Teaching is an Art (not a Science), Teamwork and Guided Practice are the Keys

In the vast literature in the field of personal and organizational change, Rule # 1,

* Externally imposed change is perceived as punishment (“Your experience is irrelevant, your doing it wrong”), and Rule # 2,

Participation reduces resistance. (“Let’s work together to improve outcomes”)

A principal friend invited me to sit in on a teacher-initiated meeting in her school, teachers of Algebra 1 and the predecessor course. The teachers had scored the Algebra 1 Regents Exam, created an error matrix, the most common incorrect answers and were discussing changes to their lesson plans, why did students select the “wrong” answers and how can they improve their lessons.

Usually referred to as “ownership of practice,” teacher driven, not Danielson driven instruction

Next school year all K-8 schools are mandated to use a phonics reading curriculum, most choose the Harcourt Brace curriculum, a major shift for teachers, the governor followed up, districts across the state will be required to use phonics-based curriculum. The Science of Reading gang won the battle!  Students may be the losers.

Weren’t we taught to differentiate instruction, to use the instructional “tool” that suits the needs of the student?. 

Teachers are not happy, professional development is largely absent, new materials slow to arrive, and, the cost: probably tens of millions, btw, is anyone checking whether “higher ups” purchased Harcourt Brace stock before the announcement, no one would do that …

Once again, the key to improving outcomes is instruction: how do we create collaborative schools, teachers sharing what works, schools sharing with other schools, school cultures willing to explore, to adapt and adopt.

Sprinkled across the city are shining stars, truly effective schools, glittering stars that are too few and the potentates in the eyries of power seem determined to be extinguish them.

Innovative school leaders are viewed as troublemakers, not team players. One of those troublemaker principals invited me into his school, an Afro-American student body, and suggested a few teachers, who welcomed me into their classrooms.  An English classroom, the kids were reading Hamlet and Freud, in an AP European History class written on the board, “God is Dead,” asked students reactions, others to comment on the reactions, and continue by reading a passage from Nietzsche, the topic of the week, sadly in most schools leaders, with no choice but to swallow the remedy of the moment.