Fawn Johnson, at National Journal/Education Experts blog, asked guest bloggers to respond to an intriguing post that ended with these questions:

What are the best ways to foster honest student-teacher relationships? How do teachers mask dislike for students? How should they deal with their own problems while teaching? How important is the passion in teaching? Are there practices that can help compensate for a not-passionate teacher? How can schools encourage professional camaraderie among teachers? Do students really need to like their teachers in order to learn?

Here’s what I shared:

When students say they don’t like a teacher, it most often means they don’t like how the teacher is treating them as persons. Those who do not work with young people may be surprised to learn students also do not like teachers who don’t respect them enough to actually teach them. As I often counsel newer teachers, we should not confuse students “liking” us with their respecting us. Part of my teaching philosophy from the start of my career has been: “I am my students’ friend, not their peer.” It tickles me to overhear my students talking about me to each other. Hey, I’m an English teacher; many of my students tolerate or even despise me in the short-run. Oh, but how many have come or written back later, grateful that I neither gave up on them nor gave in to them. Too many teachers have wrecked young lives and their careers by stepping over the line of appropriate teacher-student relationships.

I appreciate what NYC teacher-blogger Ariel Sacks wrote about teachers seeking approval from their students:

The lesson here, though, is that I should be making meaning of student responses so that I can determine next steps for their learning. Not to tell me whether I'm a good teacher or not. That's an egocentric response on my part.

We need to have compassion for ourselves as teachers, so we can, in turn, give this to our students as they make their way through learning. Their response to us is often determined by whether they think we like them and believe in them. It's egocentric of them, but they are the children! They are allowed this!

I would argue that the teacher-student relationship is a powerful aspect of formal language arts instruction. For over ten years, I conducted classroom level research on the issues surrounding teaching and learning Standard English with my African American high school students here in the Mississippi Delta. That research yielded much information that is still being used by me and by teacher educators around the country. One critical finding came from interviews with many groups of parents and students who repeatedly insisted that the most important quality in a teacher was whether s/he “cared about the students.” Not what last year’s test scores were, not her alma mater, or his college grade point average, but does this teacher see my child as a unique and worthy human being? That was the question on my mind, and often on my lips when I met with my own children’s teachers at the start of each school year: “Will you do for my child what you want done for your own?”

That wasn’t just a rhetorical question for me either.  The first two years I taught, I had two of my own children as students. Both earned a failing grade for the first grading period (one did it on purpose; the other actually thought she was exempt from classroom requirements because Mama was her teacher). Both had to sit through a parent-teacher conference with me and their father. Those experiences taught us all some valuable lessons, not to mention establishing my reputation at the high school.

Most people who enter education do so because they have a love of children and/or a love for a particular subject that they want to share. The best teacher preparation programs and mentors wisely emphasize that passion alone is not enough. As the Bible warns, zeal without knowledge can be dangerous. A well-intentioned person can be passionate about wanting students to succeed, but inept at dealing with their social immaturity or disrespectful of their families and cultures. Likewise, another candidate could be passionate about building up children’s self-esteem or helping them with social issues, yet be totally incompetent at teaching subject matter.

It is no coincidence that great teachers tend to be passionate about their responsibility to their students, about learning, and about the profession. That’s one reason National Board Certification for teachers was created—to set standards for highly accomplished teaching that recognize the critical dual qualities of passion and excellence to which every career teacher should aspire. Passionate, highly accomplished teachers should be advocates for the educational needs of their students, particularly for those who might be especially vulnerable.

As my Teacher Leader Network colleagues and I have pointed out many times, whether working with students via digital tools or in face-to-face settings, human relationships are still at the core of the learning experience. If we believe, as I do, that “public education is fundamental to a democratic, civil, prosperous society” (Forum for Education and Democracy), then all the relationships within public education are part of creating and advancing that society. Students learn much from their relationships with their teachers. What few have acknowledged is how much students learn from watching how their teachers interact with others. Children learn what they live at school, too.

