Effective Teachers

The original construct of the "Whitewashing of the Education Debacle" may have been somewhat more fluid. Being unable to have the entire essay published as an editorial opinion I have had to chunk it up into 300 word segments just to get one small regional weekly publication to print it. I have mixed emotions about the situation however the chunking has permitted me to be in print and on topic before an audience for an extended duration, a situation I feel I shall try my utmost to perpetuate. To that end I would like to elaborate on the concepts of Teacher Design and teacher effectiveness.
In the past couple of years there has been created a schism between two identical doctrines. How could this be, if the doctrines are identical there can be no schism? The twist is perception, like the transitive and intransitive use of a verb. The doctrines are "Traditional Design" and "New Design" Education. According to experienced teachers new design educated teachers are more or less new teachers who will through time and development become good teachers or move on to more desirable vocational conditions. Experienced teachers do not necessarily see themselves as "Traditional Design" because that label was created for the "New Design" teachers. It was created to ostracize, stereotype, profile and discriminate against teachers that they are being groomed to replace. It was not their goal but the goal of a new breed of education doctrine developers. New design teachers are indoctrinated to believe that they are able to turn around failing schools because they are full of vim and vigor, they are youthful and in touch and they possess more current and applicable intellect than the older, complacent, lazy and intellectually stale ineffective traditional design teachers. What are we? The Yugo of the Borg? The idea crossed my mind that the same people teach new designers as taught Traditionalers. What about them? Has it just turned out that they were installing bad processors before? No Recall? All those poor unfortunate people, like me, who based their career, their American dream, on a costly and hard worked for graduate education that would prepare them for job stability, are suddenly identified as "ineffective" and the education institutions can suddenly install the new improved processors to create the ideal replacements. So what is that new replacement like? They supposedly possess high technological skills, show enthusiasm for all children to be successful and have a unique awareness which allows them to connect the learning objectives to all of their student’s real world associations with efficiency and unequivocal mutual synchronicity.
I visited several New York City public schools this past summer in my employment search and found several Smart Boards in classrooms covered with posters and lacking peripherals. This was in classrooms that were in use. At the Bronx High School of Science I was told that projection would be available for my interview demo lesson. I was interviewed by an assistant principal and fellow staff member. The AP told me on the telephone she had my resume from their recruiters and all I needed to do was to show up, create and deliver a lesson demo and participate in a panel interview. I brought my resume on a flash drive nonetheless. Sure enough she did not have my resume. I offered her my interview flash drive, which contains all the pertinent information as well as supplemental materials for the application and interview process, and she did not know where to put the flash drive in to her CPU or access files in order to print a copy of my resume. Then during the demo there were only wires hanging from the ceiling where a projector should have been, and again, no peripherals. I had my laptop in my briefcase but after the flash drive incident was reluctant to do anything other than bang a few rocks together to create fire for fear it might upset their obvious geocentrism. I am sure that New Designers know how to text their CPUs off and use all the latest social networking skill based platforms, but are they equipped to teach? Children are still children cognitively at their respective levels. Meeting them where learning can happen requires a bit more prowess and experience than comes readymade through a teacher preparation pathway where the applicant is told they are the best and the brightest and they are the hope tomorrow hangs on. I am sure the only thing they are certainly not taught in their preparation is that they are part of an elaborate social experiment, one in which they are merely a variable.
I concede that not all new design preparation teachers are young although the overwhelming majority is. Even those that are entering teaching as a career change are rarely leaving positions of authority and stability. On the contrary many are victims of downsizing in other industries or switching to teaching as an opportunity to escape graduate study programs for which the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned out to save on oil. Too often I hear the term “recruiting” used when a school system is looking to attract these new design teachers to stave off the vultures of failure. This is not recruitment. It is preying on the desperation of people who are willing to become reprogrammed, promoting in them a false sense of identity, so that they will eagerly present themselves to school administrations as “supermen and superwomen” willing to work longer hours and through the summers, even teaching classes in multiple content areas to get a job. Simply put, teaching is rigorous enough without wantonly trying to hurt yourself. Rule #1 in Lifesaving is to never put yourself at greater risk than the person you are trying to save. The term burnout in teaching means that the teacher is at risk. For any number of reasons a teacher can become detached from their mission and be at risk, like a lifeguard who plunges into a swollen and rushing river without a lifeline. For many of the New Designers the motivation is a Masters Degree, paid for in trade, and a promise of job placement with security. For that price they are willing to overlook the need of a lifeline. A traditional design teacher sees their contract as their lifeline and their union as their support team. Teachers with experience can tell you all the horror stories you would ever want to hear about colleagues that tried to do too much and were not able to keep their grip on their mission. Yet, new design administration willingly and deceitfully cajoles unwitting New Designers to take the plunge, cheering them against the turbulence that will take its toll. Unfortunately, today’s economy is generating a fodder of new design teaching candidates that silences the cries of desperation from students and new teachers alike that are lost in the current.
