The Future of Teacher Professional Development

“Professional development is going to look a lot more like what we envision for our students,” began Dr. Judy Zimny, the Chief Program Development Officer for ASCD. 

What if teacher professional development (PD) was formative in nature?  I’ve written about that topic before, arguing that the “gotcha” mentality has contributed to the adversarial relationship between teachers and administrators. 

If formative teacher evaluations were all about helping struggling teacher get good and good teacher get better, and if teacher professional development were tied to those evaluations, then what would professional development look like?

Teacher training couldn't continue along the same paths as they have.  They could no longer be whole-school, one-shot workshops in the library where the guru of the day poured out her/his canned presentation, typically the same presentation s/he delivered at the conference where the principal fell in love with this latest silver-bullet of school reform.

Instead, teacher PD in 2030 will have to be differentiated and on-demand where teachers alone or in small groups find and engage with the professional learning that they think is relevant for their practice.

I can’t stop thinking about all of the PD sessions I ran last year as my school worked through our Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) accreditation.  This was important work for us.  We had been receiving a string on one-year probationary WASC accreditations, living every year under the threat that WASC may withhold our accreditation, leaving our graduated limited to only community college options.

As important as that work was for the school, it was neither relevant nor useful for our cadre of first-year teachers who needed to know where the photocopier was, how to schedule a field trip, how to engage their classes, and even how to simply settle the kids down at the beginning of the day.

A 2030 school would have a road-map of beginner PD for these novices to follow under the tutelage of their school-based mentors. 

A 2030 school would have a cornucopia of PD options for its journeyman-level teachers.  These teachers would self-organized into professional learning communities for the semester or year and submit a PD plan to their administration, detailing in which areas they plan to grow, how they will do this, and what evidence and products their administrators will see to show that their time was well-spent.

Master teachers in a 2030 school would be the novice mentors and event the PD gurus for their site.  These hybrid teacherpreneurs would be compensated for their expertise and time by the school paying for one or two hours of their work day to engage in their independent research on curriculum, and instruction.  The pay-off for the school would happen when the teacherpreneur facilitates high-quality PD for the school’s novice and journeymen teachers. 

Organizations like ASCD could help.  ASCD is wildly popular for their conferences; over 10,000 educators are here in San Francisco this weekend.  They are less well known as a provider of in-line PD.  In the world of teacher learning, in 2030, ASCD will play a much larger role, providing web-casts and virtual classrooms and collaboration spaces for journeymen teachers to use to implement their PD plans, as well as supporting master teachers in their research and development. 

The resources are already here.  ASCD could crowd-source their various on-line PD series.  Master teacerpreneurs from all over the world could up-load webcasts or host virtual sessions.  These teacherpreneurs would be compensated based on the number of discreet views of their products or attendance in their sessions.  Teachers would pay a modest fee for an annual subscription to the ASCD Virtual University.  Schools in 2030 might purchase site-level subscriptions to support all of their teachers.

Just like the differentiated instruction our best teachers provide for their children, meeting each where s/he is in her/his learning career, our best schools will meet their teachers right where they are in their professional careers, helping each one become even better!

Common Core Assessments: Will they Ruin our New Standards?

David Cohen just wrote a great piece about a session he was in yesterday at the ASCD conference here in San Francisco.  He writes about his fears that the new Common Core standards will be left a reeking hulk after the textbook companies politicians and consultants are through with them.  While I am not as leery as he is, I have to agree that he is exactly right that the devil is in the details and poor implementation of these new standards can be a disaster! 

Three years ago, our social studies department at Skyline High School, in Oakland California, realized that our sophomore history class had an enormous fail-rate. After collecting and analyzing data, we concluded that the primary reason for this was the lack of a relevant and rigorous class at the 9th grade level. In response to our conclusions, I wrote a new curriculum for 9th grade social studies, focusing on the goals of primary-document research, thesis development, and historical essay writing. Two years ago, I piloted the class for 120 9th graders. Last year, all of our 9th grade history teachers had adopted the curriculum. Today, not only vastly more sophomores maintaing at least a “C” in their world history class, but the AP World History class has expanded by 50% and is “the most diverse group of AP students I have ever seen,” according to our AP teacher.

