Better Teachers: Teacher Education, Standardization, And Natural-Born Teachers

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Although I spent most of the last few days shoveling snow, I did manage to enjoy some reading. I almost finished Marilynne Robinson’s Lila, and I finished Elizabeth Green’s Building a Better Teacher:  How Teaching Works (and How to Teach It to Everyone).  Green’s book, along with Dana Goldstein’s The Teacher Wars, were on the NY Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2014 list.

Whereas I loved Goldstein’s book, I can’t say the same for Green’s book.  Part of my lack of enthusiasm may be the fact that there is more focus on math than English, but I also think Green gives too much due to corporate reformers, she limits herself to too few examples (from her evidence, one would think the Mecca of pedagogical innovation is Michigan), and she comes to few conclusions. 

One thing I do like in Green’s book is her attempt to explore the notion that great teachers are born not made, the idea that there is some intangible “it factor” that some of us simply have and some of us simply don’t.  She begins with a case study of a so-called great teacher named Magdalene Lampert, and after demonstrating Magdalene’s greatness proceeds to document Magdalene’s self-doubt, her constant introspection, and her relentless pursuit of both greater content area knowledge and deeper pedagogical insight. 

Green’s point, ultimately, is that while some teachers may have certain personality traits—confidence, charm, charisma, extroversion—that make the transition from preservice teacher to full time teacher relatively easy, such traits are never sufficient long-term. 

Green then contrasts Lampert with another educator, Doug Lemov, who was a brilliant man who appeared to lack the “it factor” but who, through years of assiduous study and practice, became, if not a dynamic and exciting teacher, at least a more than competent and successful one.

Green also demonstrates how difficult it is to “scale up” any successful model of instruction.  Chapter after chapter chronicles attempts by schools, districts, cities, states, schools of education, charter networks, and the federal government, to capture lightning in a bottle, to take the successful dynamic of one teacher or one department or one building, and codify it so as to export it and implement it on a large scale, as if teaching expertise could be franchised.  In every case Green documents, such efforts fail, and often grandly.

Tom Newkirk likes to say, “Bad things happen to good ideas when they get standardized.”  I think we see myriad examples of this throughout our professional lives.  Calkins’ Units of Study is perhaps the example du jour, but I felt the same way when Grant Wiggins took Understanding By Design on the road, or watching Mike Feinberg and David Levin try to build the KIPP empire on the foundation of Harriet Ball’s idiosyncratic teaching methods.  Calkins and Wiggins—and Ball for that matter—are great educators who have made incredible contributions to the field, but attempting to package their work and use pre-set materials to train teachers to be just like them is destined to fail.  As my old Sociology Professor Hal Abramson used to say, “Religion is what happens when the charisma dies.”  Too often, what you’re left with is a few stone tablets and a bunch of bickering former acolytes.

Although Green confoundingly fails to summarize her findings, I think they come down to a few things.

*New teachers need to be apprenticed to highly successful teachers.

*All teachers benefit from observing one another’s teaching.

*All teachers benefit from talking with one another—across grade levels, disciplines, and districts—about their teaching.

*Quality professional development is hard to find but invaluable when found.

*Teachers need to build relationships with their students and their students’ families and communities.

*Teachers improve their practice when they expand and deepen their content knowledge.

*There needs to be more communication between K-12 teachers and content area professors at local colleges and universities.

*Professional development (call it Educational Reform if you’d like) works best when it evolves organically from within a department, building, or district.

Goldstein arrives at complementary conclusions in her book. She also points out several correlating factors for effective teaching: “deep content knowledge,” a working class background, an urban upbringing, attendance in non-elite colleges, residency in the community where they teach, “experience spending time with low-income children,” and being “coachable.”

Goldstein’s concluding mantra, and one that could serve for Green’s book as well, is that “teachers teaching teachers, outside formal evaluation systems” is the most effective method of improving teaching. 

Amen to that.