An eager reader shares a post from Minneapolis high school language arts teacher Ben MacKenzie on how to attract more teachers to K-12 education:
I believe that the next generation of teacher leaders won’t be satisfied with just a bump in salary [Ben MacKenzie, “How to Attract More New Teachers,” MinnPost, 2015.08.28].
No, Lana, don’t stop there. (And remember: conditions may be necessary but not sufficient.) Keep reading:
We want the chance to affect change in our community, to creatively problem-solve, to use our autonomy for our students’ benefit, and to engage socially with everyone around us [MacKenzie, 2015.08.28].
MacKenzie says we engage teachers through the Minneapolis school system’s Community Partnership Schools:
Community Partnership Schools embrace the philosophy that school culture should be built on the existing foundation of community support through dialogue, design and innovation shared among professional educators, families, and neighborhood leaders. Even the most tireless teachers know that collaborating with an existing support network will trump the best efforts to manufacture such support. Moreover, this integrated collection of voices will more effectively influence student success than teachers operating in isolation. The embedded social aspects of this design should appeal to new graduates looking for careers, rather than just jobs, and all teachers will benefit from listening to and speaking with community members.
To create better and more responsive schools, and to recruit and retain more educators, we have to make teaching more than instruction and assessment. For too long teacher voice has been missing from policy-making. Community Partnership Schools aim to amplify forgotten voices, creating reforms built on the advice of parents, community leaders, and classroom teachers. By inviting teacher-driven ideas for innovation at CPS sites and creating leadership roles for teachers on the CPS Advisory Committee, both Minneapolis Public Schools and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers have boosted the role teachers play in creating change [MacKenzie, 2015.08.28].
What? Involve teaches in policy-making? That could take some revolutionary thinking in South Dakota state government, which has marginalized teachers in most policy discussions, including the current Blue Ribbon K-12 funding summer study.
The ability to collaborate in setting real policy would give teachers a sense of control over their destiny. But I’ll maintain that South Dakota is short on teachers for much more fundamental reasons: we’re squeezing our teachers for a couple-three months of free work, work for which Minneapolis and other school systems would pay them fairly. Raise pay first to square accounts; then we can talk about new models of local school governance to capitalize on teacher expertise.
I have no arguments with the need for a respectful and economically sufficient pay raise. But being treated with respect goes a long way in creating an effective work environment. The more stake any worker has in the results, the better those results will be. That bit of knowledge is nothing new. In fact, first-rate employers have incorporated the respect bit pretty much forever. What kind of employer does that make SD?
(While the state government does not directly employ teachers, they have control and overarching influence over schools. The Koch/Republican government is the employer in every way but hiring and writing the individual checks.)
When I was in high school, the superintendent of schools had his office in the building. And the head of the English Department, Ella Cockrell, patrolled the halls greeting students and keeping order. One morning as we were coming in the building to begin the day, her stentorian voice rang through the hall, “Just a minute there, young man. I want to talk to you.” Every boy in the hallway paused to receive her reproach for something. But she was talking to the superintendent who was on his way to his office. She registered an objection to how he represented the teachers and students before the school board the previous evening. We heard him say, “Yes, ma’am. I’ll see that it is taken care of.”
That was back when school boards regarded their function to be a conduit between the public and the professional school staffs. Most changes in curriculum and teaching strategies originated with the teachers. Those that didn’t had to have teacher approval before they were implemented. And the job of principals and superintendents was to represent the staffs to the boards, not merely to enforce orders given them by the boards of education.
The Community Partnership is how things were done before the boards decided they were corporate-like boards of directors rather than representatives of the public.
David, fascinating: the Community Partnership isn’t an innovation; it’s a return to how things used to be. :-)
Deb, your comment and this CPS idea remind legislators that this “respect for teachers” that bubbled out of the Blue Ribbon listening sessions requires far more than lip service. It requires integration of real respect for teacher expertise and autonomy into every aspect of school operations.
The Mindset List of 2015 is out. Enjoy, use, modify it to apply to your work (students, their parents, peers/seniors/subordinates of different decades, your legislators, etc.) Examples: for college freshmen this fall: hybrid cars have always been mass produced; Google always existed; they never licked a postage stamp; WI-FI is an entitlement; etc.
The Mindset List of 2015 for the Class of 2019: https://www.beloit.edu/mindset/2019/
The 5-minute rationale: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd5KVtyNp2A
The Guide: https://www.beloit.edu/mindset/guides/
Well, you check out the Minneapolis schools website and the Community Partnership Schools lists just four schools in the program. Each school is focusing on a different approach to school improvement. This is a good pilot program and maybe will show the way to go in the future, but it’s not much more than a research effort at this point.
One concern a school board would have is that you could end up with schools that are unequal in resources or outcomes, and you become subject to lawsuits. You really have to have buy-in from all stakeholders, especially parents and the teachers’ union, and you might need a lot of data to make sure things don’t go off the rails. That probably means even more standardized testing.
I always found teachers reluctant to give their opinion to school board members. I had a number of personal friends who taught in the Rapid City schools, so I had a good pipeline into how many teachers felt, but you could never get teachers to speak up on the record at school board meetings. Union reps would sometimes give opinions, but their main concern was maintaining the terms of the contract. They didn’t want to venture into what they viewed as “management.” On my time on the board, board members actually went around to schools to hold some listening sessions with teachers at their schools, but few teachers would attend and speak out. Maybe they didn’t want the principals to know they were speaking out on issues that might be too close to home. Generally, principals want to deal with issues in their schools and want the school board to butt out. And, really, that’s why we hire principals.
Wapo has a great article on the teacher shortage, which is generally nationwide. I’ll give you a quote that summarizes it, and the link.
“If we are to turn this trend around, we need to act now to not only stop the attacks on teachers and tenure, but to stop evaluation systems designed to fire teachers based on metrics that no one understands. And we cannot forget that pay and working conditions matter. It should also come as no surprise that in states that pay teachers relatively well like New York State, the shortage does not yet exist.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/08/24/the-real-reasons-behind-the-u-s-teacher-shortage/?tid=trending_strip_4
Donald captures the reasons I might hesitate to leap into a Community Partnership School. I really don’t want to spend an hour a week in meetings doing “management.” I just want to teach. I want “management” to create a positive environment in which I am free to teach, just as my job is to create a positive environment in which students are free to learn. I want autonomy within my classroom, respect for my ability as a professional to do the right thing for my students. I’m not as eager to exercise my autonomy in trying to figure out operating procedures for everyone else’s classrooms.
Deb, good article. Valerie Strauss there suggests that we need to stay off the wild reform/accountability merry-go-round and trust teachers.