Opinion

A Tyee Series

We Can Teach Teachers Better

Pro-D workshops aren't enough. It takes expert mentoring, teamwork and sweat. Fifth in a Tyee reader-funded series.

By Nick Smith, 16 Sep 2008, TheTyee.ca

Kit Grauer

UBC's Kit Grauer: 'Sponsor teachers' are key. Photo by Christopher Grabowski.

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Teaching that Inspires

Because I'm a teacher, people often tell me about their school years. They never mention the state of the equipment, course selection or educational policy at the time. They want to talk about their teachers: the approachable art teacher who did the graffiti project, or the primary teacher who held the year-end party at her house. Anyone with a good education likely has stories to tell of the teachers who made that happen.

Although we like to think of our most beloved teachers as naturals at their trade, truth is, effective teachers are well-trained. Stanford education professor Linda Darling-Hammond confirms this. "Teachers who have the best effect on student learning are well trained in educational methods". And, "the most effective teachers have had the most recent training with opportunities for ongoing professional development."

Pretty straightforward. Train teachers well, then make sure that they stay on top of their game.

Nevertheless, this is not always as easy as it sounds. Teacher training is complex; it involves a lot of steps with a host of dynamics to be taken into account. Simply put, there are just so many places for things to go wrong, from lousy practicum placements, to the isolation of the first job, right through not having enough time to keep up with best practices because that stack of papers ain't marking itself. In order to see how things do go right, it might be worth backing up to see how the whole system hangs in balance.

Why old ways win out

Our teacher education programs are great for creating a stable system with high standards, yet it is this strength that we struggle against if we are to embark on a path of school reform that allows for flexibility and innovation. Using the methods to teach the methods creates a closed loop. It is like the proverbial axe that is used to carve a new axe handle, using the old one as a model. The challenge is to create new tools using the old ones, with no pattern near at hand.

I recently discussed this conundrum with Dr. Kit Grauer, a UBC education professor who has placed many student teachers in my classes. We both agree that the universities are teaching the latest and best methods to a crew of highly skilled, intelligent young people. Once they get into the schools, however, they rarely find newer methods enacted. Grauer articulates, "It is a huge problem, the divide between practicum and school enculturation which goes against the most progressive ideas in education." No matter what is taught on campus, pre-service teachers, "trust the experience of the school," she admits.

In all likelihood, student teachers also wake up to the fact that innovative teaching is a lot of work. Reading the chapter aloud then assigning the questions is a whole lot easier than having students collaborate on dynamic projects that require them to personally relate to a topic. It is also less effort to just do what your sponsor teacher would have done, instead of challenging trusted methods with the new-fangled ones coming down from some professors on the hill.

Rather than making waves by swimming against the current, student teachers wisely invest their efforts into getting along with the sponsor teacher. "All the research indicates that the number one factor influencing the outcome of a teacher's training is the relationship with the sponsor teacher," Grauer tells me. "That is key."

Let's train master mentors

In recognizing this vital point in teacher preparation, Grauer puts effort into developing long term relationships with teachers with whom she knows she would like to place practicum students. In doing so, she is an exception whose example should be followed.

Aside from fostering connections with exemplary teachers, universities might do well to train them in mentoring methods. Between SFU and UBC, I have now sponsored 14 student teachers, but never have I been offered anything resembling training in how to improve in my ability to mentor a pre-service teacher, nor have I been evaluated on my capacity to do so, a serious shortcoming if you are asking. I suppose that there is an assumption that if you can teach, you can teach how to teach, but I am not so sure about that.

Not long after my conversation with Dr. Grauer, I was reading an article about the miracles accomplished in Finnish schools, when a detail piqued my interest. The article discusses a "model campus" for children aged seven through 15, "which is run like a teaching hospital," where instructors can view student teachers "from the sidelines" as they help pupils. The benefits of such a system seem immediately apparent. University professors could concentrate their attention on developing long term relationships with just a few schools where all teachers could be trained in mentoring student teachers. Models of best practices could be fully implemented at schools where teachers are trained, breaking the cycle of passing down outdated methods.

