Teacher Voice Counts, So Let's Start the Conversations

The spring of 2012 is shaping up to be a pretty important season.  Contract negotiations have been intense, organization in response to the Stand for Children initiative is gearing up, and momentum around increasing membership participation and voice through a voting proposal will be building.

It’s a particularly meaningful and important time for us as teachers to get involved and support positive change in whatever way possible.  As the historian Howard Zinn famously suggested, you can’t be neutral on a moving train.  Depending on the metaphorical locomotive of discussion, it’s going to take individuals and groups acting in concert to either speed up or slow down these trains.  Or in some cases, to even lay some new tracks.

At the end of February, based on ongoing conversations with a number of teachers and friends, I introduced a companion Survey Tool through The Teaching Pulse website to amplify and build upon the theme of the Talk to Teachers campaign.  The idea is based on a simple, dual premise: 1) the voices of teachers matter and 2) there’s nothing more compelling in this day and age than data.

The steps to make this happen are also intended to very doable ones:  1) develop a survey around a particular topic or theme, 2) distribute the survey to the intended audience of teachers, 3) analyze and interpret the results and 4) present that information as needed to advocate for our students and our work in educating them.

For this column, I’d like to re-pose the question and propose possible topics for survey development:

What collective information would be useful to solicit from the teachers in our individual school or job settings?  How might that information be helpful in surfacing particular issues or opportunities to enhance and support our work in the classroom?  Or to gather information that would be helpful for our individual school, union or district leadership to know?  And ultimately respond to?

In other words, let’s continue to work on inviting and building upon the voices, experiences and ideas of teachers.  Some of us may be interested in getting involved with some of the broader, district-wide issues I raised at the beginning of this column.  Others may want to ‘activate’ teacher participation and leadership around themes of classroom instruction and figuring out ways to share best practices.  Yet others may want to focus on issues and opportunities specific to an individual school.

Here are a few examples of possible topics, along with sample statements that can be answered by the typical Likert scale of responses (strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree).

Student Attendance Concerns.  As one teacher recently raised, ongoing concerns of low student attendance in her classes and her school overall have been making instruction extremely challenging.  Here are some statements that might comprise a survey to all the staff in her building to raise initial patterns while also providing some next possible steps in terms of discussion and/or sharing best practices.

• Student attendance issues (ie: frequent absences and student tardiness) affect my ability to plan and teach students effectively.

• I have developed (and would be willing to share) good strategies in my classroom that minimize the effect of absences or student tardiness.

• I believe that a standardized and consistently applied attendance policy throughout the school would help me in my classroom.

Voting in the BTU.  Turnout and participation in the BTU’s biannual elections have been a concern and challenge for many teachers.  Here are some possible statements that could generate useful baseline information.

• I vote regularly in the BTU elections.

• I am generally satisfied with the diversity of opinions, experiences and positions represented by the candidates for BTU leadership positions

• I think the current voting structure is an effective way of encouraging BTU members to vote

• I would be more likely to vote in BTU elections if they were held at my individual school or through a mail-in ballot

• I think that more teachers would participate in BTU elections and be involved if they knew more about the issues and had the opportunity to contribute.

Sharing Best Practices.  A number of past contributors and commenters have indicated strong interest in learning from each other and creating more pathways for teachers to share best practices—both within schools and between them.  Some possible statements are below.

• The professional development offerings from the school district and those required in my school meet my needs.

• I would like to see the BTU take an increased leadership role in the professional development of teachers

• I would be willing to learn from and adapt new instructional strategies from other teachers

• I have a best practice that relates to ____insert topic here____ that I would be willing to share

• I would be willing to participate in a district-wide cohort of teachers to pilot and jointly refine a targeted, instructional practice

I hope these topics give a glimpse of what is possible.  Do visit the online forum at www.theteachingpulse.org if you are interested in further developing these or other surveys, and get in touch with me.  I’d be glad to help in any way that I can!

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It’s a pleasant experience walking through the front doors of the Boston Teachers Union School.  It might have just been me, but the floors seemed particularly gleaming, the colors on the bulletin boards especially bright and the teacher conversations meaningful and intense.

Now in its third year of operation, the BTU school opened in September 2009 as a pilot school with seven classrooms and by the next academic year, will be operating as a full K-8 school with one class for each K-5 grades and two classes for grades 6-8.

Betsy Drinan Multi-Tasks

Needless to say, all the staff and school partners, including co-lead teachers Betsy Drinan and Berta Berriz, have been hard at work.  As a teacher-run school, one with two seasoned teachers at the lead and the multiple autonomies of being a pilot school to manage—including the domains of hiring, budget, curriculum, scheduling and governance—there is a lot of work to be done.

Betsy’s office on this particular late Friday afternoon in October reflected this state of being.  Within the first few minutes of my arrival at the main office, she was finishing up a tense conversation with another teacher, fielded a phone call about a bus issue, buzzed in an afterschool partner, and managed to get a breath at the same time.

I was almost sorry to be putting her through yet another activity.  But I also knew that she would have a lot to say, especially from her perspective as an experienced teacher and in particular, as a teacher playing a very unique role as a designated school leader.

***

Thanks for taking the time to meet with me and talk a little bit about yourself as a teacher and one of the key lead teachers of the BTU school.

One of the key themes of The Teaching Pulse is an attempt to make conversations around best teaching practices a central focus of our professional organization.  And one way I’m hoping to do that is by talking to some of the best teachers in the district and sharing those conversations with other teachers across the city.

I hope that these questions help guide us into a great conversation.

Is there a typical day in the life of Betsy Drinan, teacher leader at the BTU school?

Well, it’s non-stop.  I would say that.  It’s a non-stop job.  [Last] year, we were short-staffed [but] the student weighted formula worked in our favor and we got extra funds to hire a social worker and paraprofessionals to assist me and [the other co-lead teacher] Berta.  It [gave] us a little bit of breathing room.  But we’ve [also] got an influx of kids in the upper school and some of them have some challenging behaviors. Some have transferred in from Middle School Academy and already have a history of issues. We want to work with and support these kids but it takes an enormous amount of time on a daily basis.

So you teach as well, right?

I do teach.   I’m an English teacher and a reading specialist and we are working on our Response to Intervention model for literacy and math.  So I do small group reading for 6^th, 7^th and 8^th grades. I teach each grade three days a week for a fifty-minute block.

The other parts of my day, I’m doing everything from student support and discipline to data meetings to curriculum meetings.  I also work on fundraising, Court Street budgets, ordering materials, getting our library developed, Governing Board, strategic planning, [organizing] family council, [overseeing] facilities management, [and fostering] parent relationships… just for a start.

How would you describe yourself now and what you do?  Do you call yourself a teacher?  A teacher-leader?  Or a building leader?

I call myself a co-lead teacher.  The title is a bit cumbersome, but that’s what it is.  I feel like I mostly coordinate.  I work with the upper school and I run ideas by people all the time.  It’s my responsibility that ideas and projects get picked up and that we follow up on them and move them forward, because they can get lost.  We are all keepers of the vision here but I feel that it is my particular job, along with everyone else, to keep us moving towards the goals we set for ourselves in our strategic plan.

Do you feel like there’s a proportion in your mind that describes the balance between being a classroom teacher and an administrator?

Well, I teach reading and I’ve been teaching reading for a long time so I have a wealth of materials to draw on.  Most of my preparation I do on the weekends at home.  I like the teaching. It keeps me grounded in what’s really central to our work. On the other hand it’s kind of hectic sometimes because sometimes I’m in the middle of something and then I think, ‘Oh!  It’s time to teach!  I have to run!’

I don’t actually think that in year three of our school I really have the balance worked out yet.

Is there one particular moment in your many years of teaching that encapsulate who you are and strive to be as an educator?

Just seeing growth in kids.  We just had our data meetings yesterday with kids we’ve had for three years now.  Kids who were struggling and scoring at the 30th percentile and now they’re at the 60^th percentile.  It’s very exciting to see that kind of growth, and to see kids engaged with books.

It is also wonderful to see the kids maturing and being able to handle situations that would have confounded them in the past. We have some 8^th grade students who have made tremendous emotional and social growth. Kids who were explosive or constantly reactive now can handle difficult situations and be more proactive in their lives. That is marvelous to see.

I know the district is interested in developing pathways for teachers to grow in their careers as lead teachers.   Are there specific innovative approaches and practices that you employ as a teacher leader that you think others might be able to develop as well? 

Well, this school is collaborative.  So it’s not my practice, it’s all of [ours] together.  We have a CCL model where we have four teachers working together and doing collaborative peer observation.  Teachers are starting to film each other, to look at the videos together, to look at student work that came out of a particular lesson, and to continue through the whole peer observation cycle.  We’re devoting part of faculty meetings to it—we have two hour meetings every Thursdays – so we can debrief there.   And that’s exciting—teachers are buzzing about getting into each others’ classrooms to see what’s going on.

In terms of leadership development I think one of the most important practices is being open to and encouraging teachers to take on projects that they feel particularly skilled at or committed to. I think it’s about opening up the leadership circle and then leaders emerge naturally.  That has not been my usual experience in other schools I have worked in.

What are the ways you make decisions at the Boston Teachers Union School? 

During our first summer retreat, we really spent a fair amount of time just getting to know each other and asked ourselves the questions—who are you, where are you coming from and how do we work together?  And what does it mean to have a shared leadership model?  They are pretty words written on a piece of paper, but what do they mean in practice?

