On instruction and the lack thereof

When I was a student, Dead Poets Society happened to me. It affected me on a very deep, visceral level. I must have gone to see it about eight times in the month it was released in South Africa. With me having come from a very conservative, paternalistic background, it should of course surprise no one that the film spoke to me like that.

 

It should then also come as no surprise that I emulated the Robin Williams character (Mr Keating) in no small measure when I started my teaching career. But the romance of a film only gets you so far when you have to engage with curriculum content, syllabi, end-of-term assessments and final Matriculation results. Especially when you dive into teaching with absolutely no training like I did.

And then PGCE happened. What an absolutely mind-numbingly boring experience that was! Except for a glimpse of the works of Piaget and Vygotsky et al, I learned nothing that could prepare me for the world of teaching. I disconnected utterly - to the extent that I had to rewrite a module called "Classroom Management" two or three times before I could get my qualification. The "Teaching Practicals" were tick-the-box exercises with very little impact. After two years of this I was a qualified teacher! And so I floundered on, as I mentioned before, figuring it out as I went along.

Eventually, I moved into school management positions. I worked with absolutely astounding teachers over several years. I also worked with some pretty ineffectual teachers, to put it mildly. One of the things that struck me was that there wasn't really any measuring tool for what went on behind the closed doors of individual classrooms. We assumed that the teacher would get on with the job, and as long as there wasn't mass failures or too many complaints, well enough was left alone.

Fast forward to 2017.

I took a leap of faith and joined a completely new group of schools. They were taking their cue from the American Charter School movement and built their schools around the concept of Instructional Leadership. No closed doors. Glass walls. Constant teacher observation and feedback which was the sole job description of their Academic Deputies. A complete revelation for me who had never before heard of any of this.

Two months after starting in my new position I was enrolled on an 18-month course in Instructional Leadership run by the newly-established Instructional Leadership Institute (ILI). This was an incredible experience that took me miles outside of my comfort zone at the ripe old age of fifty!

*The Three Holy Scriptures of Instructional Leadership

So, for other South Africans coming from the traditional way of doing school, what are the differences?

1. The very firm belief that the function of school leadership is to focus on the instruction that happens in the classroom to the exclusion of almost everything else.
2. The job of the school leader is to be an instructional coach. Their driving question: "Is teaching happening as effectively as it possibly can and how can we improve it?"
3. Professional development (PD), teacher observations and coaching must happen on a daily basis. And more importantly, PD is something that must happen in a hands-on fashion based on real-time observations of teaching. The coaching, feedback, and PD must have immediate, measurable results.
4. As alluded to above, without data to measure the impact of your coaching and PD, you are just making noise.
5. Staff performance reviews happen separately from the coaching and PD process, but staff growth is measured according to specific outcomes agreed on as part of coaching.

The above is my own summary of what I learned. The training offered by ILI was intense, to put it mildly. I was exhausted by the end of each day of our contact sessions. I was petrified by all the role-plays and "taking it live" sessions - things that I, as a committed introvert, always avoided like the plague. But, for the first time in all my years involved in teaching, I actually learnt teaching skills overtly and received instant feedback on how to improve. At the same time, I was also learning how to coach other teachers on how to improve their classroom practice. I felt immensely empowered. And, also for the first time, I had the tools that would get me behind those closed doors of the more traditional schools in order to ensure that the teaching was up to standard. This was the fastest, most impactful professional development that I had ever experienced. I would encourage any teacher or school leader to sign up for this.

But what about my hero, Mr Keating?

It has to be said that the proponents of the Charter Schools and this version of Instructional Leadership have very little time for the likes of Mr Keating. And to understand that one has to understand a little of their background.

It is a complex picture that you can read about here. For the very narrow scope of this blog, I would like to point out the following:

• In many instances, they provided an alternative to failing state schools in the inner cities of America.
• Their funding is largely determined by student results.

Focusing on only those two elements, it followed that they would develop models meant to (1) fix underperforming teachers' instructional and classroom management skills and (2) develop measurement tools to ensure maximum student results. No room here for Mr Keating and his tearing out pages from books for the sake of the purity of enjoyment of literature! When the ship is sinking, you focus on the actions that will ensure survival, the band can play show tunes again when we are on even keel.

Proponents of this model have very little time for Pedagogy and academic analysis of educational philosophies. They have an almost mechanistic approach that holds that, given the right skills training, anyone can become a good teacher.

This very narrow focus on instructional impact definitely has its place and is currently largely missing from our own teacher training programmes and school management systems. We definitely can learn a great deal.

But, as always, when you have a new religion with new messiahs and disciples, things can get a little narrow and one-sided. A few things bothered me.

1. There is a level of cultural blindness that comes with all missionary movements and the disciples of Instructional Leadership do not always miss that trap.
2. Their approach to teachers is one of deficit that can only be fixed by sticking very rigidly to "The Way".
3. Their disdain for theory can lead to an impoverished, mechanistic perception of the teacher, instead of a fully rounded professional vision.

These points of concern bothered me greatly as I could not fully put my reservations into words. That was until I read this excellent article by Corinne Campbell. I encourage you to read it for a far more scholarly approach to what I attempted here.

In closing, what would I want for teacher training? If I could put together the skeleton of a new PGCE, what would I want?

1. A deep reading of the works of the great Educational thinkers like John Dewey.
2. A deep reading of Educational Psychology.
3. A deep reading of the impact of current cultural and political realities on the Educational space.
4. An in-depth, practical course in Instructional Practice, as per the ILI or similar.

I believe that this would make for a balanced and empowered young teacher who might make significantly fewer mistakes than I did in my first three years! And, as we all know, once you have mastered the basics of your craft, you have so much more room for the creativity that enhances both your own experience and that of your students.

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Paul Bambrick-Santoyo, Driven by Data: A Practical Guide to Improve Instruction

Paul Bambrick-Santoyo, Leverage Leadership: A Practical Guide to Building Exceptional Schools

Doug Lemov, Teach Like a Champion 2.0: 62 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College