Such a system might also help with the serious attrition in teachers' ranks we see in B.C. According to Mike Lombardi of the British Columbia Teachers Federation, up to 20 per cent of teachers leave the profession before getting their careers underway, in part due to "ineffective induction and mentoring programs." By starting teachers off in a culture of collaboration, we might help to break the myth within teaching culture that the best and strongest survive. The truth is that we just might be losing our most sensitive and thoughtful individuals while retaining those who have figured out how to cut corners just to get through the day.

Someone to share ideas

Twenty years ago, the Royal Commission on Education led by Barry Sullivan published A Legacy for Learners, a report that sought to draw a bead on where B.C's public schooling should be in the 21st century. Among the report's recommendations: that every new teacher be teamed with a mentor for at least a year. Personally, I could have benefited if I had been assigned a veteran with which to team-teach one of my tougher classes. I also could have used someone with good eyes and seasoned judgment to come regularly into my other classes to observe and report on how I was working. If the mentoring relationship just meant that I had had someone with whom to discuss teaching, it would have been life-saving.

Despite chiding one another for "shop-talk" in the lunch room, teachers huddled around the coffee urn on a professional day appear to like talking about education. I find that the standard model of professional development, that of the lecture or workshop, doesn't allow enough time for teachers to talk. Instead, we convene at a school or conference centre, jam into an auditorium for an expert-led keynote address, then file off to the smaller workshops, which tend to be headed by imported authorities. Often, the most interesting part of the day is comprised of the discussions with colleagues during coffee break.

Workshops that don't work

Fred Jones, an American psychologist who trains teachers in classroom management and instructional techniques, has always received accolades for his professional development workshops. One day he decided to find out how his ideas were making their way into classrooms. They weren't. He decided to narrow his research down to only those teachers who had rated his workshops as outstanding on the forms he had provided, but still found that, months after taking his workshop, less than one per cent of these teachers had used his methods.

Other researchers have had similar findings. Deborah Butler of UBC found that not only did the workshop model lead to "shallow implementation of principles" in the classroom, but that of the few teachers who did incorporate methods learned during workshops, "there was little sustained use of innovations, even when they seemed to be working."

Really effective Pro-D isn't as appealing as a nicely packaged conference. It doesn't come with brochures, big name speakers and trays of melon and strawberries at break. Instead, it is as messy and sweaty as real life, usually carried out in a classroom after everyone is already tired from teaching all day, organized by a committed group of teachers who already have a good idea of what it is that they want to learn. It is a lot of hard work, and it requires you to put yourself out there a bit.

In order to get his methods in action in classrooms, Fred Jones researched what it would take. He designed a series of facilitator-led sessions, complete with videos and workbooks, which I took part in, putting in over 40 hours with my cohort in after-school sessions. We spent our time enacting his instructional and discipline techniques upon one another, then all agreed to try them in our classrooms before regrouping and reflecting at the next session. By the end of the series, all seven of us were using the strategies in our teaching practices every day.

Creating a 'community of practice'

At the leading edge of professional development is the "community of practice," which is "an intellectual group of people who share goals, and who plan, enact and reflect together," according to Nancy Perry of UBC. Collectively, they find out what the research on their topic says, try out the suggested methods in their classrooms, reflect with the group, then work on improvement. Descriptions of this form of professional development can sound more like therapy, when someone such as Cathy Luna speaks of teachers seeing "the everyday through new lenses," and "accepting themselves as experts capable of inquiry." Some teachers involved in a community of practice will go so far as to conduct research in their own classrooms, collecting data, then analyzing the results, in a process known as "action research."

One Vancouver teacher, involved in a community of practice-based action research project facilitated by UBC education researchers, stated in her final report, "Participating in action research was the richest form of professional development that I have experienced in my career. It has given me the opportunity and time to examine, study and reflect upon my own teaching practices."

SFU has adopted a similar model for its Teaching and Learning in Information Technology Environments program. In TLITE, a teacher-mentor leads a cohort of teachers who seek to become more proficient with educational technology. I noticed an ex-colleague of mine, Christopher Rozitis, listed as a mentor, so I gave him a call.