We also now have much research and field experience to confirm that students learn more when their teachers collaborate. More and more examples prove that the most effective way to “turnaround” a struggling or failing school (or better yet, to prevent a school from becoming one) is for the adults in the building to model being a true learning community. Building successful learning communities is not easy (hint: it takes more than teachers liking one another), but it is possible and essential. Much of the impetus and some of the best resources for how to build productive, collaborative professional relationships among teachers within schools and across boundaries are coming from grassroots work among teachers ourselves. Many of these efforts have been helped by teachers’ increasing use of social media for their own networking and professional development. Here’s a growing list of such networks, courtesy of Steve Hardagon. Effective school leaders are encouraging and participating in these learning communities as well.

I’m really curious what others of you thing about Fawn’s questions. What is your take on the role of relationships in teaching and learning?

I’ve just returned from a meeting of the Board of Directors of the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), and I am thrilled about where this important organization is headed.

I also feel the need to set straight some disparaging rumors about NBPTS and encourage people to look more closely at what is an important front in the education reform battle in this country.

First, it is important to note that while the staff of NBPTS has been reduced due to reorganization, that staff now includes a significant number of NBCTs—including the Chief Operating Officer, Andy Coons. Another is the Director of Standards, Kristin Hamilton.

NBPTS has also matured to the point that the majority of the Board of Directors (15/26) are NBCTs including (besides me): Kimberly Oliver-Burnim (former National Teacher of the Year), and Glenda Ritz, newly elected state superintendent of Indiana. The majority of the NBCTs are practicing classroom teachers.

Under the direction of new president, Ron Thorpe, NBPTS has made some important changes and earned some much-deserved respect both nationally and internationally. Responding to the needs of NBCTs and candidates, the Board has recently (some would say, finally) shifted to electronic submission of the portfolios, upgraded its website, and other moves to make it more accessible and user-friendly for NBCTs and potential candidates.

Another exciting development, again thanks to the prodding of NBCTs, has been to make better use of the vast NBPTS database of accomplished teaching resources (videos and teacher reflections). Thus was born ATLAS [Accomplished Teacher Learning and Schools].

The National Board is getting its first look at the use of ATLAS in a three-year project funded by the U.S. Department of Education through its Investing in Innovation (i3) program.  Working closely with Linda Darling-Hammond and the Stanford-based Teacher Performance Assessment Consortium (edTPA), along with AACTE, the two teacher unions, Deborah Ball’s team at Michigan, and evaluator AIR, ATLAS will be introduced into teacher prep and induction programs.

While ATLAS was originally imagined as a support for teacher preparation and early career development, pilot programs in the states of Washington and Maine are now using the resource to train principals to be better observers and evaluators of teachers. National Board has received other inquiries, too, regarding professional development for teachers faced with implementing the new Common Core State Standards and other content areas. Whenever and wherever this resource is used, it extends the teacher voice into the way the profession works. (Building a True Profession, Part III)

One rumor I would like to smack-down is that the NB certification process is being run by Pearson. That is an insult to my fellow NBCTs, Board members, and staff who have fought hard and long to maintain both the independence and the quality of National Board Certification. Currently, Pearson is contracted to handle the logistics of the certification process. However, the development of the standards, as well as how they are assessed, scored, and reviewed is all under the control of NBPTS. The unfortunate glitch in release of candidate scores a couple of years ago, was a problem with Pearson’s logistics, but the scores were never lost (just regretfully delayed). National Board Certification was and remains a process created and run by teachers, for teachers.

