissipate and it will grow.

What are you prepared to do?

“We are a country based on the rule of law” is a statement being used at the national level to discuss resolution of significant challenges to our representative form of democracy.  The “rule of law” statement also holds for local school district challenges.

We elect members of our community to represent local interests in the governance of our schools.  Much of that governance is the application of federal and state regulations and statutes.  It is challenges that are not addressed by legislation and court ruling that create the targets for heated arguments.

The rule of law requires those authorized to establish and execute laws to do so.  It also requires those under the jurisdiction of these authorities to comply with their laws and execution of laws.  Secondly, the rule of law creates pathways for those in disagreement with the authorities to either bring forward their complaints and/or exercise their lawful opportunities to remove members of the authority through recall or replacement at the next election.  Beyond these, the rule of law does not abide authorities who ignore or fail to fulfill their duties or citizenry who choose to defy the established rules or act in ways that prevent the authorities from doing their duties.

“Being prepared to do” means school boards and school leaders cannot complain without action or ignore problems in the hope they will go away or cave in the face of personal attack on the singular demands of activists.  Instead, “being prepared to do” means taking all possible action to create higher ground, consensus resolutions and in the absence of full consensus make decisions in keeping with “best practices”. 

We have good examples of how “being prepared to do” leads to success in our schools.  In memory of a mentor from decades ago, “it is time to pull up our socks and do what needs to be done” and “more than Trix, school is for kids”.  There are few problems we cannot resolve when we maintain the integrity of our institutions and act upon best and informed practices.  There always may be disagreement, but then that is inherent in a representative democracy.

Public Education Ensures Our Future

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“What do you do?”, I was asked.

“I am a public educator.”

“What does that mean?”, he continued.

Declaring oneself to be a public educator is not a common response to “what do you do?”.  From a person working in education, one more commonly hears “I am a teacher”, “I teach math (or 2nd grade or children with special needs)”, I am a high school teacher”, “I coach basketball”, “I am a school counselor”, or “I am the principal at…”.  Those asked usually provide a more precise answer by stating their employment assignment.  Seldom is “public educator” given in a response to “what do you do?”. 

“As a public educator, I prepare each high school graduate to be an informed, inquiring, skill-based young adult citizen ready to be a productive member of our society.”

Is the concept of public important?  Not so much and then very much.

Teacher preparation is what and who we teach.

PI 34 or Chapter 34 of the Wisconsin Administrative Code is the “bible” for teacher licensing in our state.  Licensing programs are tactically written to validate a teacher candidate’s understandings and provide evidence of the candidate’s proficiency in each standard prescribed by PI 34 for a particular teaching license.  Successful candidates are endorsed by their college or university to receive a DPI license to teach a curriculum supported by the issued license.  That is to say, the job of a teacher has fences around it – the grade levels and the specified content of the license issued.  The term “silo” is applied to a variety of descriptors about teaching.  Teachers work within their licensure silo; they are content and grade level specialists.

Our local school is a confederation of these specialist teachers.  We display our faculty roster by teacher name as well as by teaching assignment.  When we advertise a teaching position, we do not list the simple word “teacher” but clearly state the specific licensure we seek.  Our mosaic of teachers is very effective in causing all our students to achieve success in their schooling.  Without failure, when asked “what do you do?”, our specialists will correctly identify their teaching license, their silo of expertise within our school’s faculty.

As a mosaic, take out any one of the many specialist pieces and our school fails to teach all children the curricula they need to learn.  We build a synergy of teaching by uniting all our specialists to our school’s mission and high-performance standards.

Public Education is why we teach.

Chapter 34 does not include the word “public” in its definitions or in its statutory requirements for the establishment of teacher preparation programs or the endorsement of a person as a licensed educator.  It determines what and who we teach, not why we teach.