He tells me that when he meets with his group of seven educators monthly, they discuss readings and assignments, but since all of their work is self-directed, he does not lead or instruct them in any way. "I say 'Go use it and tell me how it worked and how it didn't work.' I talk to them, but it is not my job to present curriculum."

'Easy stuff, right?'

Rozitis confides that some teachers are surprised at how the program operates. "They come in here thinking 'I am going to listen to the lectures and do the assignments. Easy stuff, right? But then it's 'Oh, no. Now I've got to think and come up with my own projects. But in the end they come out as better teachers who think about their practice."

He tells me that TLITE encourages teachers to work together on projects of mutual interest. It is this atmosphere of inquiry, collaboration and reflection that make for such a strong program. So strong, in fact, that TLITE has announced that it is taking a one-year hiatus from accepting new applications so that they can catch up with the number currently registered.

I like to think that B.C.'s students deserve the best teachers that we can provide. I know deep down that we could give aspiring teachers a much higher quality experience than I was given and than they are being offered now. If we treat these emerging educators as intellectual professionals in need of a supportive community, we might just hold on to the most promising individuals throughout their careers. There are no further academic studies needed to do this, nor any bags of cash, just the political will to roll up our sleeves and do the good work: We pick a place to start, inquire, enact, evaluate, reflect, then go back and do some more.

On Friday, last in this series: Time for learning: How the clock is used or abused when it comes to trying to teach well.

Related Tyee stories:

[Tyee]

Nick Smith is a veteran public school teacher who lives on the Sunshine Coast in British Columbia. This series was made possible by those readers who gave to the Tyee funds for Investigative and Solutions Reporting. Donations are tax deductible and you can find out more about the Tyee Fellowship Funds here.

13 Comments:

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  • Chris H

    3 years ago

    Ongoing Pro-D requires $

    The largest issue that teachers face in keeping current and taking ongoing Pro-D is that it costs money. When School Boards give in-service workshops to Resource Teachers, they are either after school or do not provide teachers-on-call to fill in; thereby, tearing away even more service to the students that need it most.

    Many employers in other fields will actually pay the costs of their employees to get extra training and education. But, every teacher that has taken TLITE has paid for it out of their own pocket. That being said, the article is quite correct in its findings that there is great demand for continuing education from teachers. It's not like you have to drag them there!

    One weakness with asking professors at University what the problems are is that they haven't been practicing teachers in the classroom for years. Teachering is very different than it was 20 years ago. I'd be more interested to hear from Faculty Associates who have actually just recently stepped out of the classroom. It is hard to be innovative when you have to prepare your students for hours of standardized tests.

  • BC Mary

    3 years ago

    Red pencil, teacher!

    The first line in this story needs fixing.

    The next word after "As a teacher" must be "I", not "people". OK?

    Can't make "As a teacher, people ..." work nohow.

  • michael maser

    3 years ago

    Teach less, learn more ...

    Faculties of education and departments of education have prioritized teaching and supporting teachers over nurturing learning. But truth be told, there isn't much or any evidence that more teaching leads to more or better learning because there's a world of difference between teaching and learning.

    As a 20-year (innovative) educator, I think the process of education and learning, especially, would be much better off if there were far less teaching and much more emphasis on nurturing learning.

    Teaching is oriented to control and usually serves to limit learning choices to a pre-chosen curriculum. Challenge the authority of the teacher or the veracity of the curriculum and ... you fail, you get a detention, a poor grade, you are ostracized, you are rarely rewarded! If we, as a society, were truly dedicated to nurturing learning we would get out of the way of learners and learning far more often than we do now.

    This saddens me overall. Reading 'Collapse' by Jared Diamond, or 'The Upside of Down' by Thomas Homer-Dixon, it is clear to me that we, as a society, need to nurture new models of learning so future generations - my daughter's generation?! - can gain new perspectives and experiences in understanding and posing solutions to the myriad and complex problems they are inheriting.
    More, better teaching isn't going to do this very effectively, IMO.

