Running head:
ROLE OF THE TEACHER
Platform Plank II: Teaching Principles: Structural Mode
Theme III: The Role of the Teacher and Principal: How Schools Should Be Organized
Jeffrey B. Romanczuk
Sevier County School System
Overview
This plank
attempts to answer these main questions:
·
How
should the classroom, schools be organized?
·
What is
the role of the teacher?
·
What is
the role of the principal?
There are
many subquestions addressed in the following pages as well, including what
theories of organizational management influence school organization? Related to this is a discussion of how and
why the business model was tried in
Educational Administration, and could not be reconciled with the school
culture. The discussion then turns to
why bigger is not always better more so for schools than for businesses, why
the kindergarten to twelfth grade progression is locked in even when it should
not be, the impact parents can have, and the when transformational leadership
does work. The plank closes by
describing the place for ethics and morals and caring in school organization.
Background
Educational Administration's (Ed
Admin's) "theory movement" of the 1950s and 1960s "attempted to
put educational administration on a footing as sound as that of psychology or
economics by developing theoretical constructs that could be tested in the
world of organizations" (Foster, 1986, p. 53). That Ed Admin theorists
went the "business route" without assuming schools are not the same
as other organizations is a mistake the field is still recovering from. The
world of K-12 isn't even the same as higher education; when the business model
is applied, the connections slip even more. A concurrent change made this
business model link even less useful. Herrnstein and Murray (1994) point out
that the democratization of higher education did not remove barriers to follow-on
schooling; it raised different ones instead. No longer was college the domain
of the children of the social elite; however, in the 1950s and 1960s, the
college admissions shifted their focus to the "cognitive elite"
(Herrnstein & Murray, p. 25).
Kearns (as cited in Darling-Hammond, 1997) makes the point that we need to restructure, not merely tinker. Piecemeal changes and reforms that were more well-intentioned than thorough have gotten K-12 education to its present state. Herrnstein and Murray (1994) and Murphy and Forsyth (1999) highlight different decades important to getting us where we are now for different reasons. The dip in the college aptitude tests from the mid 1960s to the mid 1970s and the reform of Ed Admin from the mid 80s to the mid 90s have more commonality, though, then is immediately obvious. The shift from "scientific" to "postscientific" Ed Admin (Murphy & Forsyth, 1999, p. 3) posed more questions than it has so far answered. Is Ed Admin "an applied science" with a "single best approach" (Murphy & Forsyth, 1999, p. 20), or would only Taylor think so?
Special Education (SpEd) itself is
something of a throwback to the "life adjustment movement" of the
1940s (Owens, 2001, p. 7), prior to scientific/technical "backlash" of the 1950s that the
space race prompted in schools. Especially for the lowest ability students,
getting them life skills and some kind of independent living is very much like
Taylor's time and motion studies. In fact, the teachers who are the best at
documenting it have task analyses of the simplest processes—tooth brushing,
making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, etc.—that are very like Taylor's
science of shoveling (Taylor as cited in Shafritz & Ott, 2001).
Transformational Administrative Leaders (The Role of the Principals and Vice Principals)
Supervisors need to give their
employees what the workers need when they need it. Teaching does not have to be
as autonomous as it usually becomes. When teachers do not feel supported by
their administrators or have no idea what administrators do all day, they begin
to believe that their supervisors are out of touch with what it is really like
in the classroom these days. Supervisors have to be skilled and tireless
two-way communicators. Although I’m
well aware no one will ever consider me gregarious, I tend to the easy tasks
and the tough ones to work hard against the notion that I’m
unapproachable. One easy one is never
shutting my office door. A hard one is
getting myself to use a phone call or better, a visit, instead of electronic
mail. Leaders need to be open and
visible to those served. Parents
especially need to feel like they belong at the school, that they are not only
invited to come in, but welcomed and encouraged to contribute to the life of
the school. When communication breaks
down or is filtered through layers of personality and pride, cooperation ends
and productivity suffers.
When I see how the various special education
operations work at the various schools, the range is stunning. If there is an in-road anywhere for a
transformation leader to have impact, special education is that road. Thanks to federal and state laws, the
special education population is included in the life of the school, but the
degree of mixing at each school varies widely. An important variable in these
differences is how knowledgeable and supportive the building-level
administrators are of special education, and (more frankly) how comfortable
they are around these students and their parents.