Our department knew that doing the authentic work of a historian would be not only more rigorous, not only a better support for our children’s writing skills, not only more closely tied with the skills our children would need in college and career, but also more fun. When our six 9th grade social studies teachers read the drafts of the new Common Core Standards last year, especial the set about “Teaching Writing in History/Social Studies,” one of us said, “It looks like the policy wonks have caught up to us.”

As excited as I am about the ELA and Math standards, I must admit, I am a little fearful about the soon-to-be-written History/Social Studies standards. Traditionally, history standards are far more politicized as stakeholders ask the question, “Whose history will we teacher the children?” As a part of my work with the Center for Teaching Quality and the California Teacher Association, I plan to be right in the middle of that debate. My concern is that the new History/Social Studies standards are not a laundry list of names, dates and battles like many of the state standards it will be replacing.

I am also leery about the next generation of student assessments. A teacher might argue that the current version of her/his state standards is far more relevant and rigorous that the set of sub-skills and facts that are on the high-stakes test. S/he may go on to say that the high stakes attached to the assessment have overblown the import attached to those sub-skills and facts to the detriment of higher-order (and more difficult to assess) thinking and reasoning. Finally, that teacher may critique our current system by saying the primary merit for using the particular questions that we currently do on our student assessment is not because these are the skills and facts we most value, but rather because they lend themselves to easily scored tests. I would agree with that teacher and advocate that the next generation of student assessments must serve our goals and objectives in regards to what we want to see a well-educated young person able to do and know. Our vision of a well-educated child, or an effective teacher can no longer be the servant of inexpensively administered exams.

Five Perspectives on the ASCD Conference

 The Moscone Center in San Francisco is packed to the gills with educators.  For the next three days, I’m attending the ASCD annual conference.  Some of the sessions are going to be webcasted, so you can check them out here.

On Friday night, attendees were treated to smooth Jazz and Chinese food at the Welcome Reception.  I met five attendees there, just at random, and was treated to five very different takes on the conference.

Ms. Thomas might be the kind of person one would expect to see at an education conference.  She is an elementary teacher from Florida.  She is here to explore more about the Whole Child movement.  Ms. Thomas sees the community of education being a triangle of connections between the child, parent, and teachers.  “We are all together in this goal of helping the child lean and perform,” she said.

She is fascinated by the surge of technology that has occurred in her thirty-year career.  “We’re a new school, so there was lots of money there to get us set up right,” she explains.  “You name it, we’ve got it.”  Ms. Thomas has embraced her role as a digital immigrant, to use the terms coined by Marc Prensky.  Many of the tools she is using to facilitate her children’s’ learning are tools that she is less familiar with than they are.  “’Sit down with me, Ms. Thomas’ the children will say to me.  ‘I’ll show you how.’”  She loves being a learner together with her children.

Michael isn’t an educator at all.  After a career with HP, he now works for Nelson Education, a textbook and digital content publisher.  I asked Michael when he thought print would die, forever replaced by digital readers.  “I don’t know if printed book will every be fully replaced,” he replied.  He went on to say that television didn’t kill radio (despite the claim by the Buggles)...

Computers haven’t killed television.  He sees a future that has room for digital and analog books. 

Emily is a principal who is here on her school’s Spring Break.  She is focused on Response to Intervention (RtI).    She sees her teachers using the techniques and strategies to help their children every day in the classroom, but the school has not been engaging in formal discussions about the RtI concept, and as such, they do not yet have a comprehensive plan.  “I was at Dominican University watching some of our student teachers engaged in mock interviews.  When they were asked about RtI, they couldn’t answer the question,” she explained.  One of her goals is to be able to facilitate professional development at her school so that their work on RtI becomes more formal and systematic. 

