“Where are the Snows of Yesteryear,”

In my union rep days I visited a couple of schools a day “showing the flag,” some principals welcomed me, a few thought I was a troublemaker, in a way, they were correct.

In the winter I kept my army field jacket in my car in case I had to walk to the school, I was standing in the lobby of ER Murrow HS, the principal, Saul Bruckner sidled up to me and asked, looking at my field jacket, “Where’s the Revolution? and I responded, “All around you,” Saul quipped, “I hope so …”

Sam Storch was the school union rep and the Astronomy teacher, the school had a planetarium, Sam was an incredible teacher.

(Are shrimp swimming in the oceans of the Jovian moon Europa?)

Saul and Sam were a team.

How many schools have planetariums and green houses?

Anything you wanted to try, Bruckner was enthusiastic, “Just keep me in the loop”

The days of Saul Bruckner principals are long gone, btw, Saul taught a class every day.
It’s not the principal, it’s a system in which eeries from the towers of Tweed spin out the mantra of the day. 

Science of Reading and elementary school math and algebra pre-packaged curriculum, teachers are working on the assembly line of instruction.

High Quality Instructional Models (HQIM) is new to me, makes sense, the goal of the curriculum should be to raise the bar.

No one likes rigidly scripted curriculum. a school system that fails to understand the decisions impacting kids should be made by those closest to the kids simply does not comprehend the teaching-learning nexus.

Kids differ, neighborhoods differ, “one size fits all fits no one,” the pathway to getting to learning, the goal, is manyfold. Superintendents, principals and teachers, together, should seek the pathway for the kids they teach.  

One shining star, the Affinity Districts, glowed for a few years. Schools clustered by choice, not geography, and the network leaders fka, superintendents, had wide leeway in developing network centric instructional models. Mayor de Blasio selected a friend, a retired superintendent who restored the top down model. See Norm Fruchter’s detailed analysis of the Affinity District here.

Ben Weisberg, the current deputy chancellor, actually the de facto chancellor is an efficient mechanic, oiling the gears of Tweed,  It’s an important role, he gets along with the union, collaborative and wedded to rigid instructional models that will change every few years as leadership changes.

What is missing is the vibrancy, the excitement, the encouragement to experiment, to try a “new” approach in lieu of following the Teacher’s Guide page by page. 

David Steiner was the Commissioner of Education in New York State, Dean of Schools of Education at Hunter College and now at John Hopkins University and an incisive critic/commenter.  In a high school in Harlem I met a teacher, in her junior English class the kids were reading Hamlet and Freud, I sent the curriculum to David, we agreed, the curriculum was superb; we wished we were able to clone the teacher.

Steiner recently made a presentation to New York City District Superintendents, and delved into:  if schools are utilizing HQIM why aren’t we seeing better results?  The slides below examine, based on research, some thoughts re why we aren’t seeing better results and what we can do to improve the outcomes.  See the slides and suggestions here

Steiner asks, “Professional Development (PD) too often fails to deliver improved instruction;  while district/schools may offer PD, the PD was about the curriculum in general, not about teaching specific units prior to teaching those units. Even then it was rare to see classroom observations integrated with the PD so the teachers’ understanding of their  coaching could be reviewed.” 

Basic tenets of personal and organizational change:
* Change is perceived as punishment
* Participation reduces resistance

In addition to the superintendents the UFT District Leaders as well as the UFT Teacher Center leadership should have been participants. You mention teacher observations as if they were useful tools, the only people who dislike observations more than teachers are the supervisors observing.  Peer observations/visitations are far more productive

Teaching is not a science, it is an art, DNA probably is important, coming from a family of teachers, an upbringing rich in literature, or science or computational skills, and, as with all athletes, even intellectual athletes, guided practice is crucial

A teacher is the producer, stage manager, director and actor in a play with a run of one day.

When a student walked out of my room at the end of the lesson and says, “That was hard, I think I got it.”  I knew I was doing my job.

Unfortunately the opposition caucuses in he UFT are dominated by the Democratic Socialists of America, a fringe political party, their platform includes taking over unions and using strikes as weapon, in the age of Trump and Elon, suicidal.

We can achieve our goals through collaboration, with electeds, with management and with the wide range of advocacy organizations.