Do We Need Principals?

Tonight during an #edchat on Twitter, the group was discussing leadership in education. Partially joking, but with some level of honest curiosity I sent the follow tweet out:

I got some initial kick back that schools certainly need a principal and could not imagine functioning without. I poked back as a means to stretch my own thinking and not necessarily to be perceived as an anti-administration rant. With that being said, here are a few of the arguments that came out and some of my initial thoughts.

“We need principals for discipline.”

This bothers me a little bit, because I always thought of discipline as a teacher’s job. Now, there are certainly times when things escalate and you need to bring in the “big guns” or reinforcements. My own school has three administrators and a school resource officer (school police). They are called in to deescalate situations and in some cases remove students from the classroom. My question is, why does this have to be the role of the administration? Can we not create a disciplinary advisory committee of sorts that handles this? What about this committee being teachers who are trained in such situations and provide that support? This group could also be the one that makes collective decisions on actions taken in terms of consequences and next steps.

“Someone has to do the schedules and plan the meetings.”

Let’s be honest, most of the meetings we attend are a waste of our collective time and only exist for the sake of saying they exist. A fair amount of the information in our meetings could be disseminated in a brief email. In terms of the schedules, I think we could again utilize a small group of teachers who are good at that sort of thing. I work with a woman that does all of the scheduling for our team’s special days and testing days. She has a brain that works that way and does it very well. Why can we not just tap these people to do this?

“We need administrators to evaluate the teachers.”

Yet again, why does this have to be an administrator job? Yes, I understand that teachers need to be evaluated and that often impacts if people keep their jobs or in some cases their pay. However, this model does not actually promote what it should, which is improved teaching and learning. When teachers are evaluated by administrators that are not practicing teachers, it is difficult to value their insight. On the other hand, if a peer observes and provides feedback that comes from a place of credibility and in most cases more honesty. Why can we not create a culture of openness and reflection where peer feedback is part of the norm? If that were the case, would we still need administrator evaluations?

Now, I am not an administrator and don’t even play one on TV. My opinions are completely based on my own experiences with administrators and the experiences of those I have talked with about the topic. I know there are many more things that administrators do that is not mentioned in this post and I am not exactly advocating that we do away with them completely. I am just wondering if there is a better way. The best administrators I know miss the classroom and the teaching. If you talk to teachers describe the worst administrators they often talk about how out of touch they are and not connected to what is really going on in the building. Would all of these problems be solved if schools were self-governed by the teachers in the building? Could we indicate a small handful of “go-to people” in times of emergency like the early days of the Roman Republic? I anticipate I will reflect more on this, but would love to hear your thoughts…can a school function without an administrator? 

We Are Not Newsworthy...

In the past year I have had my fair share of press related to some recognition I have received. I won't post anything here...but google me if you want to know. ;) A majority of it has been in the form of local newspaper articles or online blurbs. While it has been nice, it is not something I sought out or was initially comfortable with. I am nothing special and know plenty of amazing teachers that are far more worthy than I. That being said, I have embraced it recently as a way to tell my story and more importantly the story of teachers and students that don’t get that chance.

Back in March, I attended my state technology conference and stepped in on a media roundtable. Sitting at this table was a key reporter from the four major TV networks in the Chicago market; NBC, CBS, FOX, and ABC. All of these individuals sat and told really nice stories about how they had some personal connection to the teaching profession and unanimously professed their love of the teaching profession. However, they all admitted none of their networks had an education reporter on staff. They went on to say they want teachers to bring stories to them so they can run some “good press” on behalf of teachers. Well, personally, I think it is garbage that we have to bring them a story…isn’t that their job? Regardless, I walked away thinking I would try to bring them some stories and shed some rare positive media light on teachers and education.

Last month I was invited to Washington DC to attend a ceremony at the White House, meet President Obama, visit with Jill Biden and a whole host of other activities. Personally, I thought a teacher getting to meet the President of the United States was a newsworthy item. Let's be honest, regardless of how you feel about the man, this is an honor few ever get. I was really looking forward to sharing my experience as well as how my students are truly the ones that got me to where I am. So, I emailed every single one of the reporters that sat at that media round table…crickets…eventually one of them replied to tell me they were “passing it on”. I even sent another email to members of each of their staff and again heard from just one with the “pass it on” line. To this day, I have yet to hear from any of these reporters that claim to love teachers and want to share the good word. Needless to say, I was frustrated by this. I was hand delivering a positive story and getting nowhere.

