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Private School Teachers Are Not Necessarily Better Teachers

September 21, 2011

Whilst I like the idea of experienced and outstanding teachers helping to mentor student teachers, I am very bewildered by a proposal to have private school teachers mentor public school teachers.

Who thought of this crazy plan?

It is such a simplistic generalisation that private school teachers are superior to their public counterparts.  So what if private school kids get better academic results.  We all know that the credit doesn’t solely fall on the classroom teachers.  Private school students are given higher expectations by their parents and often have tutors to help them when they are behind.

That is why it was refreshing to read an article by lecturer, James Williams:

The results that private schools achieve may be impressive – but results are one thing, raising aspirations in a cohort of disaffected youths, when your experience is of children with Cath Kidston pencil cases who holiday in the Bahamas is quite another.

The problem with such debates is that they miss an important point.

Not all teachers, regardless of how they have been trained, can teach in all schools.

The reality of teacher training is that there is no ‘one method’ of training that instantly produces excellent teachers who can turn their hand to any school, any challenge and any system.

An important skill for those who are teacher trainers, like me, is recognising your trainee’s strengths and weaknesses and guiding them to teach in the right school for them.

It is very good to hear that teacher training is under the microscope.  For too long the problems to do with teacher training was swept under the carpet.  Teachers spend years of their lives slaving away for a degree that ultimately does precious little for preparing them for the realities of the classroom.

I like the idea of a mentor system, I just don’t like this one.

 

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The Trouble With Professional Development

July 2, 2011

I am so tired of going to long and diabolically boring PD’s that do nothing to advance my skills and leave me deeply frustrated.  I just read a brilliant article about the ineffectiveness of some professional development and how it misses an important opportunity.

The way we provide professional learning experiences and support our nation’s teachers is a running source of debate and, unfortunately, disappointment. Policymakers grumble at the costs. Teachers complain they don’t get what they need while parents and the public wait for our schools to get it right for our students.

…  Another federally funded report found that even after two years of targeting more than 100 7th grade math teachers in 12 districts with professional development, there was no measurable impact on teacher knowledge or student achievement. Even the researchers sounded a bit surprised, noting that the programs did everything the existing research says is effective.

Though I’m not familiar with the specifics of these professional development approaches, I’m not too surprised that they didn’t lead to improved student achievement. It is far too easy for professional development to miss the mark – even if it follows the research.

As the former director of professional development in New York City schools and someone who has devoted most of my professional life to leading teacher professional development, I can tell you that what teachers need to improve their craft is rarely what they receive from professional development.

This is not a slam on professional development per se, though teachers typically do not have enough input in determining what professional development they need, who delivers it and when they get it. And the stakes are about to get higher as states phase in higher common core standards that will ask more of teachers and students.

Much of the professional development teachers are required to attend is attached to textbook adoptions, mandates, or scripted programs that promise results that are rarely delivered.

To read the full article, please follow this link.

 

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Sometimes the Unions Don’t Help

June 26, 2011

There are times when the Education Unions just make me shake my head.  At a time when respect for teachers is at an all time low, unions have the opportunity to help promote the good work teachers do.  Instead, they often make things so much worse.  Take this story for example:

Students will not be allowed to enter teacher training in England if they fail basic numeracy and literacy tests three times, under tougher rules to raise teaching standards.

At present students are allowed to take unlimited re-sits while they train.

The Department for Education said one in 10 trainees takes the numeracy test more than three times, while the figure is one in 14 for the literacy test.

The National Union of Teachers said it considered the tests “superfluous”.

The aim is to improve the standard of students entering teaching.

From September 2012, candidates will have to pass the assessments before they are permitted to begin their training courses.