Most important, NBPTS stands poised to help bring the teaching profession to one of its most elusive, yet essential goals: The development of a true profession. If we, educators, want to be treated like professionals, we have to be a profession. That means setting and maintaining standards for who enters, stays, and excels in this profession. It means holding ourselves and each other accountable for standards and ethics we have developed. To paraphrase Thorpe:

Governments do not create professions. Neither do businesses nor foundations. By definition, professions are created by those in the profession. If teaching is going to claim its rightful state as a true profession, then teachers and other practitioners must make sure [our]voice guides the work. That voice should exert itself through the standards of accomplished practice and the path that all teachers travel to become accomplished. Both will put teachers in a position to define the key terms of [our]work and will create the habits of mind that need to become the profession’s norm. ]We] teachers must realize, however, that no one will do this for [us]. [We] either do it for [ourselves],or through [our]silence agree to comply with the vision others have for [us].

Much of the discussion today around writing at the secondary and community college levels focuses issues around remediation or developmental writing (aka getting students ready for “college-level” writing).  Never mind (for now) that there is much debate within higher education over what college-level writing is. Too many people, even within the teaching profession, equate good writing only with having technical proficiency in using grammar conventions.

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For this part of my series on National Board standards, I've asked Kristin Hamilton, NBCT who now is Director of Standards for NBPTS to talk about her experience as a co-chair the committee that revised the English Language Arts standards.

Guest Blogger, Kristin Hamilton

National Board Certified Teacher:  AYA/ELA

NBPTS Director of Standards

I remember sitting at a large U-shaped conference table
looking at the other teachers and professors and wondering how I got so lucky. The
fourteen of us, plus staff from the National Board for Professional Teaching
Standards, were gathered as practitioners and researchers (the majority of whom
were National Board Certified Teachers) to revise the English
Language Arts Standards that a teacher must meet in order to become an
NBCT. 

I questioned my right to be at that table, and I even questioned
my right to question the standards by which I had measured my professional
life.  I never questioned that writing
these standards ought to be the purview of teachers, but I wasn’t sure I should
be one of them.

Over time the fourteen of us realized that we all felt the
same way.  Since that first committee it
has been my honor to continue to work with the National Board and to facilitate
other committees, and I see the same phenomenon at the start of every
committee. 

Psychologists sometimes call it “impostor syndrome” when
individuals have difficulty accepting that they have earned the honors they
receive. For some reason, the culture of teaching causes us to believe that teachers’
participation in policy is an imposition, that their contributions are an extraneous
addition to predetermined courses of action. 

 The National
Board standards committees, however, are convened to do the thinking,
writing, and decision making—not to advise, not to make recommendations.  To participate is the most startling
paradigm shift I’ve ever experienced as a teacher. 

 Standards revision committee members sign on for an intense
five-seven months of group writing, editing, debating, consensus-building,
stakeholder outreach, and research. 
Their charge is to describe what accomplished
teachers know and do in such a way that teachers in any context or region could
see themselves and their students; write standards that look ahead five-ten years;  and uphold the Five Core Propositions that
are the foundation for what accomplished teachers know and do in every content
area.  The committees are held to
exacting expectations by professional organizations, stakeholders, researchers,
policymakers, legislators, the National Board itself, and, of course, teachers.

 Interestingly, the origin of the word standard is Gothic, a combination of “to stand” and “hard.”  To be sure, the standards committee wrote rigorous
and exacting standards, hard measures of teaching.  Beyond that outcome, however, the National
Board created a space in which we could take a firm stand and define our own
profession rather than be the recipient of others’ decisions. 

 One hallmark of a profession is that its members determine
its standards, and they decide when practitioners meet those standards.  I truly believe that the National Board has
found a way for teachers to be professionals in the full sense of the
word.  Teachers write the National Board
standards, and they score the assessments that teachers submit.   To engage with the certification process is
to converse with colleagues and be assessed by peers.

 I urge educators (primary,
secondary, and higher education) to participate in writing the standards of
accomplished teaching that guide our profession, and I urge policymakers and
officials to encourage them as well.  Apply
to sit on a NBPTS standards committee.  Participate
in public comment on the released drafts. 
Encourage your colleagues to do the same.  Read the standards and engage with them as
you would a colleague across the hall.