Do you feel like you had that starry eyed look going into it?

No, not really. I knew it would be difficult but we thought hard about what shared leadership really meant.  We figured out a system so that some are decision by consensus and some are designated as leadership decisions.  [Other times], a committee is designated with the authority to make those decisions or a committee might research and bring back information to the larger group for a vote.  We’re very intentional—if all thumbs are up, we move forward.  If a thumb is down, we go back and talk it through.  And it’s actually worked.  It seems like a simple [system], but it actually works.

So you don’t feel like it’s gotten in the way of just managing the quick pace of a school?  Sometimes I hear the concerns that consensus decision-making just takes too long.

It doesn’t, though.  I think it’s the teachers [that make it work].

The decision-making is [actually] pretty fast and efficient.  We have timekeepers, we have norms, and we have facilitators.  We have to move on and if we can’t make a decision, we’ll come back to it the next time.  Teachers are busy.  [We’re] not into debating just for the sake of debating and hearing [ourselves] talk.   ‘Let’s move on and let’s keep it moving’ [is our approach].

I’ve worked in schools where you couldn’t walk in the principal’s office and talk.  I’ve worked in schools where you didn’t know anything about the decisions being made.  I’ve worked in schools where there were no meetings.  I’ve gone from working in non-profit agencies in the world of social work where you had meetings every week and there were supervision meetings to a school where there [were no regular staff meetings at all].  Scary. How can you run such a complex organization as a school without regular faculty meetings?

Is it fair to say that your office is open to other teachers coming in is because you are a teacher as well?

I think that’s really the truth because I’m not the boss here.  I can’t make decisions and just go with what I want.  I have to go back to them.  It’s the way we’re established.  I am the co-lead teacher.  I am not the head of school in that sense.  And we have strong-minded people here.  So God forbid I make a decision and not check with people.

It sounds like there’s a different kind of accountability here.  You’re accountable to the other teacher staff as the co-lead teacher but they’re accountable to you, too… and you have certain responsibilities they understand as well.

Right, and we’re all responsible to the students.  The stakes are high here. We were talking about the stress and the demands of this job [the other day], particularly on teachers with young kids at home and this teacher suggested that maybe he should have stayed at his former school—[because, sorry to say], the expectations were less there.  [It’s different at this school, though].  The expectations are high.

Who makes them high?

We all do.  We all do.  We feel responsible to our students and families, and to our union and profession.  I do.  We need to be a good school… you know plenty of people told me that  -‘Ok, Betsy!  It better be good!’ (laughing)

That’s actually a good bridge. You mentioned before how the BTU school is successful.  What are your thoughts on the Boston Teachers Union as a professional organization?  What does it do well, what does it need to do better, how can we include more voices to make it a stronger union?

I wish that our union could be more of a collaborative partner with the district. Generally, I’m not a believer in polarization.  Maybe strategically every once in a while, it’s [necessary to have this stance], but [I disagree with] continual polarization.  Demonizing people [is counterproductive] and there’s an awful lot of that going on in our society…demonizing teachers, teacher unions, and [even] individual schools.

I’d like to see our profession and our union do more in terms of proposing solutions to specific problems.  We’re so much under attack these days that [sometimes it is all we can do to] just try to fend off the attack.  I know that takes a lot of energy and I’m grateful that our union is strong and we do have some degree of power and protection.  But on the other hand, there are important issues where maybe we could be more proactive.

One that’s front and center for me is the issue of differing policies and missions between certain charter school and BPS schools.  I had a conversation with [an administrator] from a local charter school the other day and he stated that any kid that gets into a fight is automatically expelled given their zero tolerance policy.  He then modified this by saying that they would give the student the opportunity to withdraw so their record wasn’t impacted but that the kid would definitely be gone.  I asked him where the kids went next but he ignored my question.

The question is whether there is a basic difference in our missions.  The BPS is here to serve all the kids – not contribute to the increasing educational stratification going on in our country.

But what about those kids though?  Our system isn’t as responsive as it needs to be.

But you don’t have the background or resources…

Even if I do have the background because I have some, I don’t have the personnel to work with [students with particular risk factors]. I am not in favor of expelling [students] from the system. I am in favor of us developing and providing intensive services to help turn things around for them.

But you’re right, we need the resources and the extra personnel to do this.  Teachers could help the district figure this out. It is critical for these young people.

It sounds as if we in the larger education community need to trust teachers and the teaching staff to recognize what students need.

Exactly, exactly.

I’d like to see our union become a center of education for teachers.  When I was at a recent AFT conference, I talked to people at the Education Research and Dissemination Program and the courses they offer [on research-based professional development].  Let’s get our union to be a center of ER&D.  They’ll do it for no charge!  And I think that the union could be the go-to place for good, quality professional development.

How would you think that would change the dynamic between the school district and the teachers union, one that can often be tense or harsh in tone?

First of all, if the BTU were a center for professional development you might get a different or more varied group of people going to the union hall because people would be coming there to get their quality PD.  It would strengthen our union and maybe could increase collaboration with the district.

In terms of changing the dynamic between the district and the union though, that’s a tough one. A lot of the issues that are so divisive nationally are front and center in our negotiations. To me [for example], merit pay is really more of an insult than anything else—a simple, corporate mentality type of solution to a complicated problem. Just pay the teachers a bonus and they will work harder and things will be better? Do they even have a clue? If they have all this extra funding why not ensure that every school has a social worker, reading and math specialists and updated library and technology resources to start? Give us the personnel to work with our most troubled kids.

I think it would be worthwhile for the district to reach out in a more concerted way to explain why they are pushing some of the changes they are.  On the other hand, we as the teachers union need to be willing to look at new ways to do things also.

Good and open communication is key. The adversarial positions we are often forced into really are not conducive to good problem-solving.

In your role as a co-lead teacher, Betsy, do you feel your views have changed at all about what it means to be a good teacher?  Or what it means to be a good building administrator?

I have a different perspective now in the sense that I’m a lot more cognizant of the overall organism.  I consider a school as a complex living organism.  And I’ve always been somebody that has [considered] systems.  I like to look at the whole, how it all works.  But when you’re a classroom teacher in a big school, and especially in schools where you have limited information—never mind input—you just see your classroom.

Now, I see the whole school.  And it’s a house of cards sometimes – it can be a delicate balancing act.  It doesn’t take much to stress the organization.

Can you offer one or two suggestions that would help schools build a collaborative environment that would benefit everybody?

You have to break down that artificial barrier.  The [idea of] administrators against the teachers is ridiculous if you hope to build a successful school.  It’s a ridiculous situation that’s artificially created…and some people work to maintain it for whatever reason.  It’s always easier to have the ‘good guys’ and the ‘bad guys’ and most of the time it’s not that simple.  Though sometimes it is that simple…(laughing)

But in schools, it’s usually not.  Especially as we have increasing demands that our schools are the center for socialization, education, poverty reduction… they are supposed to do everything.  We’re supposed to do everything.

People have to take the time to get to know each other and develop some level of trust. There has to be an openness and willingness to discuss the issues as well as mutual respect. If the respect isn’t authentic it will be hard to work together successfully.

You’re asking interesting questions that I haven’t really spent the time thinking about.  And it makes me think now that I do have a perspective having come from both sides here to look at it in a way to say, ‘what are models looking forward that we can create that sustain this work in a more viable way?’

Right, something that can be transferred and replicated.

Right.  So much of it is about staffing.  If I had three more people, four more people, I could take the woman who was just here and have her teach one less class.  And give her the responsibilities for developing and implementing our writing curriculum across the building as a part of her regular position instead of an extra responsibility she is willing to take on because she is committed. But how much can you reasonably ask people to do?

The reality is, they can talk all they want about restructuring teacher leader pathways and things, but you have to have more people to do that. The reality is, we are spread so thin. We do not have enough people to do everything we want to do.

The Boston Public Schools and urban public schools in general are understaffed.  Give us a few more people. One of our teachers taught in Brookline before she came into Boston and it is fascinating to hear her talk about the extra people who were available to her on a regular basis in Brookline.

I hope in some way, we figure out a way to look at the systems you have in place and the needs that you have; we don’t often communicate and learn from each others’ experiences in a shared way.

There’s so little of that.  It’s stunning.  You were asking me about sharing with other administrators so here’s what happens.  We have these district meetings and the parts that are often the most worthwhile are the conversations that you have during the breaks.  Like the, ‘how do you do such-and-such?’ and ‘what do you have in place for student support and how do you structure that?’ and ‘what are doing with your writing curriculum?’  Because there is no place for that.  And there isn’t a place for it for teachers, by and large—we’re trying to do it, but we’re not that big.  We only have one 7^th and 8^th grade ELA teacher, and one 7^th and 8^th grade math teacher.

Again, the union could be a natural place for that… calling all 3^rd grade teachers, you know?  Let’s talk about how you teach 3^rd grade.  What are you doing?  Because people are hungry for that.  And you get great ideas.  Sure, I can go online and read a million things, but it’s not the same.  Let me show you, you know?  It’s more fun.  And school leaders to school leaders.  What systems do [we all] have in place to motivate students?  I want to talk to the charter schools.  I want to hear what they’re doing because they’ve got some good ideas.  But who’s pulling us together?  Nobody really, in the sense of providing time to simply share ideas and brainstorm together.

