New Terrain

I know the magic bullet to closing the achievement gap is having and keeping great teachers in the classroom. But I also know that the fastest way to lose someone away is to force them to do something.

I wrote this article, Growing School Leaders, months ago about a professional development model new principal Natalie Basham is using to meet the needs of both her students and staff.

I hijacked a class I was supposed to be observing yesterday. I couldn’t help it. I may have left my job as a special educator last summer to become a program director for Teach For America to build my educational management skills, but I still love teaching.

It’s a dilemma many ambitious educators face: to continue teaching the students they love and hone their craft as educators, or try to move to the next level in school management and have a broader impact. For many teachers like myself, this means going beyond being named department head or grade-team leader; we are looking for roles in which we can move beyond our own classroom walls, influence instruction, and create change in school systems.

Basically, at the risk of sounding spoiled, we want it all. And we don’t necessarily want to wait 20 years for our turn. In other fields, especially in business, exceptional employees with a history of exemplary effectiveness—regardless of the number of years of experience—are given promotions and more influential assignments. Why shouldn’t this happen in schools?

Well, in fact, in some spots around the country, it is starting to happen. In an effort to provide more instructional support, as well as build a pipeline of future school leaders, some administrators are trying a grow-your-own approach.

Take Natalie Basham, principal of the IDEA Academy and College Preparatory Mission in Mission, Texas, a charter school that is scheduled to open in fall 2008. Basham’s school is part of the IDEA Public Schools in the Rio Grande Valley, a charter network whose central mission is to prepare low-income students to succeed at four-year colleges. As a key part of the school’s instructional program, Basham has created a layered staffing and support system for teachers.

As Basham hires her team of 13 teachers for the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade classes, she is strategically selecting certain individuals to hold a dual role as instructional coaches. While the coaches will continue to teach, they will have fewer classes than other teachers in order to build in time for their mentoring role. In this position, their responsibilities expand to include observing other teachers, providing one-on-one feedback, data-based problem solving, and developing professional development action plans—that is, much of the clinical training principals, professional development directors, and administrators take on in most schools.

What stands out are the kinds of educators Basham has hired to join her in this critical role. The teacher-coaches’ experience level ranges from 2 years to 20-plus years. All are exemplary teachers with proven leadership skills and the ability to analyze instruction and data. Only one has held a formal school leadership role before. None have administrative degrees.

But based on the teachers’ previous work with students, adults, and data, Basham says she is confident she can train them to have the necessary management, support, and analysis skills to become instructional coaches.

“I believe I can train people to be leaders. I have trained people to do it,” Basham, a former Teach For America teacher and program director, explained. In addition to running the school and working with teachers, she will also provide direct management training and support to her coaches. “It’s what I would have liked,” she notes.

But why give standout teachers leadership skills that may ultimately take them out of the classroom? For Basham, it’s about providing an embedded support system and attracting ambitious educators in order to create a dynamic academic climate for students. “My primary goal is not about retaining teachers,” she says.”It’s about maximizing student achievement.”

“My responsibility is to develop teachers’ leadership,” she adds. “I want the best [for my teachers], whether I’m included or not, because they’re the ones teaching and leading the students in the classroom. It’s high stakes. We gotta get kids ready for college.”

Posted by Jessica Shyu at 12:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I wrote this for Teacher Magazine's new discussion forum. Join in on the talk and copy some titles down for the next Amazon order!

Decoding

This book, Teaching Phonics And Word Study In The Intermediate Grades, lit the light at the end of the tunnel for me in my first year of teaching middle school special ed. For someone who managed to inpsire friends and family to donate over 1,000 books over two years to my classroom, it's pretty embarassing to admit that for the first two months, my reading class consisted of students rolling around the floor and listening blankly to my explanations of prefixes and root words. None of kiddos could decode words at the third grade level and most didn't know what a long-a sound made. It was bad and I didn't have a concrete way to break down basic decoding instruction. Then I went to a fabulous Teach For America session where I was introduced to the wonderful world of chunking, prefixes and sight words. This is a great book for those looking for a ground-up way to teach decoding to older students. The lists of high-frequency words, most common roots/prefixes/suffixes, and chunking examples are great lists to photocopy for student centers.

