Jose-

Recently, one of the teachers I supervise did not live up to her responsibility to her students. I found myself faced with developing a plan to make sure that her students received the services they deserved. I had to do this because I am accountable for her actions and her students’ progress. The problem is, she is not the only teacher in the room. There are two co-teachers. I had to decide if I should develop a plan for both teachers or just the one who had not fulfilled her obligations to her students. I decided that even though the co-teacher was not responsible for her her co-worker’s actions she was accountable to the students assigned to that classroom. They both needed to be involved in the plan to serve the students.

Thankfully this decision seemed to be the right one.  The students have been served appropriately. If this hadn’t happened I wouldn’t have felt comfortable writing this post. I am writing this because I learned some important lessons from this experience.

I have been reading up on the subject in preparation for this post and there seem to be several perspectives on the two terms.

Lets consider the two terms from an etymological standpoint. From http://www.etymonline.com/

Accountable = “answerable,” lit. “liable to be called to account,” c.1400 (mid-14c. in Anglo-French); see account (v.) + -able. Related: Accountably.

Responsible = 1590s, “answerable (to another, for something),” from French responsible, from Latin responsus, pp. of respondere “to respond” (see respond). Meaning “morally accountable for one’s actions” is attested from 1836. Retains the sense of “obligation” in the Latin root word.

I think one of the issues we face in education is messiness in the application of these terms in our policies and our practice. Teachers are responsible to thier students but are held acountable for their actions. Leadership in turn may see a teacher faultering in accountability as not taking responsibility (ie accepting moral accountability for one’s actions). I don’t necessarily think this is the case. Some teachers don’t feel a sense of “moral accountability” for their students’ test scores. They feel a sense of “moral accountability” for their students lives. Being held “morally accountable” is not the same as being “answerable” for student test scores. This perspective would mean a teacher would be able to explain why students living in poverty are not at the same benchmark level on common core assessments as other more affluent students.

There is also a sense that people can be accountable for situations where they have influence but are responsible  when outcomes are result of one’s actions. As happened with my situation one teacher was accountable and responsible while the other was merely accountable and could influence the situation through teamwork and support for the teacher who struggled with the obligation.

As I think we have seen in recent events, teachers know they are responsible for the students they teach. They will and have laid down their lives for their students. Most of the teachers I know would make that ultimate sacrifice if a situation demanded it. This type of responsibility pales in comparison to the calls for accountability we have heard for so many years. As we create a new accountability system to determine progress on the common core it is a great time to consider where respnsibility and accountability really apply. Who is “morally accountable” for student progress? Mostly it comes down to teachers, parents, and students. But, when we ask who should be accountable is it the teacher, the principal, the school system, the funding proces, or a society for allowing persistent poverty. Who should have to answer for this?

Image: http://leadinganswers.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/12/13/team_responsibility_2.jpg

Hey John,

I had a recent conversation with a few friends about teacher advocacy / activist work and wondered if anyone made any clear distinctions about this sort of thing. One of the highlights of our professional careers has been the Center for Teaching Quality’s involvement with the Teacher Leader Standards piece (full disclosure: they’ve featured our blog).

In the midst of all this, I got to thinking what it means to advocate for teachers as a teacher. The order of the title here matters: the title of “teacher” ought to take precedent over the “advocate.” For that matter, it also should come before “leader,” “trainer,” and “activist.” Anytime we as teachers take on an extracurricular task that has to do with what we do as teachers day-to-day, we must keep in mind the “teacher” title.

In other words, teachers emphasize teaching. The other stuff presumes we are teachers first.

For instance, many people would have a hard time with someone who advocates well, has a popular name, and speaks well to what teachers need to professionalize, but couldn’t teach their way out of a wet paper bag … or whatever the metaphor is. Yet, no one would frown upon someone whose kids actually felt like they learned something from the class and yet the teacher didn’t necessarily take on other tasks besides the ones assigned to him or her.

Teaching trumps all the other titles.

That’s certainly ironic considering I too advocate for everyone to work on their teacher voice. Indeed we must. Yet, in order for us to speak from a point of knowledge and expertise, we must gain these things and then enact it with the students we currently have. Our job is two-fold and simultaneous: to serve students’ needs and to work for better teaching conditions. They go hand in hand, but if we lose out on the first, we won’t make any headway personally or collectively.

A snowflake for Sandy Hook by my son.

Jose -

The community you talked about in your last post that could wash over education and transform is real. It is out there and made up of more than teachers. It is parents and students as well.