Outside of individuals or happenstance…

Right.  You talk to your friends and people you know, but in a complex profession that we have, to stand in a classroom of twenty-six kids and keep them all motivated and engaged, learning specific skills and big ideas, [and differentiating]?  It’s like magic when you do it.  It’s highly complicated.  And it’s really hard.

And awesome when it works and it’s done well.  Are there any words you’d like to end with?

I wish I had more time to pursue these [conversations] of moving our profession and our union forward.  I don’t right now (laughing).  There’s no doubt about that.

I feel very fortunate to have been given this opportunity.

Betsy Drinan of the Boston Teachers Union School

***

And I might extend this idea to say that all of us have this opportunity.  What do you think?  Please consider visiting the online forum at www.theteachingpulse.org to offer your reactions, thoughts and ideas.

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“I don’t really think there was a secret ingredient other than people being able to move past their doubts and seize an opportunity.  It was a chance to create opportunities where the rewards outweighed the risks.   I don’t think we do that much in public education…”

“You need to build systems…to demonstrate that teachers, by and large, succeed in their work.”

“I think that we, as unions and teachers, have felt so victimized by accountability that we have almost betrayed our own mission as a profession.”

Brad Jupp, Education Sector Interview in April 2006

***

Brad is a very laid back guy.  And that’s particularly impressive when you consider his current position as the Senior Program Advisor for Teacher Quality Initiatives in the U.S. Department of Education.  This is an individual who has the ear of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and has considerable, if not central, influence on any federal policies that relate to teacher quality and effectiveness.

U.S. Department of Education Senior Advisor Brad Jupp

As a former middle school English teacher and union activist in the Denver public schools, he is most known for his role in the development of Denver’s ProComp teacher compensation system—one which ties teacher incentives to both school and student performance and growth.

I met Brad through the Teaching Ambassador Program, a teaching fellowship designed to orient and involve teachers in national, state and local education policy.  A total of four BPS teachers, incidentally, have been a part of, or currently participate, in this program, including Steven Berbeco from Charlestown High School, Shakera Walker from Young Achievers Science and Math School and Robert Baroz from the Curley School.   Applications for the 2012-2013 cohort have recently opened so definitely take a look and pass on the word.

He was generous enough to spend nearly an hour with me this past November while attending the Council of the Great City Schools conference in Boston.  I thoroughly enjoyed the conversation, especially as it related to one of the core questions of The Teaching Pulse:  What local, statewide and national policy initiatives should we teachers be aware of, and what are practical ways and avenues to influence and implement those policies?’

***

Thanks, Brad, for taking the time to meet and talk with me this morning.  It’s an incredible privilege.  One key goal of this interview is to emphasize the idea that [education] policy is important, policy affects us and at times, we can actually shape it.

How would you best describe your role in the U.S. Department of Education and what you do?

I comprehend it first by its breathtaking scale.  I was always overwhelmed in Denver by how many teachers I represented when I was a union leader and how many teachers worked for us when I was in the superintendent’s office.  [And] I knew most of them.

In the Department of Education, what I think is amazing is [to consider] this huge river of 3.3 million people.  The teaching workforce is enormous.  And it works under incredibly decentralized circumstances.  You can’t say that the teacher who works in New Jersey works under the same circumstances as the one who teaches in California.  But you also can’t say that the teacher who works in Los Angeles works under the same circumstances as the teacher who works in Sacramento.  And so it’s not just a problem of enormity, it’s a problem of complexity.

Size and decentralization makes for enormity and complexity.  [It’s] been a real challenge to learn the best ways to shape the directions that the people who make up this river of people flow in.  There’s a current [in this river, for instance] where 30% of the people who have been hired have left the job within two or three years after they were hired.  You should ask:  ‘What’s causing that current’?’  Then you should ask, ‘what can be done to alter that current?’  And in something that’s enormous and something that’s complicated, it’s not going to be a simple, single gesture.

So I think the short end of this long introduction is that learning how to make the right precise moves to change the trajectory of the teaching profession has been the greatest challenge of the job that I’ve been in for the past two and a half years.  It’s not been easy.

[It seems] like a tremendous role and responsibility, to not only identify and understand what the currents are, but to also try and establish interventions, policies or even [think them through]…

Very often what people do wrong is [when] they come in with a political orientation and some policy preferences.  And they impose them.  I think the case that I was making is that you actually have to learn how these currents move before you do that, before you can alter them effectively.

I’m making the case for knowing how this workforce moves rather than knowing the right sets of policy interventions.

So you’re thinking of yourself more as a gatherer of information, understanding how it works…

Maybe the right word for it, James, and I know it might not be good interview material because it’s too abstract… I’m a pragmatist.  I work with the materials and conditions that I got.  I’m not an idealist.  I don’t work backwards from a set of perfect ideas that I think need to be imposed on this incredibly complex and decentralized workforce.

Nice… well, to bring it back to the day-to-day, because you have this experience, how has being a teacher yourself and an accomplished unionist affected how you do your work now? 

So, I think the teacher weighs much more heavily than the union background.  To be a good teacher I had to be constantly ask, ‘What do kids know, how is their knowledge changing, and what evidence am I using to feel confident that their knowledge is changing the way I hope it will?’  I use that way of thinking in every aspect of my work, whether I’m working with the state leader, union leader, school teachers, [or] a governor.  ‘What do they know?’  Then I ask, ‘how do I know that what they know is changing and what evidence am I going to use?’  I apply that way of thinking with everybody.

I think what I bring from my background as a union leader, first and foremost, is the sentiment that working people want first and foremost, good, fruitful jobs; not the political struggle that they often find themselves in.  And then second, I bring a really three-dimensional understanding of the psychology that [often] occurs in the relationship between unions and school districts, [and between] unions and state legislatures… Frankly, I’ve been on all sides of the table.  And I have an insight into what’s in people’s heads on all sides of the table at this point.  And that’s because [like I mentioned earlier], I pay attention to [connecting evidence to shifts in understanding with] whomever I’m working.  Over the years, [I’ve gathered] an experience base in thinking like a leader of a local, of thinking like a leader of a state affiliate, or thinking like a superintendent or thinking like a governor’s education policy aide.

So the union experience is double.  I understand the aspirations of the people that unions represent and I also understand the motivations and sentiments of people who represent large numbers of teachers.

I love the word ‘attentiveness’ because I think that cognitively, that’s really complex.  Especially when you come in with your ideas or you may be influenced, as we all are, by a political background, or way of looking at the work, or personal experiences that affect how we do our work.   To be attentive doesn’t mean you disregard it, but you almost categorize it in your head a certain way so that you’re looking at things fairly and really listening to all the different perspectives.

You can never disabuse yourself of your own biases but you can always take into account someone else’s as you try to create progress.

That’s a nice one… (laughing)

So one of the goals of this column is to [emphasize] that education policy is something that is important for teachers to understand.  So from your perspective and position in the Department of Education, what are the most important policy initiatives that teachers should be aware of right now?  In particular, which ones directly impact us in our classrooms?

I think the most important policy initiative is actually a bundle of different initiatives that are associated with college and career ready standards.  I’ve been in the classroom or in jobs that have been close to the classroom for twenty-five years and in the course of those years, I’ve seen three to four sets of standards wash up on the beach of my classroom.  And they didn’t really affect what I did much, although the last set that washed up in the form of accountability initiatives that preceded NCLB in Colorado did affect the way my school was organized because we started to care a lot more about whether kids were proficient or not and we began to pay a lot more attention to kids on the cusp of proficiency.  Because the numbers made us pay attention to them.   We didn’t know if it was the right thing or the wrong thing; I think it was probably somewhere in the middle, but until there [were] external circumstances asking us to pay attention to proficiency rates, the standards were largely aesthetic.  They were binders with suggested student content that we were supposed to apply as English teachers if our kids were to be on track.

So would you say that there wasn’t oversight there?

Until there was external accountability at the state level, there were not powerful, coercive forces to make us pay attention to the standards, so we didn’t.  We did what we wanted.  Now I’m not for powerful and coercive standards, I’m for recognizing that before the accountability movement, there was not a lot of attention to what the state standards were or what the district standards were, at least in [the] Denver Public Schools.  And with that, there was not much attention [paid] to whether or not kids were succeeding on the standards.

To this end, I think that the powerful thing about College and Career Ready Standards comes in two steps.  The first step is if we as a profession are going to get serious, we’re not going to be coerced into owning the outcomes of these standards, but we’re going to adopt them because they’re the right, good thing.  And the second is, if we’re going to be serious about those standards, and serious about the fact that they’re supposed to get all kids to college and career readiness, we’re going to be serious about the fact that the work that we have to do in order to attain those standards is different than the work we’re doing now.  And I contend, because I’ve studied them as an English teacher, the language arts expectations under College and Career Ready Standards are as good as my expectations when I entered the field in the 1980s… and very, very difficult to execute in the classroom.

When we as a profession embrace these [new standards], we’re embracing them because they’re the right thing for the kids to do, but we’re also embracing them as hard work.  And we’re going to need to honest with ourselves that they will challenge us, me, and my colleagues to do new and sometimes more difficult things.

I’m convinced that just as College and Career Ready standards are really important, I’m also convinced that a lot of the debate around teacher effectiveness, a lot of the debate around teacher capital management, is actually small fry compared to this big fish.

