The Great Ones

It’s the Teachers, Stupid

Think about the greatest teacher you ever had. 

There’s nothing quite like a truly Great Teacher.  If you were lucky to have one, you know exactly what I’m talking about.  

The Great Ones were cool, man.  They seemed to have effortless mastery of the content.  They knew how to manage the class; they made jokes sometimes but always at the perfect time.  They were occasionally terrifying, but you killed yourself for their approval.  They might have looked horrible—no fashion sense, homely, downright ugly or bizarre—but you didn’t care.  At times they may have pissed you off, at times they may have made you cry:  but they changed you.

Like great athletes, mechanics, doctors, or pilots, they acted in the moment, made split-second decisions, and had access to great instinct and skill.  

And they made you want to be a better version of yourself.

Greatness Is Invisible To the System

You ever notice how little official "love" the Great Teachers got at your school?  The Great Teachers were often off on their own, doing their own thing, while other Good Teachers (and sometimes Lousy Teachers) were carried around on shoulders, having parties thrown in their honor, t-shirts made about them and crap like that.

In fact, Great Teachers were often scary or annoying to other teachers and staff.  Some of the kids didn't get them or even hated them.

I always turn into Holden Caufield when I talk about this stuff.  Celebrations of teachers often just feel like a Festival of Phonies.

It’s kind of gross.  Our educational system, of course, does practically nothing to attract, develop, or sustain Great Teachers.  Great Teachers exist IN SPITE of the constantly changing weather of education: the movements, the swings, the trends, and the political fray.  This is because Great Teachers are not managed, supervised, or led into being Great.  

         How does a Great Teacher "happen?" 
         There are only three ways-- and none of them are 
         addressed by our school systems.  
        Great Teachers are...

            1.  BORN great-- all the talents are there
            2.  MAKE THEMSELVES great on their own

            3.  are coached or mentored by an 
                 OTHER Great Teacher

            

That’s the problem.  Even though almost everyone in any school knows who the Great Teachers are in it, school managers have no “official” way of identifying them.  Administrators, generally not great teachers themselves, lack the skills or tools to even recognize Great Teachers.  They look at test scores, student behavior, and parent feedback—none of which consistently identifies Greatness in teaching.  

Squandering Resources

We don't spend any time actually talking about Great Teachers.  Like so many other teachers, I have sat through hundreds of hours of "professional development" that are not only insulting, they're ridiculously devoid of anything that can help me get better at my job.  Mind-numbing, soul-crushing, pencil-stabbing-your eye stuff.  And when I look at the few Great Teachers on my faculty (everyone always knows who the Greats are), I can't believe how ignored they are.  It's a sad and deplorable waste of time and resources. 

Our goal is to raise test scores?  Are you serious?  What are you smoking?  We don’t need better tests and test scores, better tutoring systems or education models, happier parents, happier students, better computers…

We need Great Teachers.  It's the whole thing, man.  

Taking Kids to Spain

Students need to be in the zone

Spilling in reds, oranges, and blues, the Spanish sun splashes graffiti on the medieval flagstones. They stand there, the children, in their Nikes and Adidas, Uggs and slip-ons. Looking up, their eyes try to adjust to the unforgiving contrasts of light and dark.

“These vaults, the crotch vaulting- look at it, amazing- are the work of unknown craftsman from the 14 and 1500's...” The voice of our guide, Salome, echoes into nothingness, quickly replaced by the muffled chatter of the students. “You are standing in a place that represented the place between heaven and earth for the people of this town. Hundreds of years ago, if you'd been a peasant, you would have been in awe.”

The high school kids appear divided on this, in classic adolescent fashion. Some are bored and tired, barely aware of where they are. Others are fighting the ennui, trying to make sense of any of it. And then others: transfixed, mouth agape, eyes filled with wonder.

I make eye contact with one of them, a boy named Nick. It's been a long trip from NY to Spain and we've been here for days. I raise my eyebrows with a “what do you think?” expression. He looks at me and says, “Wow, Mr. Kleba, I had no idea. It's incredible. How did they do all this?”