The tests are the same for both primary and secondary school teacher trainees, who must also have achieved a grade C or above in GCSE maths and English.
What is “superfluous” about ensuring that teachers have basic skills in the areas they teach?  What profession would allow trainees to practice without the requisite knowledge or skill?  It’s not as if the questions are so hard.  Here are a sample of the questions on such a test:

SAMPLE QUESTIONS

  • Q: Teachers organised activities for three classes of 24 pupils and four classes of 28 pupils. What was the total number of pupils involved?
  • A: 184.
  • Q: There were no ” ” remarks at the parents’ evening. Is the missing word:
  • a) dissaproving
  • b) disaproveing
  • c) dissapproving
  • d) disapproving?
  • A: d
  • Q: For a science experiment a teacher needed 95 cubic centimetres of vinegar for each pupil. There were 20 pupils in the class. Vinegar comes in 1,000 cubic centimetre bottles. How many bottles of vinegar were needed?
  • A: 2
  • Q: The children enjoyed the ” ” nature of the task. Is the correct word:
  • a) mathmatical
  • b) mathematical
  • c) mathemmatical
  • d) mathematicall
  • A: b

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Why Our Young Teachers Leave

March 7, 2011

This is a topic I feel very strongly about and it goes to the heart of the future of our educational system.  Our system is not being fair to our young teachers.  The way they are trained and geared towards teaching is horrendous.  The lack of support they receive upon commencing their first job is even worse.  If the Government really cared about teacher shortages and low retention rates they would do something about it.  But the truth is that they are too clueless to think up a decent policy and too inert to care.

As schools grapple with Australia’s teacher shortage, the race to lure more people into the profession has begun. Governments are scrambling to offer scholarships and other incentives to get more students, mature-age graduates and workers in other professions to consider a career in the classroom. The strategy seems to be working, with education authorities reporting a rise in teacher graduate numbers.

In Victoria, more than 4200 people graduated as teachers last year, an extra 400 compared with the previous year. But what if the focus on stimulating teacher supply is the policy version of pouring water into a bucket riddled with holes?

A team of education researchers who have spent the past nine years interviewing teachers think this is the case. They argue that chronic teacher shortages won’t be solved as long as governments keep failing to confront the reasons why large numbers of teachers desert their jobs early.

“Poor pay is not the reason they’re giving for leaving the profession: it’s the workplace issues of highly stressful, poor working conditions,” says Dr Paul Richardson, who has been working with Monash University colleague Dr Helen Watt since 2002 on Australia’s first longitudinal study tracking the experiences of 1650 teachers from the time they started a university education course through their years in the profession. Twenty-seven per cent of those surveyed planned to quit teaching within their first five years of teaching. Dr Richardson says the finding has big implications for governments trying to entice other professionals to switch to teaching. Many of the teacher recruits planning to quit were people who had experience in other professions.

“These were people who had been in business commenting on conditions in their schools by saying, ‘There’s no support, you can’t get any photocopying done, you’ve got to do it all yourself!’

“One guy said: ‘I’ve been a solicitor and now I’ve got a one-metre desk in a staffroom where you can’t think.’ They were totally shocked by the working conditions and the lack of administrative support.”

Between 25 and 40 per cent of teachers leave the profession within five years of starting, according to estimates in numerous surveys by teacher unions and education academics. An accurate national figure is not publicly available because exit statistics are kept and collated differently by individual education authorities in each state and territory.

Of course teachers aren’t leaving because of the pay.  Our future teachers know that the pay isn’t great, and still sign up to join the profession.  Why?  Because they have a devotion to education, to helping our next generations achieve, to making a difference.  But what they don’t bank on is the lack of sufficient training and support they will get along the way.

I went to one of the elite Australian universities, with a highly distinguished Education faculty.  Only problem is, my university, like so many around the world failed to give me the practical insights and methods necessary for doing my job properly.  They were brilliant at filling us up with the theoretical, terrible at preparing us for the day-today issues that face classroom teachers.  Accountants are prepared for their job straight out of Uni, as are doctors, lawyers and architects.  Why can’t teachers go into their profession with the same amount of confidence and practical nous?  And it’s not just the best universities in Australia.  This applies to abroad as well.

As a first year teacher I was on a one-year contract. I had to show competency straight away or risk losing my job and reputation even before my actual degree arrived in the mail.  I couldn’t ask my colleagues too many questions, for I didn’t want to lose confidence in the people who would help decide whether or not I should be retained at the end of the year.