  • dorothy

    3 years ago

    One of two

    “Despite the apparent simplicity of Finnish education, it would be tough to replicate in the U.S.

    “With a largely homogeneous population, …but at home even the very young are expected to lace up their own skates or put on their own skis.”

    “…it would be tough to replicate in the U.S. “

    I suppose we are meant to understand that because we do not have the socio-economic parameters just so, we could not replicate the educational success of the Finns.

  • dorothy

    3 years ago

    tw of two

    However, it strikes me that each one of those differences is the result of a cultural, economical or political choice we made with our eyes open and other options available. I think we must either decide we don’t give a damn, or we set to work on our socio-economic and cultural framework to bring us closer to Finnish values.

    I zero in on this particular reference because I have seen my own three offspring painfully negotiate their way through school. I have become convinced that learning how to learn, which is what we’re most importantly meant to do in school, in its success or failure has little to do with methodology, much more to do with quality of interaction with those we encounter there. The success of the technologically slightly backward, but in human terms more enlightened Finnish environment bears that out.

    If we want to identify the most important barriers to educational success, we need to look in the direction of injuries to the sense of self-worth. I am not talking about individual teachers being at fault here. I am talking about the systemic capacities our society, including schools, shows for stripping people of their sense of ownership of what they undertake. I quote from the article: “Reading the chapter aloud then assigning the questions is a whole lot easier than having students collaborate on dynamic projects that require them to personally relate to a topic.” Sounds like collaboration is the superior method, the ‘progressive’ approach. I disagree. I see nothing that prevents us from ‘relating personally’ to a subject that we are asked to handle as individuals. Plus, it allows us that sense of ownership of the process and our accomplishment, which is an unequalled inspiration to progress even further. Teamwork, collaborative projects, and so on, really is a way of dumping problem kids on their peers and allowing them a free ride, or at least of avoiding having to deal with them directly. It is highly injurious to the peers, if they are of the serious sort that walk the walk. We are supposed to believe that kids will be more socially adaptive if they learn early to work in groups. I also disagree here. I think we all need to know our own strengths by ourselves first in order to become able to contribute anything to a group, and that forcing the group situation interferes with the gaining of this self-understanding.

    I have the sense that the school, as it now stands, is beating the stuffing out of so many children. They will spend the rest of their life as dependent consumers trying in effect to buy back what they have lost. Maybe, just maybe, no one intends for this to happen. But it fits so well with the needs of the market place, that it is hard not to be sceptical. Those teachers who are in it for the love of learning, may want to take a step back and ask the question that healed the Fisher King, and might heal us as well: Whom does the grail indeed serve?

  • michael maser

    3 years ago

    re - tw of two

    I'm impressed by the thoughtfulness of your comments here, Dorothy, and I agree wholeheartedly with your conclusions.

    Relational-mutuality is a primordial fact for we humans - it is one of our first and most important experiences in our mothers' wombs. In the words of a very dear prof I had when attending the faculty of ed at Queens in the 80s - Mac Freeman - "before we are one we are two", speaking to our relationships with our mothers for the first few years of our lives. Ideally, this relationship is a loving & caring one, and it is through this love and support that toddlers adventure into their world and learn to walk and talk - all without the use of blackboards, worksheets, textbooks and grades and remedial classes!

    The quality of this relationship all too often changes when a child enters Kindergarten and, perhaps, for the first time encounters an adult who generally has a prime objective to control the thinking and actions of that and all children in their class - sometimes beningnly, sometimes through discipline, often both. (I described in my masters thesis how I was manipulated my first day in Kindergarten by a smiling, grandmotherly teacher, and it has stayed with me throughout my life. Hello Robert Fulghum!!)

    What's the emotional result of this severance or interruption to this loving relationship? You speak to this accurately IMO. And as a career educator I believe I have seen dozens of kids struggling and in deep anxiety with themselves and others because a yearning for loving relationship (with a parent, especially) has remained unfulfilled. Schooling - defined by a constellation of relationships with friends, peers, caring and indifferent strangers, bullies (young and old) - clearly influences a kid’s emotional balance on a daily basis, and many kids - far too many to my perception - are further traumatized in this environment. This dynamic keeps counselours and therapists in good employ and provides fertile ground for addictions to root. Drs Mel Levine, Martin Seligman, Gordon Neufeld, Joseph Chilton Pierce and R.D. Laing and others are all articulate about this, and I can recommend no finer novel that addresses this than Herman Hesse's 'Under the Wheel'. I also think it's what drove two of my highschool classmates to suicide in their teens.