 As a final note
to K-12 teachers specifically:  Never
apologize for your presence in a room where decisions are made about teaching
and learning.   Your expertise guides
classrooms and hallways, and so it should also steer board rooms.  Imposters
take possession of that which does not—and should not—belong to them; they
impose themselves on others.   We are not
imposters.  Professionals make a public vow—in word and deed—to uphold and
advance their profession; they profess
their commitment to serve others.

This is the second in a seven-part series on National Board Certification Standards for teachers.

 “Teachers are committed to students and their learning” (NBPTS Core Proposition #1).

True to its core beliefs, NBPTS is celebrating its 25th anniversary by engaging in some hard reflection and making important (some would argue, overdue) changes in some of its processes and products. But the heart of National Board Certification remains the Standards, and those Standards are still the best statement by our profession of what it means to be a highly accomplished teacher.

Like all of the 25 certification areas for National Boards, special education teachers have their own carefully developed set of standards (the Exceptional Needs Standards) against which their teaching practice will be measured.

Standards are developed and revised by a committee of 12-15 members who are broadly representative of accomplished professionals in their field. A majority of the committee members are teachers regularly engaged in teaching students in the field and developmental level in question.  [emphasis mine] Other members include experts in academic content, child development, teacher educators, researchers, and other professionals in the relevant field. Standards are disseminated widely for public comment and subsequently revised as necessary before adoption by the NBPTS Board of Directors.  (nbpts.org)

I’ll be sharing more about the fascinating standards development and review process later in this series, but I want to stress here that these standards are developed primarily by teachers for teachers. On the review committee for the Exceptional Needs standards, for example, 8 of the 12 members were practicing and distinguished special education teachers from around the country.Similarly, a majority of the NBPTS Board of Directors who adopt the standards are as required in our bylaws, National Board Certified Teachers.

So according to the NB standards, what does it mean to be a highly accomplished special education teacher?

For one, it means being an effective advocate for your students. As stated in the standard document:

Teachers understand the special pressures and frustrations that some students with exceptional needs experience and the significant physical, emotional, and cognitive challenges unique to their exceptionalities….As advocates for students, accomplished teachers base decisions on students’ needs, even when those decisions are difficult to implement or contrary to popular opinions.Teachers recognize that their professional responsibility includes defending students when students cannot defend themselves.

In developing the standards for the Exceptional Needs certification, the review committee wrestled with how to develop discrete standards (there are 12 for this certificate), while acknowledging that in actual practice, the skills identified in the standards are highly integrated and overlapping.

Because teachers of exceptional needs children have to be able to work with students ranging in age from birth to 21, they have to demonstrate ability to do that work in a variety of settings. They also have to be able show evidence of how they turn those various settings into safe and positive learning environments for their students.

My TLN colleague and Teaching 2030 co-author, Laurie Wasserman, is a National Board Certified special education teacher in Massachusetts. Her description of what the National Board Standards and process is typical of what we have heard from NBCTs over the years:

• Going through the NB process developed my ability to become a reflective practitioner. As I observe my students who struggle with learning challenges, poverty, speaking another language, and just the day to day difficulties of being 'tweens, it has helped me to understand how best to help them, and be the best educator I can be for them.
• As a special needs middle school teacher who now works in a general education classroom for the majority of her day, the NB process developed in me the strength in myself to share ideas and teaching strategies with fellow educators.

The standards are not only valuable for measuring what a teacher has already accomplished in her/his career, but also as challenging goals for new teachers and teacher candidates.

Reading the standards document gave me a renewed respect for the depth and breadth of professional knowledge my colleagues in special education must have in order to do their jobs well. As a mother of two special needs children, I have had positive and negative experiences with my children’s teachers. Some were clearly more genuinely convinced that my children could learn and excel; while others, though kind, betrayed a debilitating paternalism.

The teacher who knows and can do what these standards describe is the teacher I want working with my children everyday. What about you?

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