As I read through the chapter on Developing Competent Teaching, I kept saying “yes!” to myself over and over again, because so many of the principles that she suggests are things that can be done and are being done in some places. The key is to take some of the good things that are happening and scale them for our whole system. One of the things that I have been very discouraged by in the past, is the idea that the education a child receives can be very dependent on which teachers they are assigned. I experienced this with my own children, but being an educator and a person that knows how to navigate the school system, I was able to advocate for my children in most cases (with some glaring exceptions that still bother me!) So one of the goals I’ve always had for my school is to create a cohesive system where no matter which teacher a child has, they will receive a similar, high-quality experience. This is easier said than done, but it is always the goal. Every teacher’s trajectory for growth is unique but everyone must work to improve including me. One of the ways to achieve this is with the kind of ongoing professional learning that Darling-Hammond describes; things like mentoring for new teachers, visiting other schools and classrooms, and a lesson study process. None of this takes a tremendous amount of money. At our site, we have all three in place and it really just requires the cost of sub-release time and planning with our teacher leaders. But to take it to scale, the district has to prioritize making subs available to the sites, not taking up precious planning time with a lot of top-down compliance initiatives, and providing some funding for mentors and teacher leaders to work outside of school hours. I have always found that the best way to promote 21st century learning is for teachers to go through the intellectual exercise of planning curriculum and lessons together that will activate our students’ thinking and engage them in meaningful learning.
I love the example Darling-Hammond gives about the “polished stones” from a Japanese system where researched lessons become part of a library for teachers to access to provide models for good practice. This reminds me of the way we use touchstone texts to teach certain concepts or strategies in reading. And this is another area that we could improve in. There are so many education organizations all around us in California that work with schools doing research and developing new ways of thinking about schools. There are university programs and research organizations like WestEd, for example, that love to partner with schools. Our school has been fortunate to partner with Center for the Collaborative Classroom, a non-profit in the Bay Area, that develops programs that combine learning social-emotional skills and an inquiry-based approach to literacy learning. We have opened our doors to be a model school for their programs as well as for IB schools. Sometimes, I feel bad asking teachers to once again have people in their rooms to visit, but they inevitably tell me that the experience helps them to stay focused on improving their practice. They often get to debrief with visitors even if it’s only at recess for a few minutes, but they learn a lot from the questions they get when they examine the lesson or learning engagement. Schools or whole districts can create this kind of symbiotic relationship within our own system or even better find partners to broaden our scope.
In order to organize schools for student and teacher learning, we have to create “intellectually challenging and relevant instruction” Again, I think this is doable but only if we have leaders who know what that looks like and will support teachers being innovative and taking risks. I cringe every time I’m at a principal’s meeting where some colleagues (not from any of our cohort member’s schools) will continually ask for someone to tell them what to do to solve an instructional problem or to make a change that involves teaching and learning. It’s not that we can’t learn from each other and work together as a team, but there are those that just want “the district” to tell them what to do without putting any thought or research of their own into it, let alone bringing in the experts that work alongside them at their schools everyday. Leaders should be leading those instructional conversations, drawing from all kinds of sources, looking for new and innovative ways to approach how students learn best, and setting the example of being a lifelong learner. And always being the voice for those students who may not have a parent or advocate that knows how to navigate the school system for their own child.
I love the quote by John Dewey. It connects so well with the equity work of Zaretta Hammond and gives us the “why” our work is so important. It reminds me of another quote I’ve used in the past:
“Teaching must be advocacy for kids, for democracy, for a better world. If it is not advocacy for those ideals, then it is advocacy for something else”. Randy Bomer