My Charter School - Part 6 (Administering Education)

    I have a simple idea for my future charter school.  One that I think will make every teacher ever agree wholeheartedly.  One that I think many will think or say is implausible in administration.  I know little about administration of a school.  One day, maybe someone who is an administrator will read these and tell me where I've gone off the rails.  Most of this idea is for secondary, but may be able to be applied to elementary.

Idea: All admin have to teach one class.  

    Before pulling out a stack of reasons why this can't work, let's go through a little mountain of values that this provides.  Sometimes, not everyday, but a lot of the time the admin of a school gets an idea that most teachers know won't work in the classroom.  Now it is not a bad thing for admin to innovate, but if they aren't in the classroom then they do not know how best to innovate.  Yeah, all admin are former teachers.  It doesn't matter.  Since Covid all former skill in the classroom are obsolete.  An admin from the campus trying to innovate for the teachers is like engineering fixes without input.  Surely, the way to improve on an existing invention or process is to take feedback from those using it in the field.  And the admin may get some input from teachers, but it would be naïve to assume they get the input from their teachers that they would get if they were teachers.

    If the admin is teaching it is an opportunity to try all the innovations.  Louis Brandeis Supreme Court Justice popularized the phrase laboratories of democracy when he extolled the worth of federalism.  Principals and Assistant Principals could be trying things out with their classrooms.  If you want to have stations in all classes; try it out.  You may find stations works better in Math than History.  You want versatile seating?  Try it out.  You may find that some classes are mature enough for it and others aren't.  You may find that it is a bit dangerous in Science labs.  A while ago, writing down definitions of new vocab and using them in a sentence fell out of fashion.  I think that was a terrible failure of modern education.  I wish that more people were trying these innovations in the classroom.  My first two years in education we were getting a new innovation called Strategic Instructional Models.  The admin, including the SIM Coach (also an admin) kept teaching us how to use the models.  They didn't always think about whether they should be used.  What if they're teachers, they no how to model all innovations to the faculty.

    If the admin is teaching a class everyday then there is tons of time for modeling correct behavior.  I'm getting pretty good at teaching in my estimation.  I see a couple of new teachers every year who have no idea what good teaching is.  It is a balance of finding your own personality and rhythm and enfolding that into a lot of learned best practices.  It can be daunting.  If they're not quite getting it, a strong solution is to send them to observe a seasoned teacher.   Last year's teacher of the year?  How about the principal's math class?  How about the Assistant Principals Geography class?  What about the art class that is taught by some administrator who...you're not really sure what they do.   The number of options for that teacher to observe can only be a good thing.  

    If the admin is teaching everyday, they know what needs discipline in the class room and what needs discipline as an admin.  Teachers know that there are teachers who send kids to the admin too much.  We are not surprised when that teacher's write ups come back with less consequences than the teacher would like.  But many teachers have had admin that lose their sense for what needs to be given consequences and what doesn't.  Teachers are trying to create an orderly classroom and if admin is failing to offer consequences then the classroom atmosphere can severely deteriorate.  If admin is teaching the kids we all teach then they have a better sense for what is good behavior, what the students are capable of.  I don't want my admin to only spend time with the bad apples.  They'll spoil the whole bunch of admin.  I want my admin to meet the honors students, to have them in their classes, to have them passing their tests, so they know what they can expect from any of them.  

    If admin is teaching a class then their criticism will be more adroit or expert.  Some teachers really hate sitting down with admin to talk about data.  The students all scored a 60 on the benchmark science test.  They need a 70 to pass.  What did you do wrong?  How are you going to fix it?  Better yet, 'here's what you did wrong and here's how you're going to fix it.'  Number one, I would love to see some teachers held up for improvement, but more than that I'm going to say that without a cultural shift of excellence some teachers cannot fix the problems in some schools.  You go into a high school in an urban area and the kids aren't studying. Why would they, they have a job waiting for them.  They're not planning on college.  They have no objective reason to get their degree.  Go in that school and the average last year was maybe a 30% on the standardized tests and you raised it to a 45%.  Now the admin want you on a growth plan because passing rate wasn't achieved.  Well, can the admin do it?  

    If the admin can, then that means we all can.  Admin teaching 10th grade algebra might really have a profound impact on the campus.  If that admin can come into an on-level class and get them all to succeed in an underperforming school then there can be a cultural shift.  The leaders are leading not just describing where the rest of us should go.  They aren't describing the map, they're leading us where they've been themselves.  There is a culture of excellence among the faculty because the admin are our advocates.  They are our teammates and not just the coach.  They act like they've been there because they have been.  

    If the admin is in the classroom then the students are getting advanced degree teaching.  The admin are the best trained, highest qualified, highest motivated teachers in the school.  Their skills as teachers are wasted.  The connection to students that they may have is non existent.  Think of the opportunities to reach the students that the admin have in the classroom.  This is another opportunity to change the culture of the school from mediocre to excellent.  Because if the admin really are master teachers then they're helping create that atmosphere hands on with all the students in their care.  The students also get a sense of continuity from the class to the administration.  This device would ensure that the students are treated the same way by admin that they are by the teachers because they are the same.  