So it’s about the Common Core [the adopted College and Career Ready Standards framework].

The Common Core is something that the profession, if it chooses to own it, and chooses to own it as thoroughly as I just described it, will actually just swamp all of the little squeaky arguments of ‘this measure of teacher performance’ or ‘that human capital management decision to give somebody a raise or to advance someone to new rung on a career ladder…’

So the Common Core is a more significant policy issue than even the Flexibility Waivers that states are currently applying for as related to No Child Left Behind?

Yes, because I don’t think you can actually do the next generation of accountability systems that are anticipated by the [Elementary and Secondary Education Act] Flexibility, without the Common Core to animate them.

Can you think of some practical ways and avenues that you might suggest for teachers to understand, influence and implement policies like these in our school districts at the local level?  How do we make policy less abstract and how do we understand it, influence it and implement it?

Be a building rep for your union, be on your building faculty senate or building committee, partner with people in the central office so that you are a practitioner [figuring out] the difficult problems of execution with administrators, because just like teachers don’t want reform to be done to them, they want it to be done with them, administrators want policy implementation to be done with them, not policy implementation arguments done to them.  And we should assume that no one wants to be part of that kind of loud argument.

And don’t hesitate to use those opportunities to be building reps and union leaders and district leaders as vehicles for career advancement.  The ambitions of teachers to be successful and efficacious are the things that actually animate the best things about their career.  And we should always be encouraging teachers to act on those aspirations.

So even in those particular roles, if those conversations aren’t happening, [should we] begin them?

Begin them, encourage them to come, and then also ask… we’ve talked about this now two or three times, ask ‘what is going on in the minds of the other people in this dialogue that would lead it to be successful or unsuccessful?  And how can I take into account their motives and my motives so we’re not adversaries but we’re solving the same problem?’

And that, I think, the idea that we’re working together to solve common problems, is the beginning of almost all progress.

That’s a perfect segway for the last two pieces [of this interview].  It sounds like collaboration and [the conditions that are] required for collaboration to take root.  

I read a really great interview that you did with Education Sector in April of 2006, the year following the successful funding and implementation of ProComp initiative in the Denver Public Schools.  At one point, you said: I don’t really think there was a secret ingredient other than people being able to move past their doubts and seize an opportunity. It was a chance to create opportunities where the rewards outweighed the risks. I don’t think we do that much in public education.

What can we do, as teachers and as members of our teachers union, to make this happen more often in general?  Or even more specifically, here in the Boston Public Schools?

In a sentence, navigate towards your best hopes and away from your worst fears.

Too much of the adversarial discourse in public education is discourse buttressed by worst fears.  ‘What if the worst principal in the world were in charge of that school?’  We need a rule to protect all teachers against the possibility of the worst principal in the world.

It’s the wrong way to be organized.  [We] should be organizing instead on ‘how do we get the best principal in the world in as many schools as we’ve got?  That means that we’re going to need really great incentive packages for principals, and by golly they might need to be paid more than teachers and as maybe as a teacher union leader, I need to advocate that we accelerate the pay for high school principals so that the working conditions in my high schools get better.

It’s a simple example, but if you begin to think like that, then you can begin to proliferate other examples.

So is it up to the individual teachers in our buildings as building reps, as partners with district officials, to talk and frame the conversation in that way?  Because sometimes a lot of the rhetoric out there is very negative, as you’re probably already aware.. how do we break through that?

I think the most important thing that teacher leaders can do is to say, ‘But wait. There are some benefits here.  But wait.  What are the right, prudent ways to protect against the fair things that are being raised by the people who are afraid against worst hopes?’

We didn’t say, when we negotiated ProComp, ‘let’s embrace the arbitrary and capricious.’  We said instead, ‘let’s embrace the reasonable, the consistent, the credible…’ and then we said, ‘let’s make sure we’re protecting against the arbitrary and capricious by embracing [the] reasonable and consistent and credible.’  We never said anything about getting it all right.  We always said though, we want to keep our antennae up and avoid treating people badly.  And what’s more, we made a commitment to use data as a way to inform our future decisions so that we were not being arbitrary and capricious.

And when you say ‘we,’ you mean… as teachers or as the collaborative team?

Labor and management, the collaborative team.  Absolutely.

What was the structure of that team?

There were a number of different shared decision-making bodies.  One, the design team that led the pay-for-performance pilot, was two teachers and two administrators who managed the implementation of a difficult project.  Another, the joint salary task force, was five teachers, three principals and two central officers who managed the policy development for the pay system.  And there were other collaborative bodies as well.  There were management teams, there were executive teams, and at all levels, we made sure that there were good problem solving ethics and a high degree of pragmatic practice, guiding the way we did our work.

We didn’t negotiate much, we problem solved a whole lot.

But were those particular task forces borne of negotiations?  Was there a deliberate decision to create those collaborative groups?

So this is really important, James.

All of those bodies were borne from their need, not from the preconceived agreement and in fact, one of the hallmarks of the early pay-for-performance pilot was that we adapted the design team away from what it was originally agreed to do into something very different.

And we didn’t reopen the labor agreement to do it.

I’m a strong believer that pre-textual power sharing agreements only go so far.  And most labor agreements, especially most agreements to collaborate, are just pre-textual power sharing agreements.   What I care more about is not the power sharing, but the outcomes.  Power sharing to no outcome is useless; it just makes people comfortable.

What we did in the period of time from the beginning of the pay-for-performance pilot through the successful election in ProComp was to create problem-solving tables in which the problem that needed to be solved trumped the power-sharing relationship, at any moment.

That was just the tacit understanding?  That was the agreement from the people at the table and how they communicated?

At the risk of making it sound mystical, because it wasn’t, it was the culture that we led together.  And it was the way that we framed the problem.  And I don’t want to make it sound like there were human variables or like I was one of them because I don’t think either of those things are totally true.  But between 2006 and 2009 when the leadership of the union and the school district became more adversarial over ProComp, it was often because they couldn’t… they didn’t cultivate that kind of culture in their discussions.  And instead what they did is they rooted themselves more deeply in the need to share power as a way to solve problems.  And you know, it’s pretty obvious that they didn’t solve their problems and they didn’t share their power.

That’s going to be a fun quote for the people in Denver.  (laughing)

Any final advice on how to best reach out to each other as teachers to get behind a system or a particular professional approach where ‘the rewards outweigh the risks?’  I mean you talked about how to get involved, of going towards your best hopes versus your worst fears [and] the specific roles you can do.. Anything else you’d like to offer to say ‘here’s how we should be organizing and thinking as teachers?’

Final thought here.  I say this a lot when I’m working with people that view unions as an inscrutable other, such as [those in] reform organizations or people training to be superintendents.

I say, ‘when was the last time that you changed your mind because someone sat across the table and demanded that you did so?’  And these ambitious and highly interested individuals pause for a minute and remind themselves that it’s a point of pride to not be coerced into changing their minds.  And I remind them that that’s the way that any right thinking teacher or union leader would think.  But for us as teachers to presume that we’re going to bend somebody’s will or policy orientation by sitting across the table and demanding that they do so is just as foolhardy.

What we really have to do is realize that we’re not going to change the graduation rates in this country, we’re not going to change the proficiency and exit rates in this country, by demanding that somebody else change their mind.  We need to be responsible not only for our minds and its change but for engaging the minds of people with whom we work, so that we’re all solving the problem together.

Brad Jupp Reflects

And you don’t learn that skill [any] better than you do than when you’re teaching.  So I think teachers are in the right position to take up the lead in the next generation of reform.  But they’re going to have to go back to their roots in the classroom, where they get 4^th graders to learn how to multiply fractions, or where they get 6^th graders to read Ezra Pound’s The Seafarer.  Those are the things that are the hard, right things that we’re best at and we should go about solving education reform matters using the same skills.

***

There are certainly a lot of compelling ideas here.  Do you agree with the points raised in this conversation?  In what ways can you imagine teachers here in the Boston Public Schools ‘taking up the lead’ in the dialogue and work of school improvement and reform?

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Happy New Year!  In the vein of starting off 2012, I’d like to volunteer one of my personal resolutions:  to try and break the automaticity of writing ‘2011’ on any writing surface, paper or otherwise, by the end of the month.  I’ll let you know how it goes.  (Riveting, isn’t it?)

Now let’s get to the good stuff.

For the last two column articles, I was happy to present interview responses from our union president Richard Stutman, as well as forty-two year teaching veteran Jerry Howland of Another Course to College.  I have another two, excellent interview transcripts forthcoming as well, one from a senior policy advisor to Secretary Duncan and one from another teacher-leader in BPS.  Both had thoughtful, provocative things to say.  Definitely stay tuned.

Dividing Lines in a Road, Dividing Lines in our Profession?

This month though, I wanted to spend some time in consideration of the Other.

What do I mean by that?

Consider the multiplicity of the typical, practically pre-folded divisions that can be named right off the bat in the realm of public education.  Younger teachers and what they want, as opposed to veteran teachers and what they want.  Traditional public schools versus charter schools.  Schools and students with good test scores on one side, and schools and students with poor test scores on the other.  Labor interests as represented by the Boston Teachers Union, versus management interests as represented by the Boston School District.

Lines drawn, sides identified and positions hardened.

