Teach Effectively!

I’ve posted a couple of entries decrying the the limp rigor and sorry quality of professional development for teachers. Having seen people attending some very good workshops recently when I was at the Reading First conference in Nashville (TN, US), I was reminded that I wanted to run a Bogus Bowl about the worst in-service sessions readers have seen.

So, I’m calling for nominations. Please send me accounts of the worst professional development sessions at which you’ve had to be present. Now, this will be a little tricky, so I’ve got to promulgate some rules for submissions.
Continue reading ‘In-service nightmares’

Wrapping up ‘08 RF conference

As reported previously, I had the pleasure of attending the Fifth Annual Reading First National Conference. I found it a very impressive event. Although I really am flattered to be among the folks shown in the accompanying photo (l-f: Donna Scanlon, Joe Conaty, Frank Vellutino, and Katherine Mitchell), I think my favorite part of the event was hearing what the teachers, coaches, and administrators had to say.

When I hear most other folks talk about reading, they use a very different language; they talk about book tubs, word walls, high-interest books, round-robin reading, and such. When I talk with a select few colleagues about reading instruction, I am accustomed to talking about students’ performance on specific measures of component skills, altering teaching demonstrations (e.g., pacing), features of instructional presentations, scaffolding instruction systematically, and etc. For the first time in my life, I was in a place where literally 1000s of people were talking the way I am accustomed to being able to talk with only a few colleagues.

The teachers, coaches, principals, and others whom I met in Nashville know their stuff! Not only that, they know that they can help each other by collaborating using their shared language. There are powerful teams capable of excellent reading instruction scattered around the US now. They know they can teach kids to read. They have done it.

As Joe Conaty pointed out in his closing remarks, no one can take away from those teams what they now know how to do. Remembering this really makes my emotional cup full to overflowing.

Previous posts about the conference: Laura Bush’s comments (29 July 2008); pin map (28 July 2008); overview (28 July 2008).

Over at The Education Gadfly, Michael J. Petrilli has an editorial entitled “What if ‘improving teacher quality’ isn’t THE answer?” In it Mr. Petrilli goes through a pretty thoughtful discussion of some of the reservations that have been expressed about the improve-teacher-quality path for improving outcomes for students (e.g., recruiting a la Teach for America; alternative certification; incentives for teachers who take tough assignments). Ultimately, he comes to the conclusion that those paths are not likely to be fruitful.

So let’s summarize: we’re unlikely to fill all of America’s classrooms with teachers from the ranks of society’s “best and brightest.” And we’re particularly unlikely to do so in tough urban or rural areas, outside of a handful of hot cities where young college grads like to live. Which means that lots of our children–especially poor and minority children–are going to have teachers who may be good but are not likely to be great. These are teachers who themselves received so-so public school educations, attended so-so colleges, are raising families and thus probably don’t want to work sixty hours a week, but who do care about their students and want them to succeed.

Shouldn’t we be thinking about how to make these average teachers more effective, too, and augmenting them via technology and other stratagems, rather than putting all our eggs in the “superstar teacher” basket? (Look out for my thoughts about how to do that in a future Gadfly.)

I think Mr. Petrilli arrived at a close-to-right conclusion. It’s not a bull’s-eye shot (technology?), but we do need to begin helping average and below-average teachers teach more effectively. In fact, although he seems to have backed into it, teaching effectively is about our only hope for improving schools. Other solutions (recruiting smart people to teach) are still one or more steps removed from teaching effectively.

As Erin Johnson noted in one of the comments on Mr. Petrilli’s post, and echoing the very premise of Teach Effectively, what we need is less talk about teacher quality and more investment in teaching quality.

Link to Mr. Petrilli’s editorial.