Teaching is a wonderful profession.  And I’m glad that I had the determination and passion to stick through the uncertain times and develop the skills on my own.  But that isn’t going to cut it for all young teachers.  They deserve better practical training and a true support system that watches over them – not to judge them, but to honestly help them.  Teachers wont leave like they are if they feel adequately supported and nurtured.

Governments are dumb when they respond to the problem by making more places for teaching training at University.  The more places they make available, the more teachers scurry away before making any lasting impact in the profession.  Why should anyone be surprised?  How can you sell the profession to our youth, when in reality they face such an uphill battle for acceptance, confidence and job security?

Wouldn’t it be worth investing in support systems and greater practical experience for our young teachers?  Nurture them, assist them, give them the tools and then watch them thrive.

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My Solution to a Major Problem in Education

February 11, 2011

THE PROBLEM

There are two different categories of teacher that are affected by this problem.

Category 1: In my opinion teacher training is ineffective. New teachers don’t get enough practical exposure to the workings of a classroom and do not come fully prepared to deal with the issues that arises when teaching their own class. Because they are new, and yet to earn their stripes they are less comfortable than most to ask for help or seek guidance. They also often begin on trial 1 year contracts, thus pressurising them into showing their worth and instilling confidence in their colleagues. Such a teacher will not want to seem incapable or lacking in proficiency.

Category 2: Many teachers are being roundly criticised at the moment for not performing up to standard. It seems to be in vogue to blame teachers, when in truth there is a lot wrong with education – it isn’t just about the quality of teachers. These teachers do exist and require much more support rather than the threat of being cut and left unemployed.

THE SOLUTION

The solution that I propose is two tiered:

1. Experienced teachers who are deemed to be excelling at a certain standard are offered a mentoring role for higher wages. If accepted to take on that role, these teachers would offer new teachers the chance to spend a few days in their classroom, let them observe their lessons, give them access to the their planning material and be someone out of that teacher’s school environment who can deliver advice and guidance via email and phone. This challenges the mentor teacher to strive in their new position as well as their underling.

2. For the second category of teacher, I recommend that newly retired teachers, who have left the profession with a wealth of knowledge and an eagerness to maintain links with the profession, be paid to mentor and assist teachers who have not been performing at the required benchmarks. Instead of firing teachers in the first instance, I propose that these teachers get the opportunity to improve with a greater deal of support and collaboration.

WHAT THIS SOLUTION ACHIEVES

• Provides the opportunity for excellent teachers to be better paid;

• Allows retired teachers to maintain links with their profession and share their wealth of experience;

• Gives new teachers greater confidence and a non-judgemental mentor who they can approach; and

• Allows teachers currently not working at their premium a second chance that may reinvigorate and refresh them.

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You Don’t Get Elite Teachers with Elitism

February 4, 2011

In my opinion, one of the biggest factors concerning the current failures of our educational system is the inadequate and substandard teacher training programs offered by our Universities.  Not just the minnow Universities but also the elite ones.

The idea proposed by Lord Adonis that every secondary school should have teachers who attended elite universities is not only unworkable but costly and simplistic.

Addressing the Independent Academies Association (IAA) conference in central London, Lord Adonis said: “You need a good mix of teachers, of course, at any successful school, but you cannot be a successful school unless you at least have a certain proportion of your teachers who have themselves come from leading universities in to which you intend to send your best students.”

Lord Adonis warned delegates it would not be possible to transform admissions to top universities “unless you can develop a cadre of teachers in your own schools that have that background themselves.”

I attended one of Australia’s elite Universities and I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that there was precious little that I was taught that was of value to me in the classroom.  From my experience the training of teachers needs an overhaul.  Teaching theory is all well and good but it needs to be complemented with proper practical instruction.  I’ve seen teachers who are more academic  and have sharper intellects than I do, who floundered in the classroom because sometimes all the knowledge in the world on the right and left brain and metacognition can’t help you get through to a hostile or challenging class.