And doesn’t the capitalized Other almost bring alien-like beings to mind?  It emphasizes a particularly formed set of opinions, biases and positions with completely oppositional characteristics—as if the Other is a golem formed from an entirely different river’s clay.  (That one is inspired from Michael Chabon’s excellent book, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.  Do check it out).

The Other, in other words, is the result of a kind of groupthink that’s substantiated, and then perpetuated; it’s a way to make sense of a complex environment.  We all do it.  It’s about identity, about orientation and even can stretch to moral convictions of what is right and what is wrong.  Politics, anyone?

The problem, however, is the following: while identifying Otherness can help us begin to make sense of complexity, it does very little to meaningfully resolve it—or perhaps more accurately, to build (as opposed to tear down) within that complexity.  Effective and meaningful change, one that keeps students at the center of the conversation, while also balancing the needs and interests of multiple constituencies, has to lie in the vast area between the drawn lines of Otherness.

So what can we do about it?

It’s no secret that I’m a believer in collaboration, as both an operational tone and strategy, to effectively improve our work in our classrooms and schools—and beyond that, in our school district and the public education system at large.

The Roads We Travel

I also know, like you certainly do, that it’s a lot harder than it sounds.  It’s not simply a matter of scheduling an extended group hug, afterall (although I think that would be something else to witness.  Everyone put your arms around the person next to you and smile!  Squeeze gently!  Do it again!).  And just consider the complications and mistrust that always swirl around education policy concerns, in particular the translation of education policy to its often-unsteady manifestation on the ‘shores of our classrooms.’

I do want to suggest, however, that positive momentum builds off of small, core successes and exemplars.  And that if we as teaching professionals want a place at the decision-making tables, our union itself needs to reflect collaborative, barrier-reducing approaches as central to the professional organization.  There are potent opportunities for our union to make collaboration around teaching and learning a true hallmark of our work together—collaboration that involves, and even depends on, participation from and partnership between all teachers, new and veteran.

BPS teacher Robert Tobio of the Mary Lyon pilot school and Bill Madden-Fuoco of the Urban Science Academy suggested the same in their Diary of a New Teacher articles from the AFT Advocate earlier this year.  Reflecting on his initial mistrust of the union, Robert concluded with the following:

…We have a responsibility to our students. I still believe education is the single most important variable in many kids’ lives. But now I believe in being part of the union—union, not just in name but also in action. We need to support each other and to push each other. We don’t need public outcry or district evaluations to improve. We need to share our successes with our colleagues and to improve our weaknesses by learning from colleagues. Every teacher has something to offer and every teacher can improve. We need to continue to improve, as a strong union of professionals.

We are part of a union, we benefit from our fellow union members, and we need to ask if they are benefiting from us.

Compelling, isn’t it?  What opportunities and structures can our union create to facilitate this type of sharing and learning within our schools, and between them, across the city?

I, for example, would love to hear how Bill is doing with vocabulary instruction improvements that he referred to in his own article, and his newly adopted ‘Flagged for Success’ experimentation related to student data and strategic intervention.

In language, in structure and deed, let’s do something to address one of the core question of this Teaching Pulse forum:

How can we build membership interest, involvement and investment in the Boston Teachers Union as an organization focused on teaching and learning in the classroom?

As Bill similarly ended his own written reflections, Let’s talk about that.

***

As always, please consider visiting the online forum at www.theteachingpulse.org to offer your reactions, thoughts and suggestions.  All the best and here’s to a great beginning of 2011…, er, 2012.

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Happy December, everyone!  I don’t know about you, but there’s always something disconcerting about how dark it gets by late afternoon this time of year.  Full darkness by 5PM?  It’s enough to make you want to stay under the covers for a month or two straight.

But we don’t.  And this month’s first teacher interviewee Jerry Howland definitely doesn’t.  A teacher and school leader for the past forty-two years, including years at the McCormack Middle School, the former Jamaica Plain High School and currently, the pilot school ACC (Another Course to College), Jerry has been honored as the 1994 state teacher of the year and was one of four finalists for the national teacher of the year award.

Teacher Jerry Howland, Another Course to College

But what comes out in this interview, even beyond these highest of honors, is his continued sense of mission, humility and a palpable belief that what makes the day-to-day work most worthwhile, is the opportunity to engage and challenge his students day in and day out.  And if his students and colleagues are any indication, he’s certainly been making the most.

***

First of all, thanks for taking the time to meet and talk a little bit about yourself as a teacher.  You were honored as the state teacher of the year in 1994, and I believe you were one of the four finalists for national teacher of the year?

I was one of four finalists, but I lost the swimsuit competition…

I’m sure it was a close call… (laughing)

(Jerry laughs)

You also mentioned that you are now in your 42^nd year as a teacher—an incredible achievement.  And I’m sure there are many, many other achievements and accomplishments that others, like [fellow ACC teacher] Chris Mee, would be quick to mention as well.

Chris credits me…but have you seen him?  [It’s] amazing what he does with the 9^th grade mind.

One of the key themes of The Teaching Pulse is an attempt to make conversations around best teaching practices a central focus of our professional organizations.  And one way I’m hoping to do that is by talking to some of the best teachers in the district and sharing those conversations with other teachers across the city.  I hope that these questions help guide us into a great conversation.

How would you describe yourself as a teacher? Can you give me a picture of how you approach your work as a teacher in BPS?

Chronologically, I started out as a math teacher and I was teaching at the McCormack Middle School in Columbia Point through the 1970s.  I went to Harvard, did a masters in the Education program, and then I went to Jamaica Plain High School as a housemaster (still teaching, but also doing discipline), and then I became a department head of math, science, health and physical education.

I was still primarily teaching math until the mid 80s when they asked me to teach a law class.  In fact, the person who was teaching that class got sick and I took over for the year and started teaching the law program.  And by the time English High School moved in, I stayed and I switched from teaching four math and one law [class], to teaching four law and one math [section], just the calculus class.  The law [course] became a very popular class.  And it’s a great course to teach because teenagers have a genuine interest in the law and [to know] what’s fair and what’s right.

Jamaica Plain High School History Faculty, 1982

I began doing mock trials after a few years.  And the excitement [they] generated because of the competition and drama was a clever way to engage kids without them [immediately] realizing that they were doing reading, writing, speaking and critical thinking.  And then [there was the opportunity] to take kids beyond that for those who wanted to do more.  We have [for instance] extracurricular interscholastic competitions with Harvard Law School and Suffolk Law School.

In the summer, I do an internship program called the Judicial Youth Corp.  It’s with the Supreme Judicial Court in Massachusetts and that’s where we get usually about twenty kids [participating] from the city.  They work four days a week in the courts and I get them on the fifth day.  It’s an ideal way to teach—they’re in the real world, and then they come to me and I can [match] the theory with the practice.  And we end up at the end of the summer doing a major mock trial in a real federal court.

What would you say is your favorite part of teaching now?  What sustains you from day-to-day?

It’s the same… people ask me a lot of kids [if] kids are different today.  And I don’t see that.  I see the kids as almost exactly the same as they were forty years ago.

What got me engaged in Boston my first year was my assignment to the McCormack Middle School.  What they did then [during the desegregation of the city schools], if you were a first year teacher, they would assign you to an all black school and as you got seniority, they could transfer to the white schools.  So in the black schools, there was a turnover and they kept on getting brand new teachers.  That’s how I ended up there.

But you remained there.

I remained there.  And when I went for the interview, the principal told me ‘you don’t want to work here’.  [The Columbia Point] neighborhood and the housing project there had the 3^rd highest crime rate of any neighborhood in the country.  And actually at that time, I wasn’t planning on being a teacher.  I was just going to go teach during the day to go to law school at night.  I thought teaching would be a part time job, and no problem (laughing) … little did I know.

But when I taught there, I found the kids were very different from what he had described.  Kids had a lot more potential that they weren’t achieving.  I didn’t help them the first several years; it took me several years to make any kind of in-roads.  But I really enjoyed it.  And I decided to finish law school anyway but to stay in teaching.  So I ended up staying in teaching.

I took the bar exam.  And said just in case… in case I no longer enjoyed it, I could find something else to do.

That still hasn’t happened yet.

If I had started teaching in Newton North high school, I’d probably be a lawyer right now, because what attracted me to teaching was the social justice aspect.  And for me, I grew up in the city of Boston.  I grew up in a housing project right up the hill here, [on] Fidelis Way.  And it wasn’t until I was 21 years old and I was at the McCormack Middle School that I realized and understood what it meant that Boston was a dual school system.  And it was happening right before my eyes.

That was the first that I saw I was doing something worthwhile.  [It] was the first time that there was something that I thought was important.

[The] kids say “I want to be like you because you know everything.” So I say, “No, no, no… I think I know everything. There’s an important distinction”

A lot of folks I’ve talked to, including myself, are hungry to learn from master teachers.  Is there a specific “Jerry Howland” approach or a transferable practice that you can share with us?

The most basic thing is [to actively utilize] trial and error.  The first time you go through [a course] I may say ‘that worked, that was great so let’s save it in the program/curriculum for next time’ or ‘that didn’t, so I’ll either change it or [remove] it from the curriculum.’

It’s like you continually refine and you’re responsive to what’s working or not working.

[Another] thing that I thought was very effective was having the kids fill out evaluations at the end of each term.  And one of the best things about kids is that they’re painfully honest. (laughing)

How do your students describe you?  How do they describe Mr. Howland?