I haven’t spoken publicly about the tragedy in Sandy Hook. I took my grief to our private online community and found friends who were struggling as much as I was. I couldn’t think of anything to say that would honor the students and educators who were killed. I posted a couple links yesterday and today through the #iKnowaTeacher hashtag that seemed appropriate because that campaign was created to change the public perception of teachers in our country. But, I couldn’t think of anything to say that was helpful to the world. Then I saw a post on facebook from my son’s PTA and my daughter came home with snowflakes from middle school. When she told us why she wanted  to make snowflakes after school my son was excited. He literally ran around the house looking for paper and scissors. Finally, a way to process this tragedy that was not self serving.

The Sandy Hook PTA and Conneticut PTSA is accepting paper snowflakes cut by students and likely some teachers and parents from all across the country. The one above was created by my son. He will send it through his school’s PTA.

The plan is for the Sandy Hook students to return to a new school in January and to walk into a winter wonderland created by children from all over the country.

Snowflakes can be sent by January 12, 2013 to:

Connecticut PTSA,

60 Connolly Parkway
Building 12, Suite 103, Hamden, CT 06514.

From the film Mitchell 20, Randy Murray Productions

Jose -

I wanted to share a story about why you, and the rest of the Center for Teaching Quality community, are important to me.

I started teaching in 1997. By 1998 I was a teacher leader. I felt empowered as I took on the role of technology lead teacher in my elementary school. I enjoyed the challenge of empowering my colleagues but I felt isolated. Except for the couple of other tech people I met in our lead teacher meetings most of these folks were tech heads, not teacher leaders eager to build a better profession. In order to fulfill my credo I craved the community of a group of passionate leaders interested in transforming education, not merely tweaking it with computers.

In 2002, when I began the NBCT candidate process, it was partially with the hope that I would find the professional community I craved. I was excited because I had heard of Virginia’s online forum for accomplished teachers, this was about the time yahoo groups hit the Internet and Web 2.0 was just taking off, at least in education. During the process I engaged with a great group of candidates in an online NB support forum. I thought, “Surely when I achieve I will finally find the professional community I will need to help transform education.”

The National Board seeks to elevate the status, voice, and role or accomplished teachers in shaping a true profession.

When I achieved in 2004, I logged onto NBCTlink to find out who I could contact nationally that was on the same path as me. There was no discussion forum, no real content at all, there was only a list of NBCTs. I looked through the lists to find out who was also a Head Start teacher or even a male early childhood teacher.  But, it wasn’t there. I even Googled the names of recently certified NBCTs to see if they taught Pre-k and emailed some of them but, it was fruitless.

In 2005 I attended the NBCT conference in D.C.  on a hunt for a transformational community. Finally I found it, but it wasn’t with the NBPTS, it was with Bill Ferriter and Susan Graham NBCTs who were presenting as members of TLN, the Teacher Leaders Network.  I heard them present and went up to Bill afterwards. I told Bill, “I want in.” He said, “Ok buddy, just shoot me an email next week and I will put you in touch with the right people.” That was all it took and it was the most important step I have ever taken as a professional. Every good thing that has happened in my career since that day has been because of the professional community I found on TLN.

I heard the other day that the NBCTlink was shut down. That is probably a good thing. It was a false promise.

Recently empowered professionals, like NBCTs, need a true community with hearth-like sustenance, easy access to support a network, and a space that is safe to trust each other and to share vulnerabilities. I would like to think I might have found that on NBCTlink if it had that ability. I am afraid though, the passionate network of caring professionals I’ve found may have never happened in a community comprised entirely of NBCTs, focused on being NBCTs, not on being great teachers. If I were engaged in an exclusive NBCT community, as I was in the yahoo group I created for our local NBCTs, I think I may have felt the need to uphold the standards at every turn. In our local group I found we talked more about how our schools and colleagues didn’t understand us. Instead, when I joined TLN I found several hundred NBCTs as well as state teachers of the year, Milken educators, and outstanding seasoned professionals. They were all there for just one thing, to engage in a community to build a better education for all students. This common ground but varied experience helped us to connect at deeper level of understanding about accomplished practice. Since that time TLN has grown to become a powerful group for teacher voice, without the identification of a particular ideology or understanding of what it means to be accomplished teacher. The strength of the community is in the diverse experiences and perspectives on excellent teaching.