If the admin teach then they are cognizant of the teachers' feelings.  Have you ever sent a student to the admin and had the admin send them back with no consequences AND some candy?  If that hasn't happened to you, you haven't been teaching very long.  Teachers know what that feels like.  Give the admin a taste, or make it never happen to anyone ever again.  Admin teaching helps them to know how much time it takes to prepare, they know what it means to ask extra of their faculty.  They know how much prep goes into class plans.  They know how much anxiety can come from being observed or going over their plans in a Planned Learning Community.  All of these are reasons to get admin back in the classroom.

But wait...Admin literally doesn't have enough time for this.  That is because they do too much.  I've had over 10 admin.  They are over worked.  The amount of work is unethical, unGodly, and unwise.  The district usually has so many things for them to do, so many trainings to take that they're hoping will trickle down to the teachers.  It is idiotic.  They need to cut the number of things they do.  That means if the district, state, or federal government is asking too much they need to cut it back.  Admin should be finishing their work in 50-55 hours max.   If they can't do the work in that time they need to have more help.  Our society should demand that our admin does no more, no less.  We have an interest in our admin having families so we have an interest in asking only that which is possible based on time constraints that make sense.    

Am I too nostalgic?

I'm trying to get a job as a teacher.  I also have a stepson who has teachers.  I also work at schools as a substitute and those schools...you guessed it, have teachers.  It may be that I'm hypersensitive to problems because of the job I want to have, or it could be that my problem is thinking about the past with rose-colored glasses.

Obviously that statement has a ton of different directions I could be taking this.  I'm talking about the two emails I sent to my kid's teachers last week.  Now school has been going on over nine weeks and this is the first time we've talked to them.  And we initiated the communication.  However, we initiated the conversation because of some small issues.  In truth, we still haven't contacted his other teachers because we only call if he has a 'B.'

Obviously, my aggravation should be seen in light of my failure to get a job.  But, I told myself in grad school that when I was a teacher I would contact.  One reason is because the only calls my parents ever got from the school is when I had misbehaved.  I hated that.  I hate it now.  My parents could have gotten a short call every time I got honor roll.  School could have called to tell them that I was voted to be Key Club president and I wasn't even Catholic.  But no.  Do you think my wife got a call to tell her parents that she was top ten in her school?  No.

I wanted to be different because if you need to have your student's parents increase their investment in their child's education then you would have to invest in your relationship.  And in a lot of schools I know this is a changing principle in America.  I know a lot of elementary school teachers contact parents every six weeks.  I think that's great.  I know that when I was in Korea I called all of my students twice every quarter and gave them a little over the phone quiz and then their Korean teacher would discuss these and other results with their parents.  That was a lot, but it was private school.  We were expected to be in closer contact.  Public schools seem to be expecting more communication.  One of those things that teachers are expected to do above and beyond teaching like discipline, life skills, nutrition, manners, phonics, and teamwork.

So how much communication is good enough?  I think a short call to the parents once a six weeks and a form letter/news letter home every week to the family isn't asking a ton.  Specific e-mails about strengths their students have would also be great.  I've always dreamed about having a picnic at a park on a Saturday and inviting all my student's families.  I like the idea of making the class/teacher relationship more communal and less professional.  I feel like that's something we've lost.

Now, there is this meme/cartoon of the difference between education in the seventies and today.  In one box the parents are standing with the teacher and yelling at the student, 'What are you going to do about these grades?'  In the other box the same words are being shouted at the teacher by the parents.  Have you seen that cartoon?  Does that match your perception?  Isn't this losing a professional respect for what the teacher does?  Is this what's wrong with our educational system?



But wait didn't I say we've lost the communal to the more professional?  Yes.  I do think we've lost a certain amount of respect for the work of societies professional teachers.  But I think we gained that appreciation after we lost the teachers' communal investment in the society and life of children.  This may sound a little pie-in-the-sky-ish, but a long time before teachers were professionals weren't they a part of our society?  Before there were unions they were paid by the parents and the parents had input.  Teachers used to be allowed to participate in corporal punishment because they were so closely tuned with the disciplinary system of the the parents. Later on their professionalism didn't allow that closeness.

Now, I'm not saying professionalism was bad.  These days we're expecting more holistic education.  These days we demand more inclusion.  These days everyone has their own "special" education.  We're making modifications and specifications and teaching to standardized tests.  We're putting square pegs into round holes.  We've cut out professionalism and replaced it with post-modernism.  We cut out cold hard facts and shoved in amorphous feeling-based modules.  We're creating a peacock of education.  This is a mosaic approach to education that we used to think was possible when we had parents communicating with teachers.

However, I may not have my historical principles correct.  I may be too nostalgic about the past.  I may see a lot of genuine community when there really was underpaid, badly-treated teachers misused and disrespected by their local communities.  Maybe I'm miss-remembering rural communities graduating high school students who couldn't read.  Maybe I'm miss-remembering state hospital lobotomizing an Asperger's Syndrome that we'd give daily inclusion to.

So if you read this and you have an idea about community and professionalism please comment.  If you have an opinion about how much communication is good then leave a comment about how often you'd like a teacher to communicate with you about your kids.  Maybe you would like to delineate between fair and unfair expectations between primary and secondary education.  Do it?  Would you go have a hot dog picnic with your kids if your kid's teacher invited you one Saturday a semester?