Behavior Management

Hitting, yelling, profanity, sexual harassment, truancy and refusal to do anything at all, etc., are common problems all teachers face and have to learn to control in their own classroom. Be consistent. Have explicit expectations. Follow through. Fine. Done. I learned quickly, however, that the real problem with behavior management happened outside of my classroom, and at first, seemingly out of my control. When a 11-year-old attacks another student in my classroom and threatens everyone else, that wasn't quite something I could contain with a phone call home. The problem was that there were no clear school policies, and rarely an administrator available to uphold any logical policies we devised. As a result, students learned quickly that few consequences would be upheld outside of the teachers' classroom (in cases where the teachers actually upheld consequences, of course). I couldn't stand the chaos and anarchy by January. Luckily I wasn't the only one. I teamed up with the dorm counselor (my dear, dear friend Dawn), and a bunch of teachers ready to make changes, and we initiated the Positive Behavior Intervention Supports program in our school. It wasn't easy-- it took much cajoling of the school board and principals for their financial and professional support and it's still a struggle to get teacher, family and student buy-in-- but the infrastructure was developed, we started the program and we can be proud to say that we didn't just sit around and complain-- we initiated change. Change can be slow, but the impact is there. Shout out to Dr. Frankland of Western New Mexico University for introducing it to me and the rest of her management class!

Differentiating Novels

It wasn't exactly a book for teaching, but it was a lifesaver when it came to teaching special ed and differentiating effectively in reading class. I am a huge fan of Barnes and Noble's abridged copies of classic novels. With these leveled books(Tom Sawyer at 2nd-3rd, 3rd-4th, and 5th-6th grade levels), my students with disabilities ranging from mild learning disabilities to mental retardation were able to engage in tear-jerkingly high level discussions about race, author's purpose and morality.

At the same time, these kids were incredibly invested in deeply understanding literature they knew college students read. They began discussing these high level concepts outside of class to impress their general ed peers. And impress them they did. Talk about developing life skills. Alas, I only did this my second year of teaching. But their end-of-year gift and summer reading assignment? Huckleberry Finn at their appropriate reading level. I have never seen so many teenagers cradle their Mark Twain novels like they did with their PS3's (or whatever kids call those newfangled toys these days).

Add your favorite teaching books to the discussion at The Best Books on Teaching.

Posted by Jessica Shyu at 7:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As an eduholic, I obsess over education and I'm angry about the achievement gap. And when I'm obsessed over something I'm angry about (imagine ex-boyfriends, people who don't use their turn signals, and the achievement gap) I tend to become more emotional and less logical. (Imagine vengeful emails, excessive honking, and getting angry at anyone who isn't a teacher .)

There was a time (and sometimes there still is) when I feel holier than thou and act as if anyone who doesn't dedicate their life and paycheck to closing the education gap only makes it wider. It's easy to feel all alone in this big, wide capitalistic reality. There have been times when I felt a tinge of martyrdom for my decision to work in education when my friends have chosen more lucrative careers as i-bankers, lawyers and doctors. Can you believe it? Doctors save lives and I dare feel like a martyr?!

As an obsessive and angry person when it comes to the achievement gap, I've learned to check my biases frequently so I don't say stupid things like above. But more importantly, I've learned to check my biases about people not in the business of education because getting them in on this mission is the only way the achievement gap can close on such a broad scale. I know that great classroom teaching is the cornerstone to closing the gap, but I also know that every single person in the village has a responsibility and the tools to close the gap, whether they're a teacher, a nurse or an i-banker. The bad news is that a whole lot of people still don't believe that it's their problem or that all children can learn or that they as non-traditional educators can do anything to help. The good news is that I am confident we all know people out there who are already doing it.

Need proof or just a pick-me-up to counteract your obsessiveness and anger over the state of society? Poets, editors and playwrights in New York City are closing the gap outside of schools by doubling as mentors to girls from disadvantaged backgrounds to help develop them as writers and leaders.

In the after-school scene at a Florida high school where "just graduate" is more heavily emphasized than "go to college," a group of students are changing their futures by designing a prep course and teaching each other. The founder of this after-school group? Sixteen-year-old junior William Scott who didn't allow his age and lack of teacher training keep him from having a hand in closing the achievement gap.