With the recent demise of NBCTlink I hope that the NBPTS will see this as an opportunity to fulfill an unfulfilled promise. I hope the the NBPTS can work with NBCTs and other transformative teacher leaders to find a way to create a vibrant professional community of practice in which they can engage. As many NBCTs will tell you, they are merely the accomplished teachers who have a) taken the risk of the NB process, b) been able to communicate about their practice, and c) demonstrated their successful practice. There are over one hundred thousand accomplished NBCTs and hundreds of thousands more accomplished teachers who have not engaged in the NBCT process. If the National Board is to become the beacon for the actualized teaching profession it will take more than NBCTs, it will take a community of thousands of professionals dedicated to one thing, to engage in a community to build a better education for all students.

The National Board may be the fulcrum on which teaching becomes a true profession but, as Barnett Berry said 10 years ago when he started the Teacher Leaders Network, “If it’s not a community, it won’t work.”

Image: http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/jackalope/2011/10/mitchell_20_the_cinde...

Midway Head Start, Chicago, Illinois

Jose -

Thanks for your kind and thoughtful post. My chair made some key statements in the past few days that really stuck with me and gave me a frame for understanding your questions.

First off, you should know that when my chair came out of teaching to pursue his Ph.D. he fully planned on going back to the classroom when he finished his degree. He told me recently of a conversation with a lauded researcher he studied with in the field of early childhood education that influenced his thinking about his career direction. He said that his mentor asked him, “What are you going to do when you finish?” My chair answered, “I am going to go back to the classroom to teach.” His mentor said, “People don’t get Ph.D.s to go back to the classroom to teach. You have an entirely different set of skills with which to contribute to the field now.” That statement struck a chord with me. You ask, “Will I keep teaching?” The answer is yes, until I am not meant to but, I do have a new set of tools.

In your post you said,

let that philosophy stay embedded in practice. As we become veterans, some of us stay curious about the “why,” meaning we want to either pursue positions that let us teach other teachers or broaden our scope. For those of us who are extra-curious, we can have PhD programs (as we do now) that address this population.

I also believe that, because we already engage in advanced scholarship, we would already have built-in tracks for following up with a PhD while teaching. That is, without breaking the bank or getting a fellowship, thus pulling us out of the classroom.

What do you think, good doctor?

This is what I think. When I became an administrator and conducted 30 some two hour observations a year the most important lesson I learned was that I was not the best Head Start teacher in my school system. Sure, maybe the 25% but definitely not the the best. There were some 20 year veterans with more expertise as a responsive teacher and a bachelor’s degree than I would ever have with my NBCT and my Ph.D. I also learned that I was not interested in telling these teachers how to do their jobs. I did not want to leave the classroom to be this type of leader. I was interested in helping those few teachers with the opportunity for excellence, who had not reached it, achieve it. Finally, I learned that none of these excellent teachers considered teaching from the same perspective of practical experience and intellectual distance that I observed the profession. They were not interested in contributing to the body of knowledge of why and how we provide education. I am. They also didn’t necessarily want to transform education the way that the teacher leaders involved with CTQ do. So yes, we should provide the opportunity for teachers to to become researchers whenever possible. Who better to understand teaching than a teacher? With that said, I know it isn’t for everybody. I also know that it doesn’t make me more qualified to teach than the teacher across the hall. It does make me qualified to research teaching and teacher leadership and I think that is why pursued the degree. I want to create a better education for all students. One way that can be done is through research.

Another idea my chair mentioned was that there was a significant gap in the body of knowledge and scholarship of teacher leadership and its’ effect on the quality of schooling at the local, state, and national level. This gap in the research is critical to explore as we begin to create a self actualized teaching profession. Unless we can prove that research base that shows that a profession led by teachers creates better outcomes for children we will always be swimming up the political and financial stream. And, who better to do this than a teacher leader who has discovered his/her voice and the power of leading from the classroom.

One of the ways I believe this can be done is in how research is designed and framed. For example, my dissertation was an integrated methods study that explored the context in which I have taught for the past 15 years. The title was, “Successful Emergent Literacy Head Start Teachers of Urban African American Boys Living in Poverty.” It may make for some dry reading but I really tried to honor the perspectives of the teachers in my study by using literacy scores, a survey of cultural beliefs, and two rounds of interviews. It was complex, not completely successful, and difficult to finish. However, I found some things that made me think that it was worth it. I don’t feel I got farther away from the topic as some value-added and survey research does, but closer to the situational reality of teaching in successful teachers’ classrooms.

In the best of all worlds I would love to be a preschool teacher with the expectations of the academy. Academics are expected to teach, contribute to the field, and serve the community. I would love to do this from within the context of my preschool classroom. Maybe it is too soon for this to be real. Maybe not. Let’s find out.

Image: http://www.catalyst-chicago.org/news/2005/10/04/next-tougher-standards-a...