School Yourself

The biggest obstacle isn't a reality:  it's a dream

Here's the old model, the time-tested, incredibly persistent concept of "school:"
The teacher teaches the student.

It's simple, easy to understand, and has the ring of truth.  We say things like "he taught me so much!" or "I learned so much from her."  The teacher is a vending machine, a talking textbook, a knowledge dispenser. We keep the wisdom and dole it out.

As a teacher, I can tell you:  this model works-- less than half of the time.  The days it works are sublime:  you lecture, digress, and expound. Your students sit in the glow of your brilliance, they eat it up, light bulbs go on, and the music of instruction plays like a street fiddler in the square.  You make the magic.

But when that ain't working for you, when the students are bored, lost, or detached-- these are awful teacher moments.   Your students loll in the harsh light of your artificial sun, they list in their seats, darkness pervades, and the clatter of the lecture plays like a rusty chain on the pavement.

The "Great Teacher" Fantasy
Often, teachers of teachers claim to want to debunk this model.  The better part of professional development that I have seen in the last 10 years as a teacher seems to be grounded in the idea that the teacher should not be the "Sage On the Stage."  I swear, I hear that stuff all the time in staff meetings.  It kills me because I don't think anyone really belives it.  When we talk about a great teacher, we often talk about this brilliant genius around whom the classroom orbits. I loved Dead Poets Society and Stand and Deliver.  To some extent, I dreamed of being those guys when I started my career.

This old model is the problem, of course.  It's those dream days of magic teaching that encumber and bewitch us.  We calculate success in the classroom as a measure of the proximity to this idealistic model.  The perfect becomes the enemy to everything else.

Teachers and schools haven't invented this old blanket, however.  It's deep in our collective thought about learning.  We live in a Guru culture.  We celebrate the "amazing teachers" in movies and in books.  Parents "are the most important teachers" of their children.  Older siblings "teach" their younger siblings.  We've even created our computer models around it.  Data is "downloaded" from an original source.  It's "copied." Knowledge is not created-- it's ctrl C then ctrl V.  Real artificial intelligence remains the provence of science fiction because we don't put a high premium on the efficacy of anyone teaching herself.  Once computers are built to teach themselves, it'll be a whole new movie, baby.  But we don't really know how to do that-- because we don't do much of it with each other.

That awesome teacher moment-- that's what we crave.  But it simply doesn't happen often enough-- even for the great teachers.

There's a more effective model, of course: a model that is, arguably, even more recognizable. It's a model that has founded just about every bit of learning ever done by any one.  It's hidden under the old model, nearly unsung in our public discourse about education despite its ubiquity in "real life" applications.

The Better Model
Student teaches himself knowledge.
Teacher helps when and where necessary.

First time parents have no teachers.  Brain surgeons must hold the scalpels alone on a first surgery.  Nobody could teach Mick Jagger how to sing, Warren Buffet how to invest, Oprah Winfrey how to produce, Michael Phelps how to swim, or you how to do whatever it is YOU are good at.  Of course, people helped Mick and Warren and Oprah and the rest-- but no one taught them-- at least, not in the traditional sense.  They taught themselves.  Their mentors were there when and/or where needed.  As have been all the great teachers in your life.

Heck, you taught yourself language.  How to walk.  Do you ever think about how your brain must work for that to have happened?  For it to happen to everyone, everywhere, in every culture around the world?

This old model needs a real challenge, especially as our cultural and political conversations about good teaching begin to gain more and more traction. It's blotting out the light and our schools-- and our culture-- continues to whither under its shiny promise of the "better teacher."

When on the job, the best teachers are barely there.  They elegantly and efficiently drop in and out of the learning process.  They pay attention, make it about the students, and constantly convince/inspire/trick students into teaching themselves.

In a world of Teaching Specialists, we need teachers need to be Specialists in How Teach Oneself.  We need teachers who teach people to not need teachers.

Complicated, indeed.

Wrong Story, Wisconsin

School's got 99 problems and money ain't one.

I'm not old enough to remember a time when the media referred to groups of teachers acting as “political demonstrators.” As a public school teacher, it's a bit unsettling-- but, I can't help but feel a bit of apathy about it. If you've seen a hundred protests, you've seen them all.

In fact, I suspect the whole “protest movement” looks a bit passe to people under the age of 50. On TV, I've seen marches for everything: civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, black men's rights, white men's rights, Puerto Ricans' rights, gun rights, Glenn Beck's rights, Howard Stern's rights, potheads' rights, and recently, moderates' rights (thanks, Jon Stewart).

I've also seen marches against everything: gun control, abortion, gay marriage, Bush, Obama, the war(s), oil companies, liberal media, Fox News, taxes, the government, and, sadly, dead soldiers (thanks, Fred Phelps). Protest marches don't seem to mean, well, anything. Protest marches often look fun, like a cool party or something, or scary, like a group of wackos, but they don't seem effective.

Protest marches just seem to highlight divisions. And, in this case, they are keeping us from focusing.

The Wrong Problem Problem

As the palpable tensions in public education bubble to the surface in the midwest, the whole country is finding that old arthritis of education woes more difficult to ignore. It's foolish to try and blame anyone, of course, but absolutely unsurprising battle lines are being drawn. The easiest narrative for both politicians and the media (our time's most powerful storytellers) is that the tension grows out of a clear rift in our country-- between those who support smaller government and those who support bigger government.

This story of big government versus small, of left versus right, will only keep distracting us from the cancerous problems of education. I'm not saying that we don't have a money problem. We do. But it is NOT the big problem. And it has to stop driving our discourse about improving education.

Here's what we keep talking about:

1.People want lower taxes

2.American students are getting whooped by students in other countries

3.Teachers' pensions are out of step with other professions

4.There are too many bad teachers

5.Teachers have “short” work days and have summers off, holidays, etc.

The budget constraints are making it more difficult to ignore the big problems. Look, when your mom gets an aggressive form of cancer, you don't say “what's the most cost-effective way we can save her?” Sure, you have to talk about money in that situation, but it's not the ONLY or BIGGEST concern.

Raising taxes, lowering taxes, abolishing unions-- none of these “corrections” address improving education. Sure, we can try and save money. But when do we start talking about better education?

Here's what we SHOULD be talking about:

1.Attracting and keeping great teachers-- and making them the most important element in our schools

2.Evaluating students to test skills and critical thinking, not regurgitation

3.Rebuilding our school infrastructure so that it serves the primacy of learning (not student containment)

4.Resisting the colossal error of making education a “customer service” industry

As long as the battle is between politicians and union members, we're going to have the same, tired arguments with the same, feckless results.

Education is the mother f#$%ing future of the country! When can we get serious about fixing it?

For some of my ideas about fixing education, read my fun-to-read (and smartly handled) four part series “Scapegoats and Saviors.” And I barely swear at all in these articles.

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