And let's not forget about the people who are closing the gap by getting kids to school safely to even start learning. After 32 school-age children in Chicago were killed last year in their own neighborhoods, Deverra Beverly, a community activist, pulled together parents and community leaders to form an escort service to help protect kids crossing gang territory as they went to and from school. Ms. Beverly and the others are most likely not teachers in the traditional sense, but they're making sure we're not alone in closing the achievement gap.

Posted by Jessica Shyu at 2:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

'Tis the season for state testing once again, and Texas is no exception. The next wave of TAKS exams are coming up in another week and a half, and my teachers are scrambling, and their students are scrambling, so therefore, I am scrambling along with them. My apologies for not posting earlier.

Over the past few weeks, I noticed a number of comments, some accusatory, other curious, about why I (and others) left the classroom to take on other roles in the field. This is a perennial question with no right answer. While I found myself tired of being asked, the more I pondered about it driving from school to school to meet teachers, the more deeply I felt about my personal decision to leave room B-2 on the Navajo Nation after two years of working as a special educator.

It breaks my heart to field phone calls from former students considering dropping out, and it's a bittersweet feeling when 16-year-olds write me letters using the exact sentence construction techniques we had worked for months on. If I stayed for another year, another decade, imagine all the children I would have had an impact on (hopefully positive). Imagine the years of reading growth, writing rubric improvement, and social skills development. Imagine what it would have been like if I could have been one "outsider" teacher who didn't leave the kids after a year or two.

These were all things I considered, but didn't truly feel, when I made my decision to take on the position as a program director helping develop new teachers in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. I cried and I said my good-byes and I mailed math homework over the summer. But it wasn't until I got a phone call in November from a former colleague who mentioned in passing that one of my most severely disabled students, both physically and mentally, wasn't getting any educational services because the new teacher hadn't figured out how to fit him in her schedule. Last year, he learned to count money, grew by three levels of comprehension and could read over 25 life skills words-- after starting from zero with each thing.

I was enraged. I called the school, sent resources to the teacher, he's getting classes now, but mostly, I questioned my decision to leave. I was tempted to quit my job right then, which I felt like I was lousy at anyway. And I felt guilty. I felt guilty, guilty, guilty about dipping out of the front lines and taking a "cushy administrative position" instead.

Well, the "cushy administrative" notion gave me a quick laugh since I was logging an average of 90-hours a week and spending most of that time working directly with teachers or on teacher stuff (imagine a dean of instruction whose job is to entirely to take care of getting their 30 teachers to teach better-- that's my job.)

But the guilt stayed. It faded from time to time as I saw my teachers grow and improve, and as I grew to enjoy my work, but a bit of it stayed. It stayed because part of me always wondered if I'd have been better for education in general if I, and so many of my colleagues who've left the classroom, stayed.

One Saturday morning after meeting with one of my teachers, I casually mentioned this guilt I always feel. And she looked at me in amusement and awe. "In the time that it took you to show me how to write my lesson plans this way, you just helped improve my teaching," she said. "And that's going to have an effect on 150 kids. Multiply that by 30 teachers. That's 4,500 kids you're helping. Why are you feeling guilty again??"

That made me realize the guilt I felt wasn't about leaving the classroom, it was about doing something instead that wasn't worth leaving all my Elroy's, Alvin's and Jenny's back in New Mexico. When cast in that light, I didn't feel an ounce of guilt-- the dramatic growth I've seen and had a hand in with so many of my teachers has made it all worth it. So, no, there is no "right" answer for why people leave the teaching profession. But there's also no guilt in it if it was worth it.

(Note: The argument that all good teachers should stay in the classroom is rather preposterous to me. Yes, it's sad to see a great classroom instructor leave the front of the room, but it seems silly to demand people stay in a role when they want to work in a different capacity. One can only hope it's still working toward the same goal of student achievement. Otherwise we'll just end up with a whole lot of professionally-dissatisfied good teachers! And I've always argued that I would prefer having a good and motivated teacher teach for just two years than a mediocre teacher teach for 20. Naive, perhaps, but this is what principals have told me time and time again.)

Posted by Jessica Shyu at 12:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)