One person can make a difference

If there is one thing I have learned so far in my policy class it is, "One person, in the right place, at the right time, can make a huge difference."
The man who steered the mutinous ship of VA's educational reform through the Standards of Learning storm of the late 90's and early 2000's spoke to our class last night. Kirk Schroder is an amazing person. He took on the position of Chairman of the Board of Education in 1998, inheriting a mess of an accountability reform and he made it work. He shared a great deal of wisdom and knowledge during our brief two hour conversation and boy oh boy did he know his stuff.
The key idea I want to internalize is he took the approach to education that a teacher takes to their class. He figured out what behavior he wanted the "student" (the educational system) to take on and he figured out an incentive to get the student there. Explained in those terms I don't feel so far away from where I could be if I want to make a real difference for children and teachers.
What scares me the most about leaving the classroom to enter leadership is that my effectiveness at bringing about change in children's lives would be diluted.
When I am in the classroom, I know that everyday I am making a positive impact on a child and or a family. I had a parent conference with a parent today whose son is extremely intelligent but emotionally immature. (for a 4 yr old) I know that she left that meeting knowing that 1) I cared very much for her son 2) I valued her and her concern for her son 3) I saw what a great kid her son is 4) We are going to work together to make her son a better student 5) I believed in him and her. When she left we were even closer than we had been before. It is so simple when it is real people.

I wonder if there is a policy that I could come up with that would make the same impact?

Horizons and Snowballs

I have been expanding my awareness of the educational world for the past three years. Have talked about being able to see "the waves of opportunity" coming. I am begining to see the waves of reform, with a little help from my class on NCLB, my blogging, and the awesome educators on TLN. I can't help but think that if teachers see a reform on the horzion they should figure out how to positively influence it before it rolls out of control over top of them like a giant snowball.

For instance, why didn't any teachers see NCLB coming? Why didn't they try to block it before it became a law when they could actually do something about it.

IT is much easier to influence public policy before it becomes policy than it is to change it after it is the status quo.

So the trick seems to be looking to the horizon to see what is coming and then figuring out how to make it work for teachers.
A Nation At Risk was one of these opportunities. It made a difference, and now that many of its reforms are finally beginning to be implemented, I want to look for what is next. Is it TOugh Choices< former USDOE leader Riley. (I know he gets it but can he helpo anybody else get it?)
Is it National Standards?
Or is it teachers finally calling for more accountability in the form of teaching standards?

waiting for an invitation?

"Even though teachers are not often invited to the policy table, they are frequently labeled as obstructionists when they decline to endorse “bold new plans” or point out flaws in policies that they know from experience will not yield the intended outcomes. Keep your eyes and ears peeled."
This quote from Barnett Berry's of the Center for Teaching Quality got me thinking.

Why are we waiting for an invitation. I doggedly sought out an appointment to Gov. of Virginia's Start Strong Preschool Council, and I got it. Though I didn't get to have a voting voice I did get invited to the table. I just had to ask for the invite.

Think about this excerpt from an essay I wrote:

Imagine two parents talking in a hallway about the sad state of their child’s messy room. The parents’ discussion is heated. The mother thinks that the child is not wise enough to make good decisions about how to keep his room clean. The father thinks the child can handle the decisions but is just not committed to the effort. Billy sits in his room listening. He knows that his parents are about to enter his room and tell him exactly how to clean it, where to put the toys, books, and socks. They will also tell him he needs to do it quickly because his mother’s boss is coming for dinner and they don’t want the boss to see Billy’s messy room. Billy knows how he would solve the problem of his messy room. He would get some stacking buckets for his toys, more shelves for his books (they won’t fit on the one he has), and a laundry hamper with a basketball hoop so he can practice his free throws with his socks. If his parents would only ask him, “What could we do to help you keep your room clean?” Billy has a lot of ideas, if only his parents would listen.
Policymakers often treat teachers the way Billy is treated by his parents. Educators’ sometimes adversarial relationships with policymakers have contributed to a disconnection between the classroom and public policy. Increased pressure on teachers and administrators to meet local, state, and federal standards has led to the disempowerment of teachers. Policymakers and administrators have seen the stakes as too high to trust teachers with the decisions to be made in their classrooms. There are many issues facing public schools today: closing the achievement gap, inequality of education from district to district, school choice and vouchers, inadequate funding, poor working and learning conditions, institutionalized racism, deteriorating school infrastructure, and a changing global economy that requires different skills than American children are learning in school. Teachers have opinions about all of these issues, but our voice is not being heard.
Teacher leadership is an emerging trend in public education that addresses teachers’ lack of voice in the decisions that affect their profession. To have our voice heard we must create a proactively self defining professional culture instead of one that reacts to each new reform as it is delivered to classrooms. Teacher leaders must work to empower teachers to be self determining in their schools, districts, and beyond because teachers are, by nature, the lock and the key to school reform. We are the lock because no matter what reform is brought forward and pushed into classrooms, it will never be successful without teachers making it so. We are the key because if decision makers were to recognize the inclusion of teachers’ perspectives as necessary to effective school reform then the need for school reforms would begin to decrease. Teaching would transform from a system that needs to be managed from the outside to a true profession guided by its own principles, research, and experience, and lead by its own practitioners.

high-needs schools and nbcts

This list from the NEA site is about a policy summit in North Carolina.
It was a group of NBCTs in partnership with the Center for Teacher Quality.

