Life lessons involving dignity

It has become a cliché to say that teachers should be life-long learners. That does not make it less true. In this post I am not going to talk about your learning in your subject area or pedagogy or classroom management. Those are self-evident, I would propose.

The more challenging area of growth and learning, I think, is that of Emotional Intelligence. But this is also the one that most of us would like to avoid. We shrug and say: "This is who I am", or "I am not here to be liked" (see Rita Pierson debunk that notion brilliantly).

Which is the worst kind of cop-out if you are a teacher, and even more so if you would presume to be a leader.

Two events conspired serendipitously (as it often does) to make me think of this. The first was an unfortunate conflict between myself and a student in our last week of term, followed a day later by a colleague posting a link to this article by Rosalind Wiseman: https://bigthink.com/future-of-learning/dignity-student-engagement. Do read it, it is not long.

Back to the first event - me ending up in a skirmish with a student. Picture the scene: It is the last week of term. At the best of times, teachers are frayed and volatile in the last week of term. But it was also the term of COVID. I am even more overwhelmed than usual. The Grade 9s have been off campus and being taught remotely for the entire term. For the last week, we have sent the Seniors home to be taught online again and have arranged a series of on-campus workshops for the Grade 9s so that they can do their subject choices for Grade 10. A lot of preparation has gone into this, complicated by all the hoops we have to jump through to manage students coming onto campus for the first time under COVID regulations. Forms had to be completed, etc.

All goes well until one boy arrives on campus late. He has not completed any of the necessary prework or paperwork, even though he clearly got the message because here he is! I confront him. He shrugs me off with "I was very busy last week". I explode. In front of the whole class I launch into a speech/tirade about lack of respect and responsibility, etc. You know the drill. With lots of grumbling I eventually get him settled and register him for the online aptitude test and off we go.

And then it hits me: This boy's grandmother, who had been looking after him for the past several years, passed away two weeks before. I remember his name now - the Dean of Students informed me at the time. He is in the midst of a custody battle. When he said that he had been busy, it was not disrespect, it was a statement of fact. I watch him while he works through the 90-minute long online assessment. His shoulders are drooping. He is completely uninterested in what he is doing. At the break after the assessment I go to him on the playground and apologise. I hope I have saved the rest of the day and subject choice process to some extent.

But the point is not his specific context - although we must never forget that each student arrives on campus every morning with a lot of extra weight in their backpacks that we are not aware of. The point is that I, through my sense of righteous indignation, impinged on his dignity. Any student, even one who might have been guilty of real "disrespect", would lose interest in the task if their dignity is trampled on. This is the point of Wiseman's article above.

I am now 53 years old. I have been in education for 21 years. And still I have to consciously learn how to manage my personal behavioural triggers. I am still growing up and gaining maturity and skills in this very difficult aspect of working with children. And we need to also be aware that students' perception of dignity differs from one place to another. It is our responsibility as educators to be ultra vigilant and humble while we learn about the culture around us.

Read the article again. Watch Rita Pierson's TED talk again. And never forget that how you treat the students at the worst of times is the most important interaction you will have with them. That is where you both grow as human beings. That is our biggest challenge and responsibility.

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.

*

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