That’s interesting.  One that I get a big kick out of, because I’ve heard it a lot this year already, is that kids say “I want to be like you because you know everything.”  So I say, “No, no, no… I think I know everything.  There’s an important distinction”  (laughing).  That’s just an advantage of being around a long time.

Is there one particular moment in your many years of teaching that stand out and encapsulate who you are or who you strive to be as an educator?

Anytime you see a student doing and being successful at something that they didn’t think they could be successful at.  The most recent was a girl we had last year and that I had in the law class, who at the beginning was a typical high school public speaker but by the time she finished, she was so impressive.
When mock trials are over [for my law classes], I have the students face each other and I tell them to pick someone and tell them something they did well and why.  And so the kids usually put out everything that I was going to say and I only need to add, if anything, a few things.

My favorite thing to do though is to call the parent when something [really special] happens.  I call and I say hi, this is Mr. Howland [and] I have your son in my law class.”   You can hear the person suck and hold their breath; you can audibly hear it.  “I just want to let you know that your son did the closing argument in the trial today and did fantastic”, and then give details about why it was great.  And then you can hear them exhale in relief.  Because usually, no parent gets a phone call with good news.

So I love making those phone calls.  And I’m particularly eager to make them for those kids who were unusually successful where they hadn’t been successful before.

What are your thoughts on the BTU as a professional organization?  What role do you feel it’s played to support you as a teacher or should it play to support teachers like yourself or other teachers?   Who should we as teachers look to in order to sustain ourselves?

There’s definitely a need for the Boston Teachers Union.  Whether you agree or disagree with what they do, even if you don’t study history, you know there’s a definite need for someone to bargain on the behalf of the teachers.  Now you may disagree with some of the things that they prioritize, but I think the union has evolved over the years since 1970.  They’ve walked that line between doing both… what’s best for the students and best for the teachers.  They are primarily working on behalf of the teachers.  But I think they’ve done some things over the years that have benefitted both.

Economically, any time the economy turns bad, people start turning against each other and competing for fewer resources.  So that’s part of the issue now.  And also when you negotiate, it’s one of those things where when it becomes public, [a position] may sound absurd because you don’t start with what you want, both sides are thinking they are going to come to the middle.    It’s the nature of negotiations.

But there’s definitely a need for the union to protect the rights of teachers and the issues that are going on now with merit pay and those things.   I would be in favor of merit pay if there was a system to determine it.  But there isn’t.  They can’t design one.  It’s not possible.  It would create a lot more problems than it would solve.  Because they can’t give people enough money to make it a viable incentive and to get you to do something that you weren’t going to do anyway. And on top of that, [the exceptional] teachers do [all the extras] anyway.  So it’s not going to provide incentive, [but actually] a lot of bad feelings.  It’s going to create a tension and dynamic that’s not going to be productive.

And it’s all over a couple of thousand dollars. And then there’s the means for doing it.  With standardized test scores, there a very few standardized tests that relate directly to what someone is [teaching] in the classroom.  Take the 10^th grade math [MCAS scores] for instance.  Who’s responsible for that?  The teachers [who have taught the students] leading up to [that assessment], or the teacher that year?

When I was a headmaster here [at ACC], I told the English teachers here:  Teach a college level curriculum and don’t teach to the MCAS.  If you’re teaching a college prep curriculum, then the MCAS will take care of itself—you don’t need to worry about that.  And it’s not something we want to be judged by anyway.. it’s a low level test and if you want to teach the high level college level analytical writing skills, work on those.

I’d love to hear your perspective in your roles as a teacher and also as a principal/school leader.  What have you learned from those dual experiences?  What implications have your experiences had in shaping what you think it takes to have a collaborative school environment?  Are there any lessons that you think could be extended district-wide?

My philosophy as an administrator was to hire good people, and then to give them complete freedom to design and teach the curriculum, even [if their approach] was different from [my own personal way] to teach it.  We had the flexibility to do this because we are a pilot school.

The reason I did that was [in consideration] of the schools I worked at as a teacher.  The people I worked for at English High and JP High gave me complete freedom.  They let me do whatever I wanted and because they did that, it was my program.  So I did more than I would have [than] if I was [just] following someone else’s directions.  So I put so much more into it.  And I wanted to create the same opportunity here.

Are there any final words you’d like to end with?

I’d say in general, the teachers today are so much better than the teachers through the 70s and 80s; so much better.  [They’re] much more dedicated, more talented… and a big part of that has to do with the desegregation of BPS.

When I started teaching, people were in either all white schools or all black schools.  And when they were started to be desegregated, [white teachers] started getting kids of color, and a lot of them were unhappy about it.  It affected their teaching as they didn’t have expectations for those kids.  [It was] pretty ugly through the 70s and 80s.  Because of low expectations for them, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Some pretty ugly things were going on.

But those people are gone now.  And the people who are coming in?  We’re getting a lot of really, really talented people.

And maybe the question is how to get those teachers to remain and continue to have opportunities to grow.  But one thing that I’ve always felt is that I’ve always disliked that divide between newer teachers and those who are veteran teachers.   If there’s anyway to better connect the two groups, I hope we do it.  Hopefully this is a venue that helps to do that—to say we’re all teachers in the Boston Public Schools and this is what we’re here for.

I hope this also bridges the gap because people don’t get the chance to see what other teachers are doing.  You know how your day goes (laughing).

***

Yes, I absolutely do.  Thanks again, Jerry, for taking the time to do this interview.

For comments and conversation around any issues that Jerry raises, please visit the online forum at www.theteachingpulse.org.  And if anyone has one of those indoor sunlamps I can borrow in the meanwhile, give me a call?

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I’m happy to present the first of an ongoing series of interviews with selected education and civic leaders in Boston.  (Karen, I echo your interest from the September column in hearing from our district and organizational leadership).  With this column, I think we’re off to a great start.  Thanks, Richard, for responding so readily to the interview request this month.

What’s the ultimate goal with these leadership interviews?

On one hand, it’s an opportunity for the larger membership to learn more about key individuals’ opinions and stances around the educational policies and issues that are currently shaping the Boston Public Schools.  And by learning more about these opinions, we as teachers in BPS can share our own thoughts and pose our own questions through ongoing, online discussion.

Perhaps more importantly though, once the conversation gets going, the hope is for district, union and other civic leaders to be responsive to these conversations, opinions and the ‘pulse’ of what we teachers are saying in our classrooms across the city.  They are our leaders, after all, and the responsibility falls on all of us to make sure they represent us well.

Let’s give it a go.

In this interview which took place on Friday October 14^th, I asked a series of questions that focused on three main areas:  1) the current climate in public education from the perspective of our union president, 2) ways to encourage more participation and engagement from teachers in the BTU and 3) thoughts on what it would take to foster a more collaborative relationship between the teachers union and the school district.

How would you describe the general climate in public education and the Boston Public Schools from your perspective as the president of the Boston Teachers Union?

I would say that the current climate is not great, and I think what precipitated that are a couple of things, including RTT (Race to the Top), the new Ed reform law, the shrinkage of the economy and the consolidation of school buildings… and the end result of all that is they become contributing factors.  The fact that we don’t have a [currently-negotiated] contract is part of this.  Regardless of what side people go to, the fact that we don’t have a contract is a hindrance, [even beyond] the facts that there is turmoil over the student assignment plan, the school closing issue, [and] the late busses [issue].  I think these are [all] symptomatic…they don’t come out of thin air.  It’s not a climate that’s conducive to taking a step back and trying to figure out which is real and which is not.

It sounds almost as if the climate is being dictated by the economic environment as much as specific policies that are being put into place.

I think that’s the overwhelming reason behind it..  I think that’s what much of the theory is being driven by in education circles in terms of what works and what doesn’t work.  [There’s] no doubt in my mind that that’s instrumental.

How would you describe the overall ‘health’ of the BTU and the engagement of the membership?

Well, every major union in the country is having what I would say are transition problems.    There’s a huge turnover in the work force.  So I don’t think that’s unique to Boston.  I think society has changed and teacher unions have changed.

What do you think we’re transitioning from and what do you think we’re transitioning to as the BTU or for unions in general?  Because I look at studies sometimes, I look at schools I’m in, I look at my own school experience and sometimes I wonder if, as you were saying, the nature of the teaching profession has changed where there isn’t an expectation that teachers stay as teachers for the length of their careers.  Does the union need to respond to that shift?

I actually think that some of this is going to go backwards.  We are going to undo some of this as things destabilize economically.  There is nothing inherently wrong with staying in the career a little longer than anticipated.  When I started teaching in 1972, I was positive I would do it for five years.  Absolutely positive.  I was going to be a mathematician.  That was my field.  And it turned out I liked teaching.  I enjoyed it and I felt I was accomplishing something.  So I stayed in it.  But I think what has changed [is that] there is more of a mobility now.  People are emboldened to do new things, try new things and can have a much wider experience than we ever did. Some of that is borne, too, by economic necessity.

I do think that when the economy improves, we’re going to bring back some more normalcy.  I also think that it’ll never be the way it was because of increased mobility.

Do you feel that  the BTU is doing a good job engaging the membership right now?

Are we trying to engage people, yes.  Have we been successful, certainly not totally.  It’s hard in a way to catch a moving target with five hundred to six hundred new hires every year; it’s very difficult.  Similarly, the school department has difficulty with catching up and hitting [this] moving target.