The Smaller, The Better (But Public, Not Private)
Blunting the leaders' impact, though, is Schein's realization that the organizational culture results from a complex group learning process that the leader influences only minimally (as cited in Shafritz & Ott, 2001). What is different about special education is that it is big and small simultaneously, big countywide as an identifiable culture, but at each school the special education population tends to be less than ten percent of the student body and presents such a range of disabilities (from profoundly handicapped to gifted) that it hardly can be said to have one identity. This brings up another point Schein makes about how being a small or large organization influences culture. In the discussion near the end of his article Schein asks, "Can a large organization have one culture?" (as cited in Shafritz & Ott, p. 375).
This hints at why big is not better with schools (Barker & Gump, as cited in Owens, 2001). In large schools, both the students and the teachers are going to break into smaller subcultures with one or more common characteristics. From here, it is tough to avoid falling into us versus them schoolhouse politics. In thinking about how schools should be organized, one of my early thoughts about getting schools from the way they are now to the smaller way that would benefit the learning culture was to just increase the teaching staff at each school to improve that ratio. I see now that the whole school setting has to be smaller, not just the teacher to student ratios. Equally as important as individual attention to students is the ease of communication small schools have over larger ones. The “Teacher Talks” article Alison brought back from the February 2003 Small School Planning Institute confirms as much. These “professional dialogs” go beyond the multidisciplinary team meetings that special education uses for students’ instructional planning to become staff development sessions as well (Ramp private notes, February 2003).
Although
politics mires public education, privatization isn't the answer either, for the
same reasons scientific management wasn't. Putting stuff in kids heads isn't an
assembly-line job. If it were, we'd insist on starting with better raw
materials (just kidding). Notice, though, that I'm admitting that only
"learning" is the product. I don't buy that we are creating citizens
for the future of society. Their parents created them. We're just trying to get
them ready for jobs, not life.
Age/Grade Progression
The "Procrustean Bed" of age-graded progression isn't the most useful idea (Hargis, 1995), but getting rid of rote (Darling-Hammond, 1997, p. 17, 19) is throwing out the baby with the bath water. (Procrustes, of Greek mythology [Hamilton, 1940], was one of many undesirables Theseus dealt with on his journey. Procrustes adjusted victims to fit his iron torture bed, either stretching them if they were too short, or truncating the tall, until Theseus put Procrustus himself on the bed.) Having children flunk their way into unskilled labor or ace their way to college makes for an easy sorting system, but not a very customer-friendly one. There was a good side to the country schoolhouse with multiage students sharing one space and one teacher: it was knowledge-based, not age or grade based (Tyack, 1974).
In the nineteenth century, the country schoolhouse was also practice and repetition based. Drills are still important in spelling, writing, and early addition, multiplication (Hirsch, 1999), but have fallen from favor in attempts to make learning more holistic, activity based, and fun. Where I think Darling-Hammond (1997) is most wrong is in the assertion that children have the right to learn, which guides her similarly named book. They have an obligation to learn, but in America this is true only if they think it is. Learning isn't the right, because this requires their engagement. Children do have the right to be in learning situations, but this is almost useless to say since almost any waking moment can be a learning situation.
In their introduction to the power and politics organizational theory chapter (VI), Shafritz and Ott (2001) say of power, "we all understand it" (p. 298). Their point is that only the "intellectualizing about it is new" (p. 298), not the idea itself. I do not agree, however. I am willing to concede only that we all think we understand power when what we are really understanding is some component of it: a Western or Japanese version, parental power, or maybe an abuse of power (like Pfeffer's description of Nixon's "need for power" [Shafritz & Ott, 2001, p. 304]). What makes this rush to claim understanding of power even worse for K-12 education is that everyone thinks he or she understands compulsory education as well. We have all been through twelve or thirteen years of it, after all. This notion surfaced during the cohort's discussion of Darling-Hammond's Right to Learn: "education as a civic religion."
What's more insidious about the K-12 arena though, is the monopoly it has become. As long as the public schools have the year to year tax flow no matter how poorly they perform, they will never be any good, let alone excellent. Suppose you perform a service, but it doesn't really matter how well you do, you will just continue to get more and more money. Suppose, for example you write a newspaper column. But it doesn't matter how good or poorly constructed what you write is. You will keep your job and continue to get raises no matter what. How long would you knock yourself out trying to write the best column you can? Would you be worried if someone making half as much—who could actually lose their job for bad or