My Response to an "Attack" on Public School Teachers

(This comes from Deborah Meier's Education Blog which I highly recommend. The first comment was posted by "Anonymous," and the second is my reply to him/her.)

I find it interesting that we can draw such different conclusions from your list of headlines. If the public has been complaining about teachers for more than a hundred years, is it not reasonable to look askance at the teachers?

I have heard in my years as a teacher every excuse in the book but never this one; A good percentage of the people that I work with are incurious, not very bright and have 'given up trying' (if they ever tried at all). They were attracted to the career because of the (as they saw it) relative ease of the job.

I think it is high time that we acknowledge that there is a huge percentage of people who teach that should not, and it is this crowd that the public is fed up with.


Ask yourself this one question: What is the quality of conversation in the lounge with your fellow teachers?

(And my response...)

Anonymous:

You sound like someone who's been in public education for a while. As a fellow educator (20 years now), what I've found to be the case is that you have a preponderance of the kind of teacher (and teacher's lounge) you describe in your comment when you have leadership that allows it to happen.

Before you start typing your response, let me explain what I mean: I'm not talking about "allowing" it in the sense of not putting people on "growth plans" or giving unsatisfactory ratings, although there are schools where that may be an issue. The good public schools (and there are MANY of them, despite what we don't see in the headlines) have leadership that empowers both teachers and students, in the service of creating a prevailing interdependent culture. Those who do not "buy in" and function positively in this school can get help in the way of peer-to-peer training (i.e. critical friends groups, PLC's, and the like). If one of the folks like the ones you write about happens to sneak in (which they don't generally do, by the way, due to careful hiring practices that often include student voices through their membership in hiring committees, but it does happen occasionally, I'll give you that), they don''t tend to do well in these peer-support situations.

What I've seen happen is that they try to close their doors and do their thing -- whatever that may be -- in isolation. The joke's on them, however, at the empowered, interdependent kind of school I'm referring to, because the doors are understood to be open. Closing ones door (figuratively, and sometimes literally) effectively marginalizes that teacher, and they begin to hear a consistent message that comes from ALL stakeholders -- kids, parents, teachers, and yes, the principal:

"We don't do that here."

If a school can say this to an ineffective teacher, and mean it, and have it be intrinsically true because it's woven into the fabric of that school, then the problems with the kind of teacher you describe cannot flourish and will invariably leave or improve and "get with the program."

Anonymous, if you're thinking, "This poor guy is living in a Pollyanna dreamworld," feel free to ask me for a list of schools where I've seen this interdependent empowerment dynamic prevail. I'll be happy to provide it for you.

And guess what: It's a longer list than you might think.