Dear Jose and John,

Five tweets really caught my attention during our monthly #teaching2030 Twitter chat last Thursday evening. The chat has quickly grown into a dynamic conversation about issues that matter to teachers. Our topic this month was teacher preparation.  Even though they were limited to 140 characters, teachers still shared some amazing insights.  Check out five of my favorite Tweets from our #teaching2030 chat about teacher prep and the context for each tweet:

{Laurence reflects on the best aspects of teacher prep programs and experiences}
@informedteacher: What works is the experience of the true grind of the classroom. #teaching2030

{Amy responds to what is needed from teacher prep programs}
@amykfmurphy: #teaching2030 I think many programs talk about best practices from research but don’t model them nearly enough. Student teachers need to see them model!

{John responds to the question:  How might it have benefited you to have some coursework taught by professors on site in your classroom w/ students?}
@MrBernia: That is a HUGE idea! Wow! Would it look like a “teaching school” much like a “teaching hospital?” #teaching2030

{Mark shares thoughts about the types of experiences needed during teacher preparation}
@jmarkcoleman:  More time working directly with students. Student interaction is a craft and finding your voice doesn’t happen overnight. #teaching2030

{Ryan thinks about what the future holds for teacher prep}
@ryankinser: Virtual coaching has teacher prep promise. Versatile, real-time help from pros. #teaching2030

Wow!  My mind has raced for days thinking about some of the suggestions—more modeling, “teaching schools,” more student interaction, virtual coaching.  I can’t help wonder how panels of practicing teachers might improve teacher prep programs around our nation.  These teachers are speaking.  Are those who prepare teachers for America’s classrooms listening?  I certainly hope so!

Join us for the next #teaching2030 chat on Thursday, February 16th at 8:30 – 9:30 ET.  The topic will be 21st-century learning.  Hope to see you there!

Jennifer

Hey John and Jose,

I always enjoy this time of year.  Looking ahead to the possibilities of a brand new year fills me with excitement and hope.  Over the last few years we’ve shared our dreams and goals for our profession with one another, much of it outlined in our book, TEACHING 2030.  I’m so glad to see this conversation expand using social media.  Our #teaching2030 Twitter chat every third Thursday of the month continues to draw a crowd passionately interested in advancing our profession.  The December 15 chat on teacher evaluation was no exception!

The conversation began with a discussion on the essentials of teacher evaluation. Some highlights:

• @stephe1234: “We first have to create a culture of relational trust and growth among teacher and administrators.”
• @MsMagiera: “Teacher eval must feel constructive, not punitive. Tchrs must feel safe enough to fail—without failure, there is no growth.” 

While it might seem daunting to deeply discuss a topic in only 140 characters at a time, we moved on to a discussion about peer evaluation.  @ratzelster, @CohenD, and @MWilliamMoran engaged in a lively debate on the role of peers in teacher evaluation.  @ratzelster worried that peer evaluation would take time away from PLCs and that peer evaluation could risks eroding those relationships. But @MWilliamMoran wrote, “Peer evaluation builds community, strengthens morale, and are often more trusted than evals coming from superiors.” 

The participants in the #teaching2030 chat had much to say about the direction teacher evaluation should take in the future. Some highlights from this discussion:

• @TRackowitz:  “Shouldn’t master teachers be held to a higher standard?” 
• @CohenD: “I’d hope we move towards differentiating evaluation just as we do for students.  My needs are quite different from new teachers.” 
• @MoniseLSeward: “There must also be ‘space’ to included things teachers do to foster learning/creativity that cannot be measured.” 
• @rcniman: “Should parents and students have input in evaluations?”  

Wow!  When teachers gather, the time always flies and leaves us with much more to share and discuss.  Luckily, the next #teaching2030 chat is coming up soon: January 19, 2012 from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. (ET). 

The new year brings great possibilities for teachers.  Teachers curious about exploring, sharing, and engaging in conversations about our profession are invited to participate every third Thursday of each month in our #teaching2030 Twitter chat. I’m looking forward to a wonderful year of hopeful discussions about the future of teaching.

The complete transcript from the December 15 chat is available here.

Jose -

I wanted to share a guest post I did for the online discussion portion of Learning Matters, John Merrow’s education show. I wanted to write, “I am thankful to you for standing up for teachers for 30 years.” I knew that wasn’t what he wanted when he asked,

“What about the current state of education are you most thankful for?”
I am most thankful for increased focus on accomplished teaching in our public schools. Over the past several years the rhetoric about teaching has been mostly focused on the mediocre and failing teachers in our public schools. A crescendo of teacher bashing, which began in 2010 with the L.A. Times use of value-added measures to publicly “out” good and bad teachers reached fevered pitch in February, 2011  when Gov. Scott Walker stripped collective bargaining rights from teachers, seems to have abated. The likes of Joel Klien, Michelle Rhee, and Chester Finn have changed their tone in the popular media these days. It may be due to several thousand teachers standing up for themselves in July at the Save Our Schools march or it may be due to the increased number of young and seasoned teachers speaking out about education.