My lecturers were mostly former teachers who left the classroom because they couldn’t manage anymore.  They were a fountain of knowledge when it came to theory, but clearly relieved to be out of the classroom.  Their pearls of wisdom included “Use them or lose them”, concerning the number of paid sick days available to teachers.  Sure, it can be seen as good advice to cash in on your paid sick leave, but it isn’t the positive and responsible message to be sending to future teachers.

Lord Adonis may be right.  Perhaps it is easier to get pupils, particularly those from poorer areas, into top universities when their teachers have studied at those institutions too.  But for my daughter, I am satisfied with a teacher that is caring, dedicated, and prepared to challenge educational norms by experimenting and taking responsible risks.

You don’t need an elite University to educate, prepare and nature an elite teacher.

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Time to Take Better Care of Our New Teachers

January 6, 2011

My school recently employed a teacher straight out of University.  He will commence teaching his first ever class in February.  As I moved out of my classroom, so he could move in, I spotted him staring at the room in adulation.  I asked him what was going through his mind, to which he replied, “This is it.  This is my classroom!”

I know how he feels.  Whilst I was going through the rigours of teaching training, I would drive past schools along the way and be filled with envy at the teachers already able to ply their trade.  I so much wanted to skip the rest of my course and move straight it to my first classroom.  People told me I was an idealist and those feelings towards teaching would erode two weeks into my first school year.  It didn’t.  It still hasn’t.

This leads me to a very important issue.  If young teachers like my colleague have such a love for the craft and such a desire to become effective teachers, why is it so hard for them to get jobs?

I was reading an article which illustrates the plight a teacher has to face, to get their first solid job:

LAST year Melbourne Magazine named teacher Michael Stuchbery one of its top 100 Melburnians for using social media to revolutionise the teaching of civics.

His year 8 students at Caroline Chisholm Catholic College, many of whom previously could not name the electorate in which they lived, transformed into political animals, using blogs and Twitter to follow the federal election, and were interviewed on Channel Ten’s The 7pm Project.

But instead of being rewarded for his innovation, Mr Stuchbery, along with thousands of other Victorian teachers on short-term contracts, is out of a job.

January is a fraught month for teachers employed on fixed-term contracts – about 18 per cent of the workforce – who are faced with job interviews and uncertainty about their future.

”A lot of positions are filled in January, which is why contract teachers are nowhere near the beach right now,” Australian Education Union state president Mary Bluett said.

Annual surveys by the union repeatedly show contract employment is the top reason beginning teachers give for why they do not see themselves teaching in five years.

It took me a year to get my first job.  I had the hunger, the good University grades, I was well read, an excellent communicator – but not what they were looking for.  Each application required extensive responses to a set of about 8 Key selection criteria. It took me a day to respond to each schools criteria (as each school had different selection criteria I couldn’t cut and paste).  Most of those applications didn’t even land me an interview.

Why is this the case?

A number of reasons.

1.  The University training offered is completely and utterly inadequate.  The training is so useless, I can’t recall an important fact or skill I learnt from my training.  Schools know they would be employing a very raw teacher that will require a lot of patience and support.  They are too lazy for such an undertaking.

2. With initiatives like the My School Website which ranks every school against each other on how they perform in the national test, the NAPLAN, schools are careful not to select a teachers they don’t have confidence will show their worth from the outset.  They have their reputation to uphold.

3. Parents tend to be weary when a first-year teacher gets appointed to teach their child, in the same way a patient prefers to see some wrinkles in their surgeon.  Schools like to avoid parent intervention by making safe, low risk choices.

All these factors are completely beyond the prospective new teacher’s control.  They have no say in the strength or weakness of their course, the can’t control Government initiatives like the NAPLAN and My School Website and if a school wants to avoid risk, there is nothing they can do about it.

This reality is a crying shame.  I would have thought that the best, most vibrant staff rooms feature teachers of all ages and experience.  Surely, the horrendous plan to make new teachers “school cloggers” by shipping them off to a under-funded and under-performing rural school is exactly not how to deal with the problem.  The answer is for schools to show some backbone and create a framework where these teachers feel welcome, supported and mentored.

The new teacher that enters their classroom for the first time with a sense of joy and calm.  Isn’t that what it’s all about?