Emily has a lot of hope that her work with her teachers will bear fruit.  They are already doing some great work as they collaborate together about how their students are learning.  “All the forth grade teachers in the district got together to talk about their students learning data.  After the meeting, I got to visit some of my teachers and I could really see them using the ideas and techniques that they learned from their peers to make their instruction even better. 

Michelle doesn’t work in education, but her clients do.  Her company, GMMB does strategic communications.  They work with educational policy makers, non-profits and other organizations.  She is here to keep her finger on the pulse of educational trends and school reform.  She’s concerned and excited about the Common Core Standards.  Now that forty-four states have adopted these learning goals for English and math, she knows the next step, implementation, is crucial.  “It’s a tough time for school professionals right now,” she told me.  “Everyone’s eyes are looking forward to the Common Core, but they are still be evaluated on the old NCLB criteria.”  Michelle has a lot of hope, though.  “Seeing how the states are working together to do things right this time is making me feel really optimistic.”

Eric Sheninger is the principal of New Milford High School in New Jersey.  Eric’s eyes are firmly on the future of public schools.  He is here as a presenter, talking about what he sees as best practices in Social Networking.  Saving some of his thunder for his presentation Saturday at 2PM, he was willing to share three tips for teachers wanting to use Web 2.0 technologies in their classrooms, “Keep it Professional; Update Regularly; and Celebrate Student Successes.”

Most schools are still afraid of social networks.  They see them as distractions to be filtered out of the learning environment.  At new Milford, Eric is encouraging his teachers to use social networking to hook their kids into learning.  His math teachers are using document camera to film themselves working on a problem and talking out the steps, ala the Kahn Academy.  “But we’re doing it in house,” he notes, “so it is the voice of the students instructor.”  They are also using Poll Everywhere to enable every child’s cell phone to become a student response system.  “The students use Google documents, we’re working with some corporate sponsors to get our textbook replaced with digital readers,” he went on.  “I’m already nearly paper free in my work as the school leader.  I’m trying to help my teachers get there too.” 

Just a couple of hours over chow mien and a beer… five very different attendees.  I think this is going to be an interesting three days.

Not All Merit-Pay Plans are Bribes

Too often so-called merit-pay programs are nothing more than bribes to teachers so that they will work harder and produce higher student tests scores.  Most teachers are offended by these programs because:
A. We already work 50-60 hours a week
B. We got into teaching because we want to help students succeed.
C. We should have been given a professional-grade salary to start with.

Not all performance-based pay systems are teacher bribes.  One of the best alternative pay models is TAP.

First of all, TAP is based on the National Board for Professional Teacher Standards.  National Board certification is not only the gold-medal standard for teaching in all states, it is also considered by its participants as the best professional development they had ever experienced.

Second of all, TAP is not simply more pay for higher scores, or Mr. Gates newest version, more pay for teachers who get higher scores to take more students.  TAP is about teacher leaders, not unlike the hybrid teacherpreneurs Barnett Berry and the TeacherSolution 2030 team talk about in their new book.

TAP believes that school should be led by principals who see themselves less as administrators and more as instructional leaders.   Principals should work in partnership with highly paid Master Teachers to lead their school.  Highly paid Mentor Teachers work to train the next generation of great instructors.

TAP provides professional development to help all teachers grow in their expertise.

TAP believes that teacher evaluation is a difficult and complex activity and should never be based on the scores of a single high-stakes tests, but rather on a rubric that accommodates for subjective observations as well as evidence of student learning.

For these reason, even though I hate merit-pay-bribe systems...  TAP is an alternate to traditional salary schedules that has merit.

Merit Pay is going to motivate me to work harder, but only a smidge'

When I got into teaching 15 years ago, it was for the money.  The fame was nice too, but mostly it was for the money.