The right response to him is, of course, "How do YOU think they got those stones up there, dude?" The ensuing conversation would be lovely and productive.  But I pause.

I look back up to the towering heights of the stone arches, questions of my own echoing in my head. Nick's reaction is the holy grail in education, the sublime moment. Normally at school, he's distracted and out of it, watching the clock. I've had him in class. But right now, he is wide open, ready to learn, thrilled by the idea of understanding more. He's prime meat.  In the cool dark of this cathedral, he is so bloody teachable. At this moment, he could learn just about anything.

And I ask myself: how did he get to this moment of wonder? What series of events led to this kid's specific experience? Why is he in the zone while others are not?

The Zone

Getting a person to the place where she is willing to learn is the single most important job of a teacher. Sure, we've got to keep the buggers in their seats, patrol them for petty crimes, and drag them through mazes of mandated tests, forms, and procedures. But, mostly, it's about getting them into the zone.

The best teacher you ever had-- think about him or her for a moment-- was a master at getting you in the zone. You never liked math until you had Ms. Murphy. Social studies made no sense until Mr. Psota breathed life into it. Chemistry was an inscrutable cloud until Mr. Ferris helped you pilot it.

In the zone, you found yourself more interested in learning. You let your wonder free. You forgot about the burdens of everything and became engaged in the matter at hand. You suddenly cared about how or why something worked.

Nick got in the zone because a bunch of teachers, working outside of the typical parameters, did a lot of stuff to help get him there.

1. TRAVEL. He had to leave the world of comfort and stability back home. Getting out of the unfamiliar was required. Strange language, strange food, strange bed-- all of it had an impact.
2. INVESTMENT. He needed to be invested in the trouble of it all-- paying a lot money to travel helped with that, but so did the work of packing and traveling he put in.  
3. GREAT MATERIAL. He had to be confronted with something worth learning, something bigger than himself. Something with undeniable value and meaning in of itself.
4. CREATIVE TEACHERS.  He needed teachers who could create and facilitate zone moments.

We only went to Spain so that Nick, and others like him, could get into the zone. The best thing we did was carefully pluck the kid out of the routine of his life and give him a way to appreciate something.

Factories Cannot Produce Experience

We are having the wrong conversations about education.  We want a more perfect education system-- and it's crazy.  We are spending too much money and time keeping kids in systems. Our education culture is stilted in its repetitive, construct-based model. We don't need better curricula-- we need better teachers. Frankly, we don't even need better testing-- we need better opportunities for the kids.  

We can't address what's not working in education by taking all the kids on field trips- that's not the point.  But creating conditions for kids to experience beautiful, inspiring, and challenging moments should be our prime focus.  And, culturally, politically, and economically, we aren't even talking about how to do it.  

Can we afford to take kids to Spain?  No, definitely not in this economy.  But can we afford not to?

Good Enough Is Not Good Enough

“Where are the strong? Who are the trusted?” -Elvis Costello

“A 'No' uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a 'Yes' merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble.” -Mahatma Gandhi

We often pretend that only some people lie. People love to tell jokes about how salesmen, lawyers, and politicians are constantly lying to us. We shake our fists at doctors who, trying to dodge potential malpractice, won't tell us exactly what to do. We hate the careful answers of our financial advisors and our mechanics. “Just be straight with me,” we fume.

And while we are complaining to each other about the lack of honest discourse in commerce and in politics, we'll happily fib our way through our day. From our private lives to our workplace to exchanges on the street, we're all carefully navigating how to say what we really think.

The problem is not that we are a bunch of phonies, however. The problem is that in our attempts to avoid calling things as we really see them, we're negotiating excellence. We're sidelining exceptionality.

We can't admire what is not admirable. So how and why are we pushing “greatness” to the side?

Lying: Hey, I Do It, Too

Who hasn't told an easy lie in order to avoid conflict?

-Your best friend is crazy about his new girlfriend. You think she's a total mess and would make a terrible partner. He asks you what you think of her. You say “she seems nice.”