My frustration boiled over even further when I was actually in Washington DC having breakfast with all the other State Teachers of the Year. We were eating together and awaiting the first live TV interview with Rebecca, who was just named the National Teacher of the Year. I honestly don’t recall which network was doing the interview but I remember distinctly what they did leading up to her interview. As they were announcing her coming to be interviewed, they ran a promo for an upcoming story on a teacher that fired a cap gun off in a classroom. Here we were about to celebrate one of the great teachers in our country, and the network decided to take a cheap shot and put a story about an ignorant teacher in first. To me this pretty much sums up our media’s perception and priorities in terms of education.

We live in a country where the profession of teaching is rarely viewed as a profession. Teachers have come under fire in more places than we can even begin to count. This perception is largely due to a few bad apples that get all the attention. As with most things in our society, the media truly shapes popular opinion. Yes, I understand that we as teachers can blog, tweet, connect and share our own stories. I also understand that the mass media is in the business of making money and nice stories of great teachers doesn’t make great news. However, I can’t help but feel an intense level of frustration towards media who even to my face say they care for teachers when they clearly do not back that up. When was the last time you watched the news and heard a good story about teachers?

For fear of this post being a complete rant, I wonder what we can do as teachers to establish ourselves as a profession and change the public perception of teaching. How did teaching become an elevated status in other societies around the world? Does the media play a part in that or is it unfair to expect them to help?  

Rules...are for the Teachers...

This afternoon I spent a portion of a staff PD day discussing our school rules and potential changes for next year. We went over the usual suspect; gum chewing, cell phones and dress code. The discussion was heated as it usually is when it comes to things that people feel strongly on. Myself, I want kids to be able to use cell phones in class, but there are many that want them completely banned. Gum chewing is the same way in that I don’t care if kids chew it in my class. There is plenty of research indicating the positive effects of gum chewing on concentration and focus. Yet, because it is a school rule, I enforce it in my classroom and don’t allow it to be chewed.

After all this discussion, I headed home and started to think about the whole process and had a bit of an epiphany. None of these discussions or potential rule changes had to do with student behavior but rather on staff behavior. Let me explain…

The gum chewing conversation came about because many teachers were not enforcing the rule and some sit in front of their class chewing it themselves. Yes, I realize gum chewing is not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. However, if it is a school rule it must be enforced universally or it causes confusion among students and pits teachers against each other. I am labeled a “mean teacher” if I follow the rule we have in our handbook when others are not. So, this rule discussion was really not about kids chewing gum, but more about teacher’s enforcing a rule or not.

When looking at the cell phone policy, it is again more about the staff than the students. Anyone with half a brain knows the potential power of a cell phone in terms of a learning tool in a classroom. For resource strapped schools, these phones are mini-computers in kid’s hands. Why would we not want a kid to be able to pull out a phone and in seconds be connected and pulling information they need? Yet, this rule is not about that. It is about those staff members that are not willing to a) actively monitor their classrooms if students are using them and b) not willing to teach digital citizenship through their use. We are so afraid of a student doing something “bad” with a cell phone that we miss learning opportunities. Yes, kids could take pictures and post them on Facebook of themselves and friends doing silly things in the back of your class. I would argue that is a reflection of the teacher as much as the student.

On a total sidebar, I laugh at the number of teachers who are constantly on their cell phones during school hours texting, emailing, updating status and playing games right in front of the students. What message does that send the kids when the staff won’t even follow the rules set for the students?

Many of the other rules we discussed in the open forum had similar themes. More than once I heard, “it is too hard to enforce that rule.” I heard very few people mention what was in the best interest of the student’s and their learning environment. It may just be me, but I saw evidence that many of my school’s rules were a product of not keeping kids safe or protecting the learning environment. What I did see was rules being created because teachers were afraid to step up and enforce existing rules, or to step up and recognize learning opportunities and not punishment opportunities.

I wonder how many schools have rules established for the sake of the adults rather than for the sake of the kids. 

Cruise Control

As the end of the year nears it is very tempting to hit the "cruise control" button. It is easy to pop that VHS in, hit play and let the remaining minutes pass by in a stream of mono-toned narrations and antiquated special effects. Many of us will check out the laptop cart or hit the computer lab and assign our students to create "big projects" that are busy work masked in PowerPoint slides, driveling essays or elaborate posters. Instead, let us finish the year as strong as we started and not hit the cruise control button...our kids deserve better.

Kids will feed off our attitude and if we expect the best from them, then we must give them the best of us.