Twice this week my heart was broken by teachers. Twice in the same day, actually. Twice the same hour.
It was PLC Monday, early release day, the day we send our students home one hour early so teachers have time and opportunity to meet in small Professional Learning Communities to discuss data and progress on SMART goals, RTI, MTSS, or other arrangements of the alphabet soup of educational reform. As Director of Teaching & Learning for the school district, I was making the rounds, talking and listening with teachers in their PLC groups about whatever it is they had to say. I love this time of talking and listening, and especially listening. If I have learned anything in my twenty four years in this business, it's that teachers are the best teachers of other teachers, and the best teachers are always teaching. If I want to be good at my job, it starts with being good at listening.
So this week I made it to two PLCs, and listening to teachers broke my heart a little each stop.
At the first PLC I listened to teachers talk about upcoming professional development and aspirations for curriculum development and invigoration, and one teacher said, with all the sobriety of a doctor delivering the bad news, that we have to keep our aspirations in check because they may be too much for our kids. "We have to see if this can really work for our kids." This was a coded way to say "I don't believe my kids can succeed at this."
At the second PLC stop a teacher described the difficulty he was having moving students through a curricular objective to higher levels of achievement. His assessment of the problem was that it was beyond the reach of most of his students; after all, he reasoned, how can kids missing basic skills reach higher levels of thought. It was just another way of saying "let's keep the expectations low."
I believe so much in the power of teachers to do good: to transform lives and help students lift themselves to places they couldn't go otherwise, that I find these attitudes especially destructive. Teachers can also do the opposite of good, when the impact they have on students is defined by limits they have for students, preconceived notions about what students can be. Research is clear on the negative power of low expectations, and the positive power of high expectations and belief in the ability of all kids to learn. It's not new research. But still...here we go again.
I had the opportunity to be humbled by the challenge of teaching recently when I did a two-week stint teaching eighth grade social studies full time for a teacher out on maternity leave. I came in the big bad administrator in charge of teaching and learning in my district, a confluence of neck tie and grey beard meeting under a couple of comfortable chins, and within five minutes of my first period on the first day of teaching, the students reminded me how little anything I had ever done mattered prior the bell ringing that morning. One good eye roll from a disinterested student had more power than every framed piece of paper nailed to the wall of my office. I had to earn their attention and engagement, and I had to dust the cobwebs out of my teaching chops. By the end of that first day, I was a first-year teacher again, and I had to scrap my good intentions and plan to teach the kids in front of me, not the ideal kids I had in mind when I designed the lesson, or the kids I taught back in the late 1990's when I was in my prime. I had to roll up my sleeves and meet these kids where they were with what they needed from me. And by the end of the first day I knew I had not entered the classroom with any idea of what that might be, but I had to figure it out, and quick.
The deal with the devil was right in front of me, and I could have taken it and blown through my two weeks with no real problems. The kids wanted to make the deal with me that is at the meeting place of teachers and students every day in every classroom, the crossroads on the way to hell. They were offering me the "we'll leave you alone if you leave us alone" deal. The terms are understood: Don't expect too much. Don't pry. Don't get personal. Don't ask us to read more than a few glances at the surface of a text. Don't ask us to write. At all. Just don't. In return, we won't make it hard for you. This deal is the same one that makes it possible for students and teachers to mostly avoid one another in the classroom, for both to send salvos of minimal effort across the battle lines, to call it good enough.
I won't lie and say I was completely successful in my short teaching gig, but I didn't take the deal. I worked hard, and asked them to read and write and talk and share and get personal, and I had some real challenges and a couple of complete belly flops. But on the last day of my two-week gig, I stood in front of the same kids, joking, laughing with them, telling them I had enjoyed the time and that I would miss them. I meant it. That same girl with the professional eye roll held out her knuckles for me to bump, and I wish I could hang that moment on my wall as a real measure of my bonafides.
The two teachers who broke my heart with their attitudes were reading from the fine print in the deal they made with the devil of good enough. Their kids deserve better than the road to hell, paved with the good intentions of teachers who dare not expect too much.
I believe so much in the power of teachers to do good: to transform lives and help students lift themselves to places they couldn't go otherwise, that I find these attitudes especially destructive. Teachers can also do the opposite of good, when the impact they have on students is defined by limits they have for students, preconceived notions about what students can be. Research is clear on the negative power of low expectations, and the positive power of high expectations and belief in the ability of all kids to learn. It's not new research. But still...here we go again.
I had the opportunity to be humbled by the challenge of teaching recently when I did a two-week stint teaching eighth grade social studies full time for a teacher out on maternity leave. I came in the big bad administrator in charge of teaching and learning in my district, a confluence of neck tie and grey beard meeting under a couple of comfortable chins, and within five minutes of my first period on the first day of teaching, the students reminded me how little anything I had ever done mattered prior the bell ringing that morning. One good eye roll from a disinterested student had more power than every framed piece of paper nailed to the wall of my office. I had to earn their attention and engagement, and I had to dust the cobwebs out of my teaching chops. By the end of that first day, I was a first-year teacher again, and I had to scrap my good intentions and plan to teach the kids in front of me, not the ideal kids I had in mind when I designed the lesson, or the kids I taught back in the late 1990's when I was in my prime. I had to roll up my sleeves and meet these kids where they were with what they needed from me. And by the end of the first day I knew I had not entered the classroom with any idea of what that might be, but I had to figure it out, and quick.
The deal with the devil was right in front of me, and I could have taken it and blown through my two weeks with no real problems. The kids wanted to make the deal with me that is at the meeting place of teachers and students every day in every classroom, the crossroads on the way to hell. They were offering me the "we'll leave you alone if you leave us alone" deal. The terms are understood: Don't expect too much. Don't pry. Don't get personal. Don't ask us to read more than a few glances at the surface of a text. Don't ask us to write. At all. Just don't. In return, we won't make it hard for you. This deal is the same one that makes it possible for students and teachers to mostly avoid one another in the classroom, for both to send salvos of minimal effort across the battle lines, to call it good enough.
I won't lie and say I was completely successful in my short teaching gig, but I didn't take the deal. I worked hard, and asked them to read and write and talk and share and get personal, and I had some real challenges and a couple of complete belly flops. But on the last day of my two-week gig, I stood in front of the same kids, joking, laughing with them, telling them I had enjoyed the time and that I would miss them. I meant it. That same girl with the professional eye roll held out her knuckles for me to bump, and I wish I could hang that moment on my wall as a real measure of my bonafides.
The two teachers who broke my heart with their attitudes were reading from the fine print in the deal they made with the devil of good enough. Their kids deserve better than the road to hell, paved with the good intentions of teachers who dare not expect too much.
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