You’re not going to find an industry in the world, a professional industry, that has a turnover of 10% a year [like we have in public education].  You’re not going to find that with a law practice, a medical practice or an accounting firm.  10% [of employee turnover] year in and year out is very difficult to handle and it’s to the detriment of the schools.

So do you think the lack of engagement of teachers in their own professional organization is mostly because of the fact that they’re highly mobile and they haven’t had the chance to settle and have their own families?  Because I also know a number of folks whose affect is what I’d described as frustrated.  They’re frustrated about not knowing who to go to, or who to talk to.  [There’s the feeling that] the BTU [leadership] is not listening to me or asking for my opinions and thoughts about things, or I can’t go and speak here because I feel intimidated. 

What are the things that you as a president can do to reach and out and quell those fears?  Because we want to welcome people, right?

Well I don’t know if there’s a fear [or not].  I think our membership meetings are reasonably welcoming.   There’s not a quick gavel [and] we try to plan different activities that interest a variety of people.  I won’t say we do a great job of that.  I don’t think we’ve ever done a great job of that.   And from my conversations with other union leaders from around the country, everyone is grappling with the same issue.

I think one of the main issues is that people don’t have a lot of time. At the same time, the union hasn’t reached out.  [It] hasn’t kept up with the times and I think we’re playing a lot of catch up.

So what’s the strategy to do that here in Boston?

Well in Boston, we’ve done a number of things, from the social to the political.  We have a lot of younger leaders that we have tried to get involved in the BTU and we’ve tried to expand the scope [or our organizational goals] so we are more embracing.  And the difficulty is in maintaining that and growing that.  I mean I was in a meeting the other day of labor leaders and I was the youngest person there and I realized that that body, as bad as the BTU might be as far as reflecting all age groups, that body was a heck of a lot worse.  Trust me [laughing], it’s a common experience.  Not a comforting one.

We have tried with the different committees [such as] the COPE committee and the Executive Board committee.  I don’t take any false credit for this.  It’s been an uphill struggle, and we are still working on it.

If there were a way to get more people to participate, it would make us a stronger union.

The Teaching Pulse is predicated on the idea that collaboration is something that’s complex but a very possible way of going about our work in public education.  And I don’t pretend to think that it’s easy or efforts haven’t been made, but right now from my perspective and from others, the rhetoric and conversation often comes across as pretty defensive or strident.  “The superintendent is not telling the truth about this issue”, or “the superintendent fails to do such and such,” in many ways representing the other side in a negative way. 

So how would you describe the current relationship between the school district, the school committee and the teachers union?  What accounts for that?  What do you do in your role as BTU president to actively shape or dictate that relationship?

Well, we’ve had countless private conversations with the superintendent, that pretty much everything she writes that has anything to do with the BTU contract should not be written.  And vice versa—I would not rather write public statements about the ongoing negotiations..  And I suggested to her that it serves no good purpose to publically quarrel.  She has resisted that… She shouldn’t take private matters public.

I don’t think the classroom is affected directly by the day-to-day tensions.  I think people do the best job they can and if they don’t, they shouldn’t be teaching.  I don’t think there’s a dispute on that.

Now at the same time, the teachers that I represent, and I believe this to a person, they want as much as we can get for them while protecting their best interests and making sure the schools are as good as they can be.  They don’t want one or the other, they want everything.  They recognize that to do that, there has to be some… fighting.  I mean, if that weren’t the case, it would upset the whole dynamic of labor management.   That’s the way it works.

Now, no one enjoys arguing.  We don’t want to argue, we want to accomplish things.  But the things we want to accomplish [can’t be done] until we resolve [issues like contractual ones].

Would you say that the relationship between the BTU and the school district in particular is one that can’t be fixed?

I don’t think it’s impossible.  I don’t even think it’s impractical.  I just think we just go through some rough spells.  There is a schism on certain things but there’s not a schism on what’s best for the schools.

To say we don’t an opinion [about what’s best for our schools] is insulting.  We’re not going to cede total control to the district over educational decisions.  I think it’s absurd not to rely on your best source of information for good ideas.  I just think it’s totally absurd.

From what you’re saying, it’s a really important time for teachers to get involved—to get involved in the union, to speak to the district leaders, to speak for the best interest of teachers and the kids.  What’s the action plan and vision for moving forward?

To some extent, we have to continue what we’re doing and do it smarter.  I’m not going to give up trying to get more of a place at the table with the superintendent and to try and get more involved in the district work.  And I think that’s an essential.  I think if the economic and political climate were better, I think we could sway the district to be a little more embracing.

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Much food for thought, for certain.  As usual, please consider visiting the online forum at www.theteachingpulse.org to continue this conversation and weigh in from your perspective.  Have a great month and see you online!

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Welcome back!

I hope you will forgive the one liner openings.  Sometimes, simplicity is best.  And what better way to get the attention of an audience of busy educators than putting the guiding sentiment right at the beginning?  Welcoming is, after all, what we teachers do at our best—we welcome a diverse mix of learners in our classrooms, we welcome opportunities to professionally collaborate and grow, and we welcome conversations that get at the heart of the matter.  But how do others see us?  And how does that affect how we see ourselves in our daily work in our classrooms across the city?

So in that vein, I thought we could spend some time in this October column reflecting upon and responding to perceptions of teachers and the teaching profession.

But first, a few shout outs.  Thank you to the teachers who responded to the first September column by visiting the online forum over the past few weeks, posting comments and making suggestions.  Kati from Charlestown, Karen from Brighton, Ted from the Edwards, Jenn from the Eliot, Neema from the Dever-McCormack and Charlie from the Peer Assistance program.  You all have gotten us off to a great start.  Writing publically is a risk and establishing a public voice, doubly so.   But that risk also represents opportunity, right?  And the upcoming content is going to reflect your thoughts and interests.  For everyone else, if you haven’t had the chance to read those comments and ideas, or to post your own, it’s not too late.  Take a look and on the online forum, you’ll see where you can respond, reply or start your own thread.  Spread the word and let’s get the conversation going.

We’ve all heard the maxim before:  perception, for better or for worse, can easily become reality.  And when Wikipedia (c’mon, you know you use it too) broadens the definition of reality to ‘include everything that has existed, exists, or will exist, not just in the mind, [but also] including what is only in the mind,’ it’s easy to get completely untethered.  What is the current perception of the public school teacher in the Boston Public Schools and of the larger teaching profession?  Are some perceptions ‘realer’ than others?  And is it possible to arrive at some kind of common understanding of what the reality is?

It does certainly seem that public opinion has been steadily shifting about the nation’s teachers and perhaps in a more targeted way, those who are represented by teachers unions.  And the range of those opinions is quite large.  One end of the spectrum is occupied by the insulting sentiment that completely disrespects teachers and the teaching profession:  those who can do, those who can’t teach.  And on the other end is the undifferentiated starry-eyed sentiment that teachers and the teaching profession can do no wrong and need nothing more than to be left alone and paid a whole lot more.  (Well, that latter part would be nice).  And I would think that the vast majority of thoughts lie somewhere in between.

Over the past months, I’ve come across a number of articles that attempt to get at what seems to be the central tension regarding the perception of teachers today:  if both ‘sides’ agree about the central importance of good teachers as a determining factor connected to student outcomes, what’s the best way to get as many good ones in front of our nation’s kids as possible?  You can quickly see the divergent ways that the conversation can unfold.  One might easily focus on getting rid of bad teachers and dismantling the teachers unions that seem to protect them, or conversely, prioritize the importance of conferring more professional discretion and respect for teachers as their own decision-makers.

There are three particular articles that I’ve read over the past few months that examine the shifting perception of teachers through different lenses.  All offer their own insight, while similarly (or at least obliquely) raising the importance of teachers individually and collectively raising their voices to shape the conversation.  I’ll also pose a discussion question for each ‘lens’ for our consideration as the BTU membership.

Lens #1:  The Perception of Teaching through the Lens of Popular Culture

In the June 2011 issue of Esquire magazine, Stephen Marche wrote a short essay entitled Harry Potter and the Hatred of Teachers in which he describes the increasingly public skepticism of teachers and teachers unions as the result of a steady transformation of teachers as cultural symbols of the imagination.  As you read the excerpt, consider:  Are teachers hampered by expectations of what an individual teacher is supposed to be, for better or for worse, in our collective, cultural memory?

Teachers have become weird symbols in our public imagination, repositories of our most extreme hopes and fears… What J. K. Rowling figured out is that we all suspect that our teachers lead magnificent secret lives, whether for good or for evil. Teachers inhabit the space between childhood and adulthood, between family and the wider world, and as such seem impossibly grander and more dangerous than they really are. Therefore the professors at Hogwarts are werewolves, frauds, assassins, secret agents, and saviors of the world.

The childish view of teachers, the mingled adoration and loathing and imagining of secret lives, did not begin with Harry Potter, of course. The sixties produced Mary Poppins (teacher as magical mommy replacement) and To Sir, with Love (teacher as civil-rights hero) and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (teacher as liberated goddess)… But what began as farce fifty years ago has culminated as tragedy. The attack on teachers’ unions is partly a panicky response to massive budget deficits, but it also derives from sheer exhaustion. America has been trying to fix its schools since Mary Poppins first danced on London rooftops. We’ve tried every flavor of politics as a solution — socialism, the free market, and everything in between. We can’t blame the students. We won’t blame ourselves. So who’s left to blame?

