Sunday, July 29, 2012
Blame
It seems that in ch 16 there have been many people and groups who would like to blame someone for structural failures. It is easier to point the blame at someone. I know that we need standards to keep us safe but it is difficult to work under pressure. The engineer is expected to design new and better structures and designs. While it seems some are just waiting for the failure so they can tear his work apart. As I apply this to teaching, I think that I am always trying to change and improve but in the end what matters to some are the scores on the assessments or NECAPs. I think it it much easier to analyze another person's work when the pressure to perform is not on that person.
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Your comments hit me this morning as I think about what Gov LePage said yesterday in his weekend address. I realize he feels that he needs to "fix" education, but I feel he is playing the blame game and wants this new reform plan but he is going by one moment in time data from a standardized test. I need him to come into our schools during a testing week to actually see these students. Then he can decide.
ReplyDelete"Those who can, teach. Those who can't, pass laws about teaching." Maybe the governor is sincere about wanting to improve education, but it's hard not to see this as a political ploy. We already have laws relating to standards, but since the standards keep changing we are constantly playing catch-up. Test scores are one piece of the puzzle. I think supporting teachers and noticing when they are successful does more than laying blame.
ReplyDeleteI think it's fine to challenge teachers to do better, just the way we challenge our students. But placing blame does not support more effective teaching anymore than placing blame for failure on students increases their learning.
Yes, let's analyze why something hasn't worked, so we can improve. But let's do it in a nonjudgemental way.
I was thinking of his statements when I read and wrote my thoughts.
ReplyDeletePetroski pg. 220:
ReplyDelete"We have come to be a society that is so quick to change that we have lost the benefits of one of mankind's greatest tools- experience."
I have spent many many hours this summer 're-designing' my curriculum to 're-engineer' better results in my student's outcomes. While I have always been an enthusiastic reformer of education, and think the new science standards are absolutely great, sometimes I feel as though I know from experience what will work with kids but I have to keep re-writing it to fit the latest fad template.
Meanwhile, we lose excellent teachers who simply get tired of all this and are not getting noticed for being successful over many years. My parents were both teachers, and I have heard about the bandwagons coming and going since childhood!
My mom taught hundreds of first graders to read and was renowned for her skill in our town. She also was one of the first to get a Grow-Lab in her classroom, invite her class to our home to grind wheat and make muffins with it, teach math through a weaving loom at school, etc. She even trained for a lifelong dream of going backpacking in Denali by walking to and from her school with a backpack filled with book-weight! What a lifelong learner! During the wholelanguage/phonics debate in education it became like living in Communist USSR. She went 'underground', using phonics secretly to help kids who did not learn in the whole language way that she also enthusiastically embraced as a real reader. Eventually administrators wanted compliant sheep and my mom got more outspoken and she felt she needed to just retire. She has such bitterness about this that she has not been near a school since. What a shame.
Our educational outcomes will not improve until this status for experienced educators changes- period!
I could not agree more with these comments. It seems that administrators within the building along with peers should assist each other. State tests, never ending reforms are not how things improve. Instead of the blame game why doesn't the government apply what is practical and proven- that the principals and superintendents, directors, and department chairs get to actually know who their teachers are, how they teach, and how effective they are and work with them individually or in small groups to improve their skills?
ReplyDelete