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/code/admin_code/pi/34/iv/012

In contrast to Chapter 34’s licensing teachers as specialists, Chapter 118 of the Wisconsin Administrative Code, General School Operations, provides the “public” to public education.  The chapter states the purpose, goals, and expectations of public schools.  Section one tells us “Public education is a fundamental responsibility of the state” and there is a “… common understanding of what public schools should be and do…”.  The “be and do” is “Each school board should provide curriculum, course requirements and instruction consistent with the goals and expectations established under sub (2) with … the development of academic skills and knowledge is the most important goal for schools…”.  This is the why statement of public education: to create an educated citizenry.

The specifics of public education, the goals and expectations of our state government for the education of all citizens, are detailed in the chapter’s subsequent sections.  The legislation describes the minimal education of the public in our state in the areas of

  • academic basic skills
  • vocational skills
  • citizenship, and
  • personal development.

I cherry pick statements from each to demonstrate the breadth of what a public education in Wisconsin is supposed to “be and do”.

From academic basic skills –

  • “Analytical skills, including the ability to think rationally, solve problems, use various learning methods, gather and analyze information, make critical and independent judgments and argue persuasively.”
  • “The skills and attitudes that will further lifelong intellectual activity and learning.”

From vocational skills –

  • “An understanding of the range and nature of available occupations and required skills and abilities.”
  • “Positive work attitudes and habits.”

From citizenship –

  • “An understanding of the basic workings of all levels of government, including the duties and responsibilities of citizenship.”
  • “An appreciation and understanding of different value systems and cultures.”
  • “At all grade levels, an understanding of human relations, particularly with regard to American Indians, Black Americans, and Hispanics.”
  • “A commitment to the basic values of our government, including by appropriate instruction and ceremony the proper reverence and respect for and the history and meaning of the American flag, the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, and the constitution and laws of this state.”

From personal development –

  • “The skills needed to cope with social change.”
  • “Ability to construct personal ethics and goals.”
  • “Knowledge of morality and the individual’s responsibility as a social being, including the responsibility and morality of family living and the value of frugality and other basic qualities and principles…”
  • “Knowledge of effective means by which pupils may recognize, avoid, prevent and halt physically or psychologically intrusive or abusive situations which may be harmful to pupils, including child abuse, sexual abuse, and child enticement.”

https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/statutes/statutes/118/01

One graduating class at a time

School boards, according to the statutes and in real time governance, are responsible for the education of children on their pathway to becoming adult citizens.  Boards do this one graduating class at a time.  Although graduation requirements are a list of course requirements, they speak to the totality of what a student learns in elementary and secondary school.  A 4K-12, chapter 118-based curricula is both broad and deep, requiring attention to foundational and well-scaffolded skill sets.  An education is not achieved by learning or becoming proficient in one academic subject, but by learning the necessary content and skills of a broad array of subjects.

Although students complete annual grade level and course content curricula, most of the outcomes of a public education are not known until well after a graduating class leaves school.  Looking at the mandates of Chapter 118, we don’t know how well students understand and can apply knowledge of vocational skills until they do so in their post-high school life.  And, some outcomes, such as citizenship, are exercised continuously in adulthood.  The quality of a public education is not assessed in our statewide testing systems but is demonstrated by each graduate in their post-high school years.

The mandate of public education is a monumental task.  The role of public educators is to constantly keep our school boards and their educational programs focused on annual achievement goals that, in the aggregate, contribute to a well-educated public.  A person who identifies as a public educator takes a 360-degree view of a 4K-12 education, using achievement data to ensure students are on track to meeting the goals of Chapter 118.  While a teacher focuses on the test data of the content/skills the teacher teaches, a public educator examines a wider swath of data.  Math and reading test data indicates proficiency in math and reading.  Daily attendance data indicates commitment and persistence to being educated.  Student disciplinary data indicates abilities to work and achieve within social and organizational guidelines.  Problem-based and project-based experiences indicate abilities to set goals, analyze information, and strategize problem/project solutions.  Participation in school life indicates healthy socio-emotional dispositions.  Public educators monitor and adjust a multitude of factors that assist children to grow towards successful life as adults.