Lens #2: The Perception of Teaching through the Lens of Education History

Seattle Times education reporter Linda Shaw recently wrote a column that can best be summarized by her article’s tagline: Teaching is one of the most criticized jobs in America. What’s up with that?  As you read this excerpt, consider:  How much credence do you give to the historical growth of teaching as a ‘women’s field’ and the idea that teaching lacks ‘many features of a true profession?’

The one-room schoolhouse morphed into school districts, with professional administrators (mostly men) in charge. Women, fed up with being paid less than the few male teachers, organized unions, which fought for benefits such as the now-pilloried single-salary schedule, which bases pay on experience and education. All this played out over decades. In Washington state, for example, the teachers union didn’t have the statutory right to bargain until 1965.

Teaching became a job with benefits and a pension. Not a path to riches, but a career with a lot of security — and summers off. Yet even after all that, a couple of things remain the same:

Teaching largely remains a women’s field, even though women have many more career choices. More than three-quarters of the 3.4 million public- school teachers in America are women.

And it still lacks many features of a true profession. There is no bar-like exam. No highly competitive admission to most education schools.  As women started flooding into other fields, it’s clear that teaching stopped attracting as many top-scoring college graduates, judging by SAT scores — although there’s evidence that may be changing.

And many of us still think just about anybody with a college degree can teach.

“To the average person . . . it’s hard to really pin down what the core skill is and how it’s hard to acquire,” says Michael Katz, a historian at the University of Pennsylvania.

“We think it’s easier than it actually is,” says Barnett Barry, head of the Center for Teaching Quality, an organization devoted to getting teachers’ voices heard.

Efforts to raise the entrance requirements also run up against the need to fill classrooms.

Come August each year, districts aren’t very picky about who they hire for any remaining open positions, says Jeanne Harmon, executive director of Washington state’s Center for Strengthening the Teaching Profession. Rather than send administrators who’ve previously worked as teachers to do those jobs — or find some other creative solution, she says districts hire people who, ideally, they’d rather not. “We’re perfectly happy to settle for OK. That’s a societal decision we’ve made.”

Lens #3:  The Perception of Teaching through the Lens of Politics

In the March 20, 2011 edition of New York Magazine, Andrew Rice wrote an article entitled Miss Grundy Was Fired Today in which he explored the impact of the polarizing figure Michelle Rhee and the shift of political dialogue of teacher deified to teacher demonized.  Consider:  Do either Democratic and Republican leaders view teachers and the teaching profession in accurate terms?  Is it to our detriment, or an opportunity, to be viewed as the ‘root cause as well as the solution to, all of the American School System’s problems?’

The traditional, patronizing view of teachers, that they are to be treated like saints and paid as if they’d taken a vow of poverty, has lately gone through a schizophrenic inversion. Open the newspaper most any day and you’ll read about “bad teachers” who are holding children back and, through their unions, conspiring to remain well compensated. In a remarkably short time, this view has become popular across partisan lines. Each political party filters it through its own core beliefs: Republicans fixate on the stresses that greedy unions are placing on budgets through their pay, pensions, and benefits; Democrats argue that putting better teachers in troubled schools is a matter of social justice. But they are using much the same language—and rallying around a radical change in how this country thinks about public education.

****

Four years ago, few people outside the pedantic confines of education policy had ever heard of Rhee. When I asked the professor and historian Diane Ravitch to explain her brash emergence, she replied, “She’s in sync with the narrative of our time.” Ravitch does not mean that as a compliment. A former Education Department official under the first George Bush who has come to consider the reform movement misguided, she recently wrote a book, The Death and Life of the Great American School System, that offers an astringent critique of the proposition—voiced most zealously by Rhee—that teachers are the root cause of, and solution to, all of the system’s problems. Until fairly recently, everyone took it for granted that parents, educators, and communities shared the responsibility for schooling children, and presumed that outcomes were the product of a complex web of circumstances. Now the calculus has been narrowed to a single variable, the instructors, who are offered all the credit and shoulder all the blame.

Rhee, naturally, says that she loves good teachers—it’s just their unions she wants to curtail. Skeptics like Ravitch say you can’t separate the individual from the collective, and question the motives behind the movement. “What I don’t understand is why Obama and Duncan have signed on to what I think is a very right-wing strategy,” Ravitch says. “Because I know where these ideas come from. I was there when they were hatched.”

Perhaps in the end, the French-Cuban author Anais Nin got it right when she wrote  the following: we don’t see things as they are; we see things as we are.  And isn’t the Boston Public School district a microcosm of all of these collective conversations and viewpoints?   Perhaps more centrally, it’s time to ask ourselves the individual and collective question:  how do we see ourselves as teachers in the Boston Public Schools?  Because if we don’t take the time to answer that question, it’s all the more likely that others will answer it for us.  Whether we like it or not.

Similar to last month’s column, please consider visiting www.theteachingpulse.org to continue this conversation and broaden it to represent our various experiences as teachers in the Boston Public Schools.  Feel free to respond to any of the particular ‘lenses’ I introduced earlier or that central question posed in the paragraph above.

For the November column, as requested, I will reach out to a number of BTU and BPS leaders to get their perspective on the most pressing issues and opportunities now present in the Boston Public Schools.  Thematically, I will plan to center the informal interviews on the topic of labor-management collaboration.  If you have specific questions or other topics that you’d like to ask BTU/BPS leadership, please get your suggestions to me by Friday October 14, 2011 at theteachingpulse@gmail.com or through the website’s ‘Comment’ tab.

All the best and looking forward to seeing you online!

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We have all been there.

For many of us, we have been there multiple times and for others, you are now in your formative, first whirlwind of an experience.  And the best among us might say that the feeling never changes—that heady mix of anticipation, anxiety and straight hope wrapped into the First Days of School with your new students in your new classes.  For what do the first days of school represent, minus the obligatory announcements, paperwork and orientation, if not Possibility with a capital ‘P?’  These days are the opportunity to lay the groundwork resulting from that intensive summer of individual and collaborative planning, collective years of experience and the enthusiasm that comes from the operating belief that this space, this classroom and school of yours, can and will be someplace special.  A place where a difference will be made.

Remember that feeling.  Because it is the same one that I hope is reflected in the inauguration of this column you are reading at this moment.

Welcome to The Teaching Pulse.  This column is about increasing the capacity in the Boston Public Schools and the Boston Teachers Union for teacher collaboration and professional growth through a focus on teacher leadership, education policy and classroom practice.  Its core premise is a simple one:  if we collectively organize as professional educators, and work to meaningfully involve veteran and younger teachers in school improvement efforts, our students will benefit.  I do not believe that we teachers have all of the solutions but I firmly believe that we have some of them.  The Teaching Pulse is an opportunity to collectively educate ourselves and build a movement towards making these solutions happen in the shifting landscape of educational reform, change in our schools, and in our city.

In short, this column is intended to be a mechanism to invite and involve, as well as to develop and share responsibility, towards owning the conversation regarding education reform and continued improvement of our classrooms and schools.  It is a space for us to connect with each other and with the larger community invested in public education.

Here are the guiding questions that will drive the content and conversation in this column:

• How can teachers in the Boston Public Schools model, facilitate and practice a collaborative relationship between labor and management that is focused on students, given the current context and climate of fiscal tightening, accountability and national ‘anti-teacher’ rhetoric?
• How can we build membership interest, involvement and investment in the Boston Teachers Union as an organization invested and focused on teaching and learning in the classroom?
• What local, statewide and national policy initiatives should we teachers be aware of and what are practical ways and avenues to influence and implement those policies?

Ambitious.  But totally reasonable if the conversations I have had over the years with a number of hard-working, inspired and inspiring teachers (and yes, a number of administrator and district leaders, too) is any indication.  Some who are driving education policy in many ways have co-opted the word “reform”.  But reform and change do not have to be dirty words, particularly if teachers, teacher leaders, concerned parents, and our representative organizations are involved and  providing leadership to make them happen.

Who am I and why am I starting this column?  I currently work as a teacher on assignment in the Peer Assistance program, a joint partnership between the Boston school district and the Boston Teachers Union to provide collegial, confidential and non-evaluative support for permanent teachers across the city.  I have seen a lot of schools and a lot of classrooms in the city.  I have always worked really hard at being a good teacher and over the last few years in particular, I have benefited immeasurably from opportunities to collaborate and connect with others in BPS and beyond.  That’s exactly what I hope comes out of this column—an enlarged capacity within the BTU and BPS for teacher development, education, conversation and growth.  All of these are processes and outcomes that stem from a fundamental belief that we are professionals.  I believe in the promise and work of public education, I believe in the importance of a strong and active teachers union and I believe that now, especially now, it is important that all of us enter the conversation and make it our own.

What is next and what can you do?  As a new column, just as in preparation for a new class, I am thrilled by the possibilities.  But most importantly, beyond the core questions presented earlier, I believe it is important that the structure should respond to what the BTU membership would find most useful and compelling.  Visit the Teaching Pulse website at www.theteachingpulse.org where I will post the ideas that I currently have in mind.  Write a comment or send me an email and let everyone know what you think.  And based on what I hear and the conversations we have, we will go from there.  The website and this column are for all of us.