One might call me foolish. I don’t spend much time reading local newspapers online so I am not so exposed to the everyday comment venom spat by Joe the Plumber types across our nation.  I have spent some time listening to the bigger pundits and it seems that many of those that felt safe bashing teachers less than six months ago have taken a step back from trying to push us off that particular cliff. As recently as July John Merrow described David Brooks as one of the band of conquistadors in the education wars.

Yet, in September I attended the New York Times Schools for Tomorrow technology and innovation conference and was pleasantly surprised by David Brooks. All of the panelists, including Klien and Finn, seemed to show a little more understanding of the learning process than they previously seemed capable. In the opening session David Brooks said,

“… people learn from people they love, they don’t learn from computers they love, and anything that gets in the way between the relationship between the teacher and the student is something I’m likely to be skeptical of.”

This step back from the edge of blaming teachers and increased focus on the relationships great teachers have with their students is new. It may have been because the NY Times made a big deal about inviting some teachers to come to their education conference, after a bit of fuss was made about the lack of educators on the panels but, this too is heartening. The fact that the NY Times would back track even a little bit to include teachers means that teachers will no longer be left out of the public discussion about what happens in our classrooms.

BIO: John M. Holland has dedicated his career to serving the neediest and youngest school children as an NBCT preschool teacher of 3- and 4-year-olds from Richmond, Virginia’s toughest neighborhoods. Currently he writes about Pre-K issues on his blog Emergent Learner.  His passions include educational policy, teacher leadership, creativity, and 21st-century learning.  He is a coauthor of TEACHING 2030 and continues to explore the Future of Teaching.

Hey Jose –

As you know, I have been following the NBPTS search for a new CEO as both a disenchanted NBCT and a passionate teacher. A little while ago the new leader was announced. Ron Thorpe, Vice President & Director, Education for WNET public TV in New York, seems to be just the candidate the NBPTS needs to create a new culture for the organization charged with defining, evaluating, and promoting accomplished teaching in America’s schools. Below is my open letter to Ron that describes what I think he might need to know about accomplished teaching and the NBPTS and what I hope he can accomplish during his tenure.

Dear Ron Thorpe

President & CEO

National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS),

We know what great teachers do. When we peek into their classrooms, it’s easy to see. They are engaged with students, they know their content, they assess student learning to improve their teaching, they influence their peers in positive ways, and they work collaboratively with other teachers. While easy to recognize, these traits can be difficult to measure. One organization has made significant headway, though: the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS).

For 25 years, NBPTS has worked to define excellence in teaching. Its mission is “to establish high and rigorous standards for what teachers should know and be able to do, to certify teachers who meet those standards, and to advance other education reforms for the purpose of improving student learning in American schools” (NBPTS, from What Teachers Should Know and Be Able to Do, 1989, p. 1). NBPTS has accomplished the first two goals, having established rigorous standards and developed processes for certifying accomplished practitioners, including a performance-based assessment that is widely accepted as scientifically valid.

But now it’s time for NBPTS to tackle its third goal: “to advance other education reforms for the purpose of improving student learning in American schools.” The organization has raised the profile of accomplished teaching in America—but it represents only a fraction of highly accomplished teachers. It is time to extend that reach and also to advocate for the best hopes of the teaching profession.

The Future of NBPTS

I hope you are a special kind of leader: a “boundary spanner” who is future-oriented and ready to collaborate with a wide range of stakeholders, including NBCTs.

What do I mean by “future-oriented”? TEACHING 2030 outlines a hopeful vision for how schools and the teaching profession can change to better serve all students. Improving student outcomes will require educational leaders to work collaboratively, rely on teachers to apply their expertise locally and nationally, to create a more flexible and vibrant teaching profession. And we call upon everyone—teachers, students, parents, policy makers, and national organizations like the National Education Association (NEA) and the NBPTS—to take a solutions-focused approach to creating a better future for ALL students and families.

The job description posted by NBPTS stated the organization seeks a “visionary” individual to “take the helm” of the organization. This metaphor reminds me of a sea captain or old-school “captain of industry”—not a team player (and definitely not an accomplished teacher). Doesn’t NBPTS really need a new type of leader, a passionate professional who will take a collaborative approach to improving the culture, reach, and impact of the organization?