The graduation handshake

One of the joys for a superintendent and school board member is a handshake with each high school graduate.  In our smaller school districts, the administrator and board member knew each graduating senior over the years of her 4K-12 education.  When the graduate’s name is read, a panoply of memories of the student’s in-school experiences rises as she walks across the graduation stage.  Giving a diploma with one hand and a handshake with the other is a wonderful symbolizing that the goals of a public education will be met in the graduate’s future.

Given the privilege of time and opportunity, we get to check the verity of that confidence in interactions with our local school graduates when they are residents, homeowners, gainfully employed, and often parents of children enrolled in our schools. 

A public education begets our next community.

What Did We Learn? Lesson #5 – Teaching Today Requires A Rethought Teacher Prep

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Close your eyes and remember your favorite teacher.  Picture her or him teaching you.  Now, blink twice.  Whatever your memory calls to mind is out of date for contemporary teaching!  That image does not appear in a classroom today.  This begs the question – Are we preparing teachers to look like our memory of what a teacher used to be or are we preparing teachers for what they need to be?  In fact, teacher prep programs, like our memories, are stuck in time and need to change.

Teacher preparation programs in colleges, universities and educator preparation centers are fundamentally of the last century.  The template for teacher education is universal across institutions and all states.  An undergraduate completes the institutional liberal arts requirements during the freshman and sophomore years.  In the junior year and half of the senior year, the prospective teacher completes courses prescribed for the chosen major and minor  baccalaureate emphases, pedagogical courses, and pre-student teaching experiences.  One semester of clinical student teaching is completed in the senior year.  This produces a DPI-issued teaching license.  Is this preparation an adequate preparation for a pandemic and post-pandemic teacher.  I think not. 

Let’s look more deeply in to the three semesters of the junior and senior year reserved for teacher preparation.  A college student completes an average of five courses (15 credits per semester) or 15 courses (45 credits) in the junior and senior year prior to student teaching.  In our state, at least three courses are required to meet the statutory requirements for minority relations, conflict resolution, responsibilities of teachers for special education, ethical responsibilities of teachers, and environmental education (9 credits).  Twelve courses remaining.  In almost every topic essential to teacher prep, one course leads to introduction and a broad view coverage.  It takes two courses to move from “I know about that” to “I know that”.  We need teachers who “know that”.

Why is there a distance between “I know about that” and “I know that” in teacher preparation.  It is because we historically have viewed a first year teacher as an apprentice becoming a journeyman.  We immediately assign a mentor teacher to each newly hired teacher and the mentor continues the college training with on-the-job training.  We assume that professional development and required continuing education will fill out the remaining needs of teacher preparation.  Lastly, most teacher contracts treat first to third year teachers as probationaries.  The assumption is that some probationaries will not be successful and resign or be terminated.  Please consider what this says to children being taught every day by an apprentice/journeyman/may-not-make-it teacher.  It says we accept less than fully polished teaching.  Bad practice!

Some of our deficits in teacher prep are made apparent by the pandemic and other deficits have been brewing and erupted parallel to the pandemic.  I will speak to four of these deficits.  When I examine more than a dozen colleges of education and teacher education programs in our state, I find a woeful lack of teacher preparation in these four areas of study.  At best, some teachers can say “I know about that”.  Few programs create teachers as the solid practitioner a teacher needs to be entering her first job. 

Child psychology.  Undergraduates study the theories of psychological development of infants through teens in an “introduction to psychology” course.  That’s it – a one semester course to prepare a career teacher to understand and successfully teach children through their most difficult years of intellectural and personality development.  If nothing else, the range of generational characteristics and values that lives in schools and affects how children relate to parents, teachers, peers, and society at large demands more in-depth work in behavioral, cognitive, social, and biological psychology.  Teachers are not psychologists,  but children today are so complex that teachers must have a psychologist’s lens for viewing children. Our Gen X and Millenial teachers, each with their own distinct set of characteristics, are instructing as-yet undefined Gen Z children, the most diverse generation, yet.  Atop their generational traits, Gen Z now is the pandemic generation.  Never before have we needed more understanding of psychological development to shape our teaching.

