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?

Across the country, parents, teachers, and students are beginning to pushback—hard—against the misuses and abuses of standardized testing in our educational system.

First, most people do not understand what standardized achievement tests are actually designed to measure. They are not designed to measure what students have “learned” over a specific period of time or from a specific teacher. Therefore, attempts to use them for that purpose are at best misguided, at worst, deceptive. For more on this point, I recommend listening to the recent interview of Jim Popham by Steve Hargadon at Future of Education.

An expert on tests and testing, Popham reminds us that standardized tests by nature of their design sort students based on socio-economic backgrounds, not academic accomplishments.

Because our federal and state governments have tied such high-stakes to the results of these misused tests, we have created additional crisis situations for students and teachers, particularly for those already facing the most challenges, as my colleague NYC teacher Jose Vilson reminds us.

I cannot do justice here to the many aspects of the testing/evaluation issue, or to the far-reaching debate over it among teachers and students around the country. That debate is yielding some important ideas, however, that deserve closer attention. In a series of articles sponsored by Education Week’s Teacher Magazine, several teacher-leaders connected with the Center for Teaching Quality have offered some much needed clarity and advice on better ways to assess what students are learning and how teachers are teaching. In one of those series, Testing at the Crossroads, teachers look at the growing resistance to standardized testing starting with the much publicized refusal of teachers at Seattle’s Garfield High School. In another series, another group of outstanding teachers offer ideas from the field on how to better measure student learning.

Likewise, my teacher colleagues and I have long been examining the issue of how to improve teacher evaluations. Back in 2011, I made this still pertinent observation on teacher evaluation:

How can we evaluate such rich complexity with all the varying levels of performance and experience they represent across the largest profession in America—with a few five-minute walk-bys and a checklist? Hardly. The old factory evaluation model, which was never a good fit for education, will be even less so as we move further into the potential of immersed learning and interconnected teaching. One principal trying to evaluate an entire faculty whose members practice a dizzying variety of pedagogical skills will be painfully ineffective. Like our students, teachers need assessment of our work based on a combination of measures and reviewers, with teachers taking responsibility for our own professional growth based on mutually established, student-centered goals.

To get there from here will require transformed thinking and some significant power shifts, neither of which, history reminds us, come easily. But I believe we are on the verge of such a shift as teaching finally morphs into a true profession. One of the trademarks of a profession is peer review of each other’s' work against high standards established by the profession.

Some of America’s best teachers have been offering up our expertise on how to improve assessment of students and teachers for quite a while now. Thankfully, there are signs that those valuable ideas are gaining well-deserved attention, but the fight against politically expedient assessment and evaluation must continue.

Cross-posted at National Journal: Education Experts

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.

read more

This week a marvelous project launched, and I'm excited to see it develop. Ten videos (one per week) and related resources will follow a year at one of the nation's most exciting schools: Mission Hill in Boston. 

The first video asks a compelling question: "What if every school used our founding principles as a nation as their design principles for learning?" It would be the difference between going to school and getting an education.

Watch, discuss, and decide for yourself. 

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.