A New Type of Leader

The NBPTS holds at the ready what may be the most powerful untapped resource for educational change in our nation: 91,000 accomplished teachers. Ron, I hope you are prepared (and eager) to collaborate with these expert educators in authentic ways. I hope that you, an accomplished executive, are able to recognize the limits your expertise—learning from and leading with accomplished educators who have a deep understanding of teachers and teaching. Here’s a truly radical idea: what if your right hand person was actually a teacher? Richard Riley took this approach when he moved from Governor to heading up the U.S. Dept. of Ed. In an interview in July 2011 Riley said,

I never made a major decision in Washington dealing with education without a teacher in the room. Normally that was Dr. Terry Dozier, who was Teacher of the Year in South Carolina and National Teacher of the Year, and had a phenomenal record as a social studies teacher. I enjoyed having people there who disagreed with me. I welcomed that and people knew that.

And the new leader must be able to collaborate effectively with external organizations, too. As NBPTS works to spread the expertise of thousands of NBCTs, organizations like the Center for Teaching Quality could be valuable partners. And of course, developing productive partnerships will be critical to the NBPTS’s financial sustainability. For example, consider the local, state, and national partnerships developed by the National Endowment for the Arts, which have improved the funding structures and impact of the arts by linking local and federal support.

Finally, I hope you are willing to support a flexible teaching profession, encouraging NBCT leaders to advocate for accomplished teaching and the changes necessary to spread our best teachers’ expertise. What if NBPTS worked with local systems to create hybrid roles that let NBCTs continue to teach while also applying their skills and knowledge to schools’ most pressing problems? For example, what if NBPTS helped a terrific teacher to spend part of her day teaching third graders—and part of her day mentoring future NBCTs in a high-poverty, hard-to-staff school?

The key point made in NBPTS’s job description were that the new CEO needs to be visionary: the word “vision” was included three times. I sincerely hope that your “vision” is truly future-oriented. I hope it is not the singular vision of a Captain Ahab type, but a shared vision, incorporating the hopes of thousands of accomplished NBCTs who have the potential to dramatically change the teaching profession.

Jose-

I recently attended the NYT Schools for Tomorrow conference that you called out for not acknowledging the expertise of teachers as innovators and change agents in the national debate on the direction of educational technology innovations. I wanted to say thank you. I am not sure I would have been able to attend if you hadn’t spoken up. I was happy to learn that most of the crowd in attendance were not capitalist know-it-alls determined to colonize and subvert public education but thoughtful and passionate advocates for a more innovative and flexible education system. I have a more thorough summary of my experience that will be published elsewhere but I did want to bring-up the importance having teacher voice in discussions of the future of education.

I was stoked that the international panelists really “got” that education in the future will require more expert teachers not less. To reach Teaching 2030 we will need reflective practitioners who are trusted and given the autonomy to innovate. After finding validation in the international session I decided to ask another question in the “Tools Available” session. My next question was too hot for the panel. To his credit, Randy Reina, Senior Vice President of Technology at McGraw-Hill School Education Group attempted to answer the question but he did not really have an answer. This was my question:

“I think the thing we are not talking about right now is standardized testing and the statistically valid form of creating those tests that wants to get 40% of kids not getting it right. I think that when we talk about technology and the reason for technology I would like to hear what people have to say about how that technology is going to be used to either support the paradigm of standardized testing or change that paradigm of standardized testing.”

Randy’s answer, I am paraphrasing here, was, “That is a good question. We really need to decide how these new technologies will be used. New technology tools could be used to create online portfolios and the like or they could be used to keep testing the same way. We need to decide how we are going to use this technology to measure student achievement.”

I was a little disconcerted. There is nothing wrong with his answer, and he was fielding a hot potato there, but it doesn’t really answer the question.  I was asking these non-teacher, education experts, to stand up and agree or disagree with the use of standardized testing as it is currently implemented and how it can/will/should be changed by the next wave of technology reform. If I were on the panel this is how I would have answered it:

“When standardized testing began it was for the purpose of deciding where to put resources to make schooling more equitable. It was a paper and pencil bubble test which was expensive so it could only be administered on such a vast scale once a year. Sometimes the test was only administered to certain students, on certain subjects. Teachers knew this was good and did not argue too much. Then NCLB was born and testing became about accountability, sanctions, and honors to more tightly couple the curriculum and what teachers do in their classroom. Teachers knew, from their vast daily experience with behavioral psychology and group think that this was not good and argued. Suddenly, in the view of the popular media and the general population, teachers were arguing against equity. What technology has the power to do now is make testing and teaching synonymous through the use of continual formative assessment. Testing online is much cheaper than testing on paper and the data is immediately available. In Utah teachers have been able to take part in the open source assessment process for years by designing classroom assessments that are shared across the state to seek cross validation. Abandoning the use of the end of course online bubble test for online assessments that show growth and inform instruction as it is happening in classrooms is the step we should be taking. Stakeholders can get their accountability data from growth scores and students can make spiraling upward progress without trying to know one thing, on one day, in May.”

That’s what I would have said if I were on the panel. It may not have been the most politically correct answer but, at least someone would have pointed in a clear direction by saying, “We need to go that a-way.” Instead of saying, “hmmm, good question, but I’m not going to answer it.”

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