Another incentive in the New Designer marketplace is merit based pay. There are two camps on how this is done. On one hand a teacher is told they will receive healthy bonuses if their students meet benchmarks set by administrators. Well, first you have to understand that these New Designers did not go to law school and if they did they did not get a good grade in contract law because they do not realize that the benchmarks are predominantly subjective in the administrators favor or due to the class schedules there can be little specific evidence that one teacher or another made the difference in the student’s overall scores. Although having every teacher working hard to outdo every other teacher to receive a bonus would be beneficial in a sprinting race it creates a suicide situation in a marathon, once again putting teachers at risk for burnout. The second spin on merit based pay is to offer the teacher an enormous salary up front. The catch is you have to keep up the pace you are hired for until you drop dead. At best merit based pay for teachers will create a sudden agitation in the perceived abilities and stamina of the new design teachers. The obvious long-term effect is most apt to be mediocre at best at the price of destroying many good traditional design teacher’s careers, providing a disjointed and transient instructional experience for the students and disrupting the method by which education has created the promise of success to Americans for over 100 years and sustained this Nation as the world’s leader in achievement and development.
Another item that came to mind as I was filling out an application for a position this morning was that the online application asked if “you a member of the Teach for America Corps?” I have to really laugh having been a Marine Brat all my life. To be a member of the “Corps”, to “fight for the right without question or pause, to be willing to march into hell for a heavenly cause”… what are they thinking? Do TFAs actually march? Let’s get our feet on the same rock shall we? The failure in our school systems is not a demonic fistula or manifestation of extraterrestrial subjugation. It is a symptom that our social values have eroded to mob rule mentality giving way to a hedonistic popular rule belief system largely fueled by drug and human trafficking and other illicit activities strongly associated with illegal alien movements within our borders that our government seems happy to let fester in urban areas rather than invest the money and sacrifice the manpower to demonstrate that our municipal police agencies are out manned and out armed by persons with seemingly limitless cash and weapon reserves. The student’s lives focus on their insight that “the man” is a target and an annoyance to what they perceive their existence to be about. Can the “Corps” change that?
The solution does not reside in a holy expectation or delusion of grandeur as it seems the New Designers are puffed up to believe they can provide. I have seen them. For the most part they are young and surprisingly naive about what really makes their protagonists tick. Most that I have met have a romantic notion about how they are going to provide the panacea for the illness in our education industry. Good teachers have always been on the ground in this battle and they have learned to be effective in ways pedagogy doesn’t begin to approach. The new paradigm is merely using smoke and mirrors to redirect attention to a different perception of achievement. I am sure positive results are recognizable but they will be short term and in fact the potential was there all along, they were masked behind other assessment data and the cloak of desperation our urban youth reside in; not just in their neighborhoods but in their minds, hearts and souls. After the novelty of the changes ware off and the students tire of their new teachers who begin to stress out over a year or two or become nameless and faceless due to the revolving merit based pay door, the short term successes in achievement will regress. The total lack of transparency holds true here as well. The data picture is a shell game where standard deviations and numerical anomalies are relied upon to create false hope and misdirect anyone who is not versed in applied probability and statistical modeling for assessment design and interpretation. Those credentials are far and few between. I really do not think that the members of the “Corps” have that kind of actuarial expertise. Nor do I think many traditional design teachers have and that makes them easy prey for manipulation by the new design administration. Most unfortunately the parents of the students don’t know it is all a fabrication to redirect teacher salaries into discretionary spending that lines the pockets of new design school system administrators that risks their children’s futures. It is an elaborate dog and pony show. Most importantly it requires the dismissal or total subjugation of effective teachers that would not stand for the criminality and unethical reality that is being perpetrated in the name of public education.
In conclusion, effectiveness in a teacher is a context, not a data point. Not every student has the same life, focus or goals so there will be variation in achievement outcome. Environmental factors in a student’s life play a big role in their meeting their potential. There are some things even an effective teacher cannot override in a student’s developmental pathway. An effective teacher cannot take away the neurological damage or other health related issues endured by a student born to a crack cocaine addict or HIV positive mother. An effective teacher cannot prevent the sexual abuse committed against young girls or the handling of weapons by young boys in their own homes let alone on the streets. An effective teacher is a good teacher who teaches to every student, encouraging them and nurturing their learning abilities in the hope that they will develop a sense of awareness past their own social dilemma. An effective teacher is a person who takes their job seriously and strives to their best ability to provide a safe and engaging classroom experience where positive social and civic values are held to high standards and modeled without fault. An effective teacher is someone who provides an unwavering sense of reliability and trustworthiness as a role model and mentor to their students. An effective teacher is a professional archivist of their students’ achievements and a professional employee with respect to the school’s mission, curriculum and practices. An effective teacher is an extension of the school to the family and the family to the student. An effective teacher helps build accountability between the student and the family for positive reinforcement of learning expectations. Effective, being a context, cannot be limited in duration. It is a process over time which requires stability and reliability. Effective teachers are career professional people, not soldiers of a corps prancing around fighting windmills. A new teacher may be effective but for how long? An effective teacher is someone who has an established record of results. New design paradigm teachers and especially those operating under merit based compensation are no more effective than a new teacher ever was and their proof is realistically prohibited by their risky exuberance to do too much too fast, throwing themselves in the rushing current without the lifeline, and for what? A free master’s degree in education or a promise of extravagant earnings beyond which no effective traditional design teacher ever hoped to achieve? It is time to stop the charade of new design education practices before we lose the identity and purpose of what American Public Education is and the ability to regain the standard it once held.