-Your husband finishes the work on the bathroom and you hate the way he installed the faucet. It'll bug you for years and you know it. He looks at you proudly and you say, “Great work, hun. Thanks.”

-Your kid hardly ever practices baseball but wants start on the varsity team. It frustrates you because he's lazy. Later, he doesn't make the team. You say “I'm proud of you for trying.”

We spin it, like political pundits after a debate. And, sometimes, we just plain lie. We say the opposite of what we really think.

Some of us do it in the name of politeness. We don't want to be jerks. Others do it in the name of protection. We think that the truth hurts. Some of us just don't want to go the through the trouble of telling the truth. We're busy. Honest communication takes too much time.

All of this makes sense in our private lives, we think. Who can always tell the truth? It's absurd! We can't pretend that we can be honest about everything. Caring for people sometimes means leaving things out, right?

When No One Is Mediocre, Then No One Is Excellent

But we're lumping all of this together too easily. It's one thing to avoid telling your friend that her ass looks enormous in those jeans. It's another thing to avoid identifying flaws in each other and ourselves. By protecting one another from the discomfort of the truth, we deny ourselves the ability to grow, adapt, and reach for new things. We claim to be helping one another-- but, instead, we are only stunting each other.

This is because honesty demands fixing the broken and improving the improvable. The mediocre becomes plain and not good enough.  Things that work get celebrated and things that don't get identified. Honesty is the fuel of real and lasting progress.

I hear people say “I'm terrible with technology.” What this actually means is “I prefer it when someone else fixes my stuff.” “I can't spell” means “it doesn't matter how to spell things.” “I have no idea who my state senator is” means “I don't want to be involved in decisions about my community.”

We're saving ourselves and one another from unnecessary pain, sure. But we're also avoiding improving things. We're cycling medium.  And our country is paying for it.

The Exception: Complaining

I'd like to allow one caveat. We will tell the truth if we can avoid any responsibility that comes with being honest. This is the machinery of “complaining.”

We are great at complaining. We love to whine about things that don't work when we are removed from making things better. Take road rage. We are astonishingly honest in the isolation of our cars. Someone cuts us off and we are suddenly on truth serum. We'll uselessly scream a suggestion: “use a turn signal, moron!” Something sucks at work; a stupid policy is making everyone unhappy. Everyone will complain and no one will try to fix it, usually because the problem will take a bunch of time, energy, and creativity to fix.

It's so wonderfully easy to complain. Who wants to go through the trouble of confrontation? Of improvement? Our complaining takes the place of being honest.

The Haystack of “Good Enough”

Somewhere in the efforts to be polite, political, and/or non-confrontational, we're not just stunting our progress. We're making it impossible to tell the difference between “mediocre” and “excellent.” We're numbing our ability to identify (and reach for) greatness. And we are doing it most with our children and young people.

Think about that. Our willingness to spin has a special effect on the younger generation. Again, it's not necessarily about hypocrisy. It's about losing the ability to identify the exceptionally good.

Our kids in our culture watch us. When we don't call the average “average” or the weak “weak,” the real casualty is greatness. We extol average!  "I'm just an average guy!"  In the huge pile of nearly meaningless compliments and unspoken critiques, we can't find the exceptional and inspirational.

In schools, we celebrate showing up-- and not even showing up on time. We reward doing the bare minimum. And you know what? We do the very same thing in our lives, day to day. We lower expectations in order to be happier with results.

This isn't just the 'give everyone a trophy' problem. This is more of a 'it's easier to call it good enough' problem. 

It won't matter if our teachers and schools are better if we can't tell our kids (and the parents of those kids) that “not bad” is NOT “excellent.” It won't matter if the kids can't tell the difference between “weak” and “strong.”

Does spelling matter? Should you be able to troubleshoot your own computer? Should you know who your senator is?

Does my ass look big in these jeans?

Is there a difference between “average” and “great?”

It depends on how brave and strong we can be about telling the truth-- in our lives and in our schools.

For further reading on the subject of excellence in schools:

The best high school students in the world are now coming from other countries. The numbers are chilling. Check out this article in The Atlantic from Nov 2011. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/12/your-child-left-behind/8310