    In the context of this article I think it comes down to this: If the goal of the BC education system (public and independent) is, as stated, to “to support the intellectual development of all students, including those with special needs” then it strikes me as pragmatic for government to validate and support the numerous ways - in addition conventional and schooling - we can achieve this goal. Under pressure from orgs like the BCTF and faculties of education that have forgotten that learning is not synonymous with schooling, teaching - and the control of students - has come to trump learning . And we’re the poorer for it.

    - Michael Maser

  • michael maser

    3 years ago

    This is your brain on school?!

    Interestingly, brain resonance imaging has a lot to inform us about schooling and teaching, learning and loving. In a nutshell, neurological activity can now be accurately mapped and characterized according to the perceptions of the subject and, of course, those perceptions reflect the environment in which they find themselves; ergo, in a loving and caring environment the signature of brain activity shows up entirely differently than when the subject is experiencing trauma and/or fear.

    Further, neurological development (especially of the Neo Cortex) proceeds along differing paths depending on which situation persists. Optimal development of the NC - considered the last and most important growth feature of the human brain and responsible for the most sophisticated kinds of [holistic] thinking - is most possible in an environment in which the subject habitually experiences love, care and support. In an environment in which trauma and fear is the most predominant experience, the NC develops differently.

    This development continues into one’s early 20s and then ... you’re pretty set for life. At least one neuro-researcher that I know of - Dr. Daniel Janik - links many experiences in a classroom as traumatic or ‘violational’ in nature. (He details this in his book, ‘Unlock the Genius Within’; 2005).

    Speaking of Scandinavia, isn’t it interesting that at least Sweden, to my knowledge, continues to support parents staying home with their children until age 7 because, as a country, they deeply value parental-child relations and obviously support the continuation of this relationship well beyond what is framed as ‘normal’ in North America.

    Enough from me for now.

    - Michael Maser (Director, SelfDesign Learning Community)

  • nicksmith

    3 years ago

    author response

    Thanks for putting the time and effort in to respond so thoroughly. I agree with much of what you say, both Michael and Dorothy, but I do think that we might disagree on some terms.

    I think that as a society we confuse learning with schooling and teaching with instruction. Over the course of our lives, most of our learning will take place outside of school. This does not mean that we should throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater. There is much that is best learned at school. Subjects like math and essay writing come to mind. There are also specialty subjects such as electronics and lab sciences that parents do not usually have the resources for.

  • nicksmith

    3 years ago

    author response continued

    Good teaching includes some instruction, but gives a lot of time for students to practice their skills, with corrective feedback from both teacher and peers. Eventually, well taught students can continue on their own.

    I would like to clarify a point with Dorothy. I do speak as though group projects are better than individual learning. Generally this is the case. However, well-designed individual learning is better than poorly planned group projects. If a small portion of a group does all of the work and someone takes a free ride, that is a problem of design.

    High achieving students tend to shy away from group work, as less skilled students can bring the group grade down. This builds in a reward for excluding the underachievers. It is up to the teacher to reward cooperative activity and group problem solving.

    Our brains have evolved to make meaning of the world through social interactions. Years of teaching have taught me to work with with this biological imperative. My students will have to go into the world and work with others. Giving them the skills to co-operate and understand group dynamics, to negotiate social situations and to problem solve is more valuable than any set of facts I could "teach" them. Co-operative learning just may be the most powerful teaching tool ever discovered. It is not foisting our job onto our students and it is not easy. Dedicated teachers use it because it works.

  • ME2

    3 years ago

    Praise

    Thank you Dorothy and Michael for the above. Up until today's comments, I've been unable to garner anything of lasting value from the series.

