Week Five Blog Review - Are Schools Prepared for Great Teachers?
This week's post by Terry Heick, of teach thought.com, finds him questioning the relationship between great teachers and schools as cultural institutions of learning.
Framing his post with quotes from Kerouac's On the Road, Heick identifies the relationship between great teaching and the progression, like a journey, experienced by great teachers. Again, Heick admirably focuses on the teacher's role with students.
Within this frame, Heick asks his readers to consider whether great teaching is possible in an educational environment chained, sometimes legally, to the institutionalizing strictures of policy. Heick agrees with Robert Marzano's famous assertion, from What Works in Schools, that a "guaranteed and viable curriculum"* is a necessity of any school's focus on students. However, he wonders whether the attempt to commodify and share great instructional techniques and curricular shifts might dilute the power of those elements.
He notes that greatness has historically disrupted or disempowered standing authorities, and implies a doubt that great teachers can become vital members of top-down initiatives, or of PLC and PD requirements within any hierarchical structure.
His closing encourages readers to consider whether teachers must choose between student need and policy cooperation as their first concern, wondering if standardization can ever inspire greatness. He implies that the philosophy of a given school as a cultural institution, as opposed to a forum for educational policy enactments, could allow for great teachers to thrive within the school's system, which would serve students by giving them the access to great teachers that matters most for their growth.
Once again, Mr. Heick follows his ideas along an arc that is a bit hard to track, logically, but that pulls from a more conscientious range of sources and examples to illustrate a wise consideration of a crucial topic in education.
I don't agree with Mr. Heick's suggestion that greatness, spread across multiple classrooms per Marzono's guarantee, is diluted when the definition of greatness hinges upon unique and sometimes unnameable qualities. There is no limit to the range of effective techniques and a great teacher's adaptation of those techniques within teacher strengths and student needs.
Moreover, while he correctly focuses on student benefit - which always increases as a teacher improves - his language that sets teachers against or outside of schools' need for policies and practices is dangerous. It reiterates a too-often held belief that administrators and leaders undermine the great work going on in classrooms. When teachers are learning from one another, they grow. When administrators can facilitate that collaboration and growth - through evaluation, data sharing, and feedback, schools can help teachers expand their sense of great work and broaden their perspectives on student need. These are essential relationships that should not be dismissed in deference to great teacher theoretical musings.
*Per Marzano, the guarantee means students get the same benefit regardless of the teacher. The viability refers to the pace of student progress across the given course's calendar.
Framing his post with quotes from Kerouac's On the Road, Heick identifies the relationship between great teaching and the progression, like a journey, experienced by great teachers. Again, Heick admirably focuses on the teacher's role with students.
Within this frame, Heick asks his readers to consider whether great teaching is possible in an educational environment chained, sometimes legally, to the institutionalizing strictures of policy. Heick agrees with Robert Marzano's famous assertion, from What Works in Schools, that a "guaranteed and viable curriculum"* is a necessity of any school's focus on students. However, he wonders whether the attempt to commodify and share great instructional techniques and curricular shifts might dilute the power of those elements.
He notes that greatness has historically disrupted or disempowered standing authorities, and implies a doubt that great teachers can become vital members of top-down initiatives, or of PLC and PD requirements within any hierarchical structure.
His closing encourages readers to consider whether teachers must choose between student need and policy cooperation as their first concern, wondering if standardization can ever inspire greatness. He implies that the philosophy of a given school as a cultural institution, as opposed to a forum for educational policy enactments, could allow for great teachers to thrive within the school's system, which would serve students by giving them the access to great teachers that matters most for their growth.
Once again, Mr. Heick follows his ideas along an arc that is a bit hard to track, logically, but that pulls from a more conscientious range of sources and examples to illustrate a wise consideration of a crucial topic in education.
I don't agree with Mr. Heick's suggestion that greatness, spread across multiple classrooms per Marzono's guarantee, is diluted when the definition of greatness hinges upon unique and sometimes unnameable qualities. There is no limit to the range of effective techniques and a great teacher's adaptation of those techniques within teacher strengths and student needs.
Moreover, while he correctly focuses on student benefit - which always increases as a teacher improves - his language that sets teachers against or outside of schools' need for policies and practices is dangerous. It reiterates a too-often held belief that administrators and leaders undermine the great work going on in classrooms. When teachers are learning from one another, they grow. When administrators can facilitate that collaboration and growth - through evaluation, data sharing, and feedback, schools can help teachers expand their sense of great work and broaden their perspectives on student need. These are essential relationships that should not be dismissed in deference to great teacher theoretical musings.
*Per Marzano, the guarantee means students get the same benefit regardless of the teacher. The viability refers to the pace of student progress across the given course's calendar.
Comments
Post a Comment