1. Ensure that all administrators will use the skills and knowledge of NBCTs and other accomplished teachers
2. Create opportunities for all teachers to teach effectively in high-needs schools
3. Develop NBCTs as leaders for high-needs schools
4. Create an array of incentives to attract NBCTs and other accomplished teachers to high-needs schools
5. Create the conditions to develop NBCTs inside of high-needs schools
6. Build awareness among policy makers, practitioners, and the public about the importance of National Board Certification in the service of high-needs schools.

Sounds good but, how do we get to the point where the teachers who are actually teaching in at-risk schools have the skills necessary to become a teacher leader or NBCT.
Many of my colleagues turn down the idea because they don't want to do the work involved with becomeing a NBCT because the effort for them would be som much more compared to their counterpart in a more reasonable situation.

Can we increase the number of teacher leaders in america through a very simple act in pre-service institutions? Can we expect, teach, and require, high level reflection by student teacehrs before they can enter the profession? What if you actually had to know how to write before you became certified? Atleast that part of being a voice at the policy table would met before the teachers hit the streets.


http://www.nea.org/nationalboard/nc-everychild.html

This list from the NEA site is about a policy summit in North Carolina.
It was a group of NBCTs in partnership with the Center for Teacher Quality.

1. Ensure that all administrators will use the skills and knowledge of NBCTs and other accomplished teachers
2. Create opportunities for all teachers to teach effectively in high-needs schools
3. Develop NBCTs as leaders for high-needs schools
4. Create an array of incentives to attract NBCTs and other accomplished teachers to high-needs schools
5. Create the conditions to develop NBCTs inside of high-needs schools
6. Build awareness among policy makers, practitioners, and the public about the importance of National Board Certification in the service of high-needs schools.

Sounds good but, how do we get to the point where the teachers who are actually teaching in at-risk schools have the skills necessary to become a teacher leader or NBCT.
Many of my colleagues turn down the idea because they don't want to do the work involved with becomeing a NBCT because the effort for them would be som much more compared to their counterpart in a more reasonable situation.

Can we increase the number of teacher leaders in america through a very simple act in pre-service institutions? Can we expect, teach, and require, high level reflection by student teacehrs before they can enter the profession? What if you actually had to know how to write before you became certified? Atleast that part of being a voice at the policy table would met before the teachers hit the streets.


http://www.nea.org/nationalboard/nc-everychild.html

How can I not help you?

I have just come from the advanced candidate retreat for national board certified teacher candidates. This is the third one of these I have done and it just feels like so much therapy. My comments on my session "Looking at Student Work" were fairly good. Every year I feel the same emotions I felt when I didn't achieve and I went to the retreat. I can almost see signs hanging around peoples necks with thier states of recovery from the rejection. Some have "hopeful" others "mourning" but the hardest ones are the ones in "bargaining" or "denial". They keep trying to convince me that they did something right OR that I should tell them something new. I like to start each coaching interaction with the question: : "How can I not help you?"IT feels like that. I don't have the answers they want I have to keep asking them questions until it seems like they have answered the question for themselves. I Imagine it is how my sculpture teachers felt when they were trying to help us understand why our sculpture was bad without telling us that we will never be Van GOgh. Then, trying to do all this when the students are convinced they are the next great artist of the world.

the age of conceptualization and creativity

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach never fails to inspire me. The fact that I have only posted twice in 6 months and she is the inspiration for both should be the testament to this truth.

I have to say that the phrase: "the age of conceptualization and creativity" sends shivers down my spine as an educator. When I think of what the future holds for my little 3 year old students and what they really need to be prepared for it I get very excited and scared.

I get even more excited for how Web 2.0 will affect teachers. I have experienced the effect of collaborating with high quality professionals through TLN . I want to bring this world of pwerful professional development and community to my little corner of the south.

I have decided to pursue my doctorate in educational leadership. There is one major reason for this.

I want to improve education for students by empowering teachers.
I could probably work at this for ten years as a teacher before finally losing steam and deciding to get out of education or move up the ladder. I figure, Why wait ten years to make the same decision so ... I have begun the long road to the land of respect that a doctorate instaneously imparts on the posessor. In a converstaion with a representative of the State Dept. of Ed. He said as much to me, when he got his doctorate, all of a sudden he had credibility. I can only think of this credibility as muscle or tork, it is what gets things done some times.

When I think of the age of conceptualization and creativity I am hoping a little intellectual muscle will help me get the lid off the jar of teacher leadership in my school district.