Back then, when I was making a six-figure salary ($ 038,000) I knew that I needed to hold a little something back.  Sure, I was making great benefits.  I could go to the dentists, I had a gym and a cafeteria on my work site (nods to John Stewart)....   But working 180 days a year is a lot to ask a person...  I mean it's nearly 1/2 the year!  It's like having to work 3 days a week, every week, with no weekends!  So I held a little back...

You see, I knew, way back then I knew, that someday my political and punditry overlords were going to wake up to the fact that I've got to be bribed to do my best.   They must have asked my Mom how to motivate me to do something I don't want to do.  "We used to pay him a dollar to eat all of his vegetables," she replied.  Aww, Mom...  you know me so well!

So like I've said,  I've been holding back.  I've been working about 75% of my awesome-capacity.  I mean seriously, 75% of awesome is still a "C" Right?

You might think that I'm ready to go all-in, now that Bill, Michelle and Arnie have put some more benjamins on the table.  Man, are they wrong.  I'm telling you, if they are going to put some more money in my pocket, then I'll give them a little taste.  Say bump it up to 78%, you know, like a C+.  They are going to be fist-bumping and high-fiving each other silly over their "success."

But I'm telling you, in a few months, that high is going to wear off, and who do you think they are going to come see?  How many benjamins do you think they are going be slapping down?  They're going to be all over me going, like, "Please, Mr. Teacher, sir.  Give us a little more!  We're jonezing for just a little more.  Please!  Take all our money, just give us a little more."

That me, brother.  Straight up gangster teaching.  Suckers better have my money!

High-stakes Testing is taking American School's in the Exact WRONG Direction

The Daily Show - Diane Ravitch
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

So-called reformers ask us to look at Finland and Singapore because they are "beating" us on international learning assessments.

Let's really look at Finland: No charter schools; No high-stakes testing; More authentic assessments; 100% unionized teachers....

Battle at Dawn

 At first light, they waited.  Fear gripped at their guts.  Soldiers of Germany and England., who were separated by worlds of ideology and politics but only a few dozen yards of “no-man’s land.”

Green grocers, solicitors, university students, and lawyers; they were all soldiers now, privates and officers.  Their now-fantasy-like lives of childhood games, studies, wives or lovers fading to distant painful memories called up from letters from home and shared in stories.

The dew steamed on the moon-like landscape, foreshadowing the clouds of smoke and mustard gas that would soon fill the air.  A whistle blew, soldiers surged “over-the-top.”  Suddenly, one is hit…

Water drips from a fourteen-year-old girl’s hair, her sweatshirt soaked.  Laughter splits the stillness of the morning as the Hillsdale High School “Battle at Dawn” had recorded its first casualty.

For weeks at this San Francisco Bay Area school, 9^th grade history and ELA teachers had coordinated their units around WWI.  English classes read All Quiet on the Western Front.  They learned about setting, character development, perspective, and anecdote.  They created an “auto-biography” of a solider-persona that they would enact at the Battle at Dawn.  In character, they wrote stories about their lives: their hobbies, former jobs, loves, and reasons for joining the military.  The facts and dates that usually dominate traditional history classes were absorbed in a day, the bulk of their time spent researching the “story” of the Battle of the Marne (from which the Battle at Dawn is inspired).    They did the research on their personas, using physical and virtual resources to find images and stories to inform their writing.  They created propaganda posters to recruit their fellow students, colleagues of their persona’s life. 

The unit culminated with “armies” of British and German “soldiers” gathering at the school before sun-up to reenact the battle fun and safely.

When the Skyline High School team visited Hillsdale, at lunch we talked to a group of students.  We asked them to talk about memorable projects they had engaged in over their high school careers.  A senior, and two sophomores immediately mentioned, “Battle at Dawn,” their eyes lighting u at the memory.  The freshmen mentioned how much she was looking forward to this project.