    But the above was well worth the wait, esp since it explains my own childhood learning experiences more than sixty years ago. Your synthesis, Michael, was right on the mark.

  • dorothy

    3 years ago

    Nick

    Nick:

    I think the root of disagreement between us has to do with what is now a four-letter word in schools, so we pretend it doesn’t exist, which means there is a strange shadow-boxing between philosophies, where things are never called by their rightful name. I am talking about what we, for lack of a better word, usually call the spiritual component of our children’s development.

    Are you familiar with the thoughts of don Miguel Ruiz? He wrote the book ‘the four agreements’. His point about how the people around you ‘hook your attention’ and manage it for your own good is very powerful stuff.

    My point is, that we should not engineer school work in such a way that it forces group interaction for the purpose of learning, until that begins to happen naturally, which of course it will, if it is truly a biological imperative. I can personally testify to that. In my school, which was somewhere in Scandinavia, group work was looked at with a jaundiced eye, as it was seen as the next thing to cheating. Nevertheless, in grade eight, where the Math started to be a real crunch for some, peer help could be had around my family’s dinner table every day after school, where some three to six class mates usually showed up. Languages soon came into it, too. There was no cheating, but learning happened on a pretty grand scale, with many ‘eureka’ moments and there was certainly no exclusion of underachievers.

    I believe we must allow these things to develop naturally. We are so convinced, that if a little is good, more must be a Hel of a lot better, and even more so, if we take a grip on it and control and manage it every step of the way. This part is what I do not agree on. I believe we have a genuine difference in thinking and not a result of lack of clarity on your part. We humans have a way of over-managing almost everything we do, instead of letting our efforts slide in as a natural, integral part of the whole.

    So many great philosophers have cautioned us about that. From ‘Seek Ye first the Kingdom of God’ to ‘This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man’, we have been told over and over, to first know ourselves, and then reach out to others. Sharing can be a strong thing in the family, but where it hasn’t been, I think we violate the process for those children who would, given the time, naturally have found their place in the peer network. We should never forget that every time we lead and guide and counsel and prescribe, we are de-selecting as well. This we should minimize as much as we can, for we never know where the road will take us and what we may need for our trip.

  • grapeman

    3 years ago

    Would teachers agree?

    In all likelihood, student teachers also wake up to the fact that innovative teaching is a lot of work. Reading the chapter aloud then assigning the questions is a whole lot easier than having students collaborate on dynamic projects that require them to personally relate to a topic.

    As a long-time teacher, I agree that there's a divide between teacher training and actual teaching in the classroom. But I think the universities share a lot of the blame. Most student teachers are forced to endure hours of theoretical nonsense, written by academics who wouldn't last an hour in a regular secondary classroom. Teachers learn quickly that student-centered learning is great for teaching a few things in depth, but is hopeless in the face of a vast curriculum that requires a lot of discrete facts - facts that are nevertheless important for critical thinking and good judgment. Education profs love a theory when it fits their agenda, but forget that the only good theory is a theory that works. [Theory should therefore follow best practices, and should be taught after good teaching practices are studied.] University education profs seem unaware that many social scientists outside of education treat education research with great skepticism. Much of education theory is based on the natural enthusiasm of elementary students, enthusiasm that cannot be easily transferred to 14, 15 and 16 year-olds. Moreover, if universities were to use their time wisely and help student teachers with coping skills rather than just theory, then student teachers might (ironically) take the theory more seriously. In the end, cynicism about the latest educational fad (an attitude which cripples effective Pro-D) might begin to fade if practicing teachers were the ones who mentored people in the university.

  • dorothy

    3 years ago

    Almost the whole ball of wax right there

    "Much of education theory is based on the natural enthusiasm of elementary students, enthusiasm that cannot be easily transferred to 14, 15 and 16 year-olds."

    Why can't it? This is the question. If we can find out what happens to that natural enthusiasm between 6 and 14-16, we may begin to see light at the end of the tunnel! Some people still have it at 60, or 80, or longer. So what makes it flatline for so many? It is clear it has little to do with living on Easy Street. We need to find out.

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