Clinical teaching.  Student teaching for most teaching licenses prepares a teacher for whole group instruction.  We quickly learned in the pandemic that remote teaching and learning requires very purposeful, strategized and consistent teaching to the individual learning needs of every child.  A general announcement made in class of “turn to page 68 and read the first paragraph” goes nowhere in remote education.  In class, a teacher scans to see children lift their book, turn the pages, and begin their reading.  On screen, a teacher cannot scan but needs to see each child perform this.  A usual “Are there any questions?”, may allow a teacher to move on in an in-class lesson.  On screen, a teacher needs to focus on the screen shot of each child, especially children with learning needs, to assure that child is ready to move on.  Whole group assumptions do not translate to remote teaching and learning.

When a teacher sits with an individual child for personalized, individualized or prescribed instruction, proximity is a good thing.  Using all her senses, the teacher knows and perceives how the teaching is being learned.  On screen, there is no proximity.  The knowing and perception must be created through clinical questioning and listening to the totality of a child’s response and reaction to teaching.  Individualized instruction on-screen is very doable, but it requires a clinical planning, strategizing and implementation to ensure learning.  Teacher preparation must teach teachers how to prepare, strategize and deliver clinical teaching to individual children. 

The major flaw we see today arises when a teacher must deliver reteaching interventions to individual children.  This is where clinical teaching lives and the need is greatest.

Phonics-based reading instruction.  Parallel to the onset of the pandemic, the science of reading is impacting reading instructional practices.  The science is teaching us that all children can be taught to be readers and allowing children to self-develop as readers is not acceptable, because too many children do not.  Setting aside the history of the so-called reading wars, statutory and DPI rules now require a stronger preparation in phonics-based reading, but their language leaves it to the college to determine the quantity and quality of that preparation. 

An “I know about it” preparation about the science of reading will not do.  Teacher prep requires in-depth, laboratory-based preparation that causes a first year teacher to be a strong teacher of reading for every child.

Meta cognitive development of mathematics.  The current critique of student learning during the pandemic is that academic achievement will be significantly less than annually anticipated for most children and math achievement will slide down more than reading achievement.  Aside from the teaching/learning downside of remote education is the fact that most teachers of mathematics are good mathematicians but not as good in understanding and teaching mathematical thinking.  Simply stated, a math teacher was a good math student and able to answer questions correctly.  However, the ability to solve math problems is not the same as understanding the thinking processes, sequences, and mental gymnastics required to teach another person to solve math problems.  Too much of math teaching is “do it like this” rather than “think about the thinking necessary to solve the problem”.  We observe this in “show me your work”, an observation made more difficult due to the pandemic and to the perfunctory nature of “show me your work”.  Instead, it should be “talk to me about your thinking in solving this problem”.  Too few teachers are prepared for this conversation.  Every elementary teacher must be taught how to think mathematically and teach mathematical thinking.

Studio teaching.  Pre-pandemic, almost all teachers were users of usual school technologies – laptops/desktops, tablets, smartphones.  They taught using tech knowing that their daily work was in-person.  The scenario shifted to this:  how will you teach students living on Mars if you and your school are on Earth?  That is a fair description of remote teaching.  Few teachers were ready for the totality of on-screen teaching and learning.  Studio teaching is when a teacher uses cameras and video screens   When a teacher is teaching via a camera and screen, especially multiple screens, it is studio teaching.  Studio teaching doubles in complexity with in-school children are in the classroom.

Teaching and learning with technology is more psychological, personal and preferential than we thought.  The task of assembling the necessary cameras and screens and setting up a classroom as studio is easy.  Creating the emotional and personal commitment to studio teaching is much more difficult.  Veteran teachers said, “This is not teaching” or “This is not the way I teach”.  And, they were right.  They were not prepared for studio teaching.  Teacher prep must train teachers for studio teaching. 

What have we learned?

The Time of COVID is teaching us to reconsider how we prepare teachers.  To quote a song, the times not only are “… a-changing…”, they have changed and our conventions for educating teachers have not kept pace.  Our children need teachers who are ready for today’s and tomorrow’s classrooms not last century’s.