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Education New Years Resolutions

January 2, 2011

These are some New Years resolutions I suggest the Education sector should take on for 2011:

1. Stop Putting Unnecessary Pressure on Teachers – Sure it is important to scrutinise teachers and ensure that poor teachers don’t preside over a classroom.  But if you base whether a teacher is good or otherwise on a test you run the risk of the following consequences:

  • Teachers teach to a test rather than typical authentic teaching
  • Inexperienced teachers will be frightened off from continuing in the profession due to the pressure to perform
  • Teachers will be labelled in a manner we have never seen before
  • Some good teachers will be mistakenly called poor based on circumstances partly beyond their control.

2. Continue Fighting Bullying – 2011 has to be dedicated to making students feel better about school, by striving to create an environment that is tolerant and bully-free.  School cultures must change where necessary.  Exterior programs are fine, but they are often at the mercy of endemic school culture deficiencies.

3. Stop Playing Public and Private Schools Against Each Other – The media has been chipping away at this one.  Comparing public and private schools for funding and achievement can be counter-productive.  Instead of pitting them against each other, Governments should be trying to improve the quality of all sectors for all people.  Let both Public and Private schools flourish.

4. Pressure the Education Union – The Education Union needs to step up and show us they are relevant.  Of late they have come across as pussy cats, giving in to big issues without even a fight.  The rule that all teachers in a school must be Union members before they even consult with the staff about conditions and wages, puts teachers under pressure from colleagues to sign up whether they want to or can afford to.  This is not acceptable.

5. Lessons Must Come Alive – The trend towards direct instruction teaching means lessons are becoming more turgid and less engaging.  Similarly, there needs to be a greater emphasis on problem solving and critical thinking.

6. Forget about the National Curriculum – The draft was a huge disappointment.  New curriculums don’t change outcomes.  Improved conditions and support does.

7. Look After New Teachers – This includes improving the quality of teacher training, which at the moment is not up to scratch.  New teachers require more support.  The idea of filling holes by putting new teachers in remote schools is just the tonic for scaring away potentially phenomenal teachers.  Don’t let them sink or swim, but rather, put structures in place that allows them to be nurtured and supported in the crucial early years.

Please feel free to add some of your own suggestions.

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Teacher Training Fails Us

November 25, 2010

It is my opinion, and I am certainly influenced by my own experience, that teachers are being let down by inadequate and highly pressured teacher training.  I believe that student teachers are not given enough exposure to practical teaching experiences and are left unprepared for the classroom upon entering the profession.

I remember how difficult it was for me to adjust to life as a teacher in the first year in particular.  On only a one-year contract, I felt I couldn’t approach colleagues for advice, because without their respect, I felt I wouldn’t earn a second contract.  Instead I had to work it out on my own, as quickly as possible, to restore the faith my school had in me when they employed me.

I found my University course high on pressure and theory, but low on substance and opportunities to observe teachers and teach classes.  I remember almost having to repeat a full year of the course because I failed an assignment for Sport.  I had to submit a series of lesson plans for Sport (not a discipline I have a passion for).  My lessons were very well-developed – except for one detail that awarded me an automatic fail.  In one of the lessons, I let the students pick the teams themselves.  Whilst I realise that I should have known better, I almost had to repeat the full year (regardless of how well I was doing in other subjects), because I failed that assignment.

That’s why I agree with the submission by Michael Grove in the UK, that plans to shift the focus of teacher training from universities to schools.

It says that “too little teacher training takes place on the job” and proposes the creation of a national network of “teaching schools” based on the model of teaching hospitals.

Mr Gove said that great teaching was a mix of academic and “emotional” intelligence, and working with children and exceptional teachers would enable trainees to grasp this fact.

So many teachers leave the profession because they found it too difficult in the early years.  Others quit during the training period because they are so worn out by assignments and hurdle requirements that have little resemblance to the realities of a classroom.

My advice to teachers in training is to hang tough, get back to the reason why you signed up for this wonderful profession and try to get through.

I feel a lot more confidant in the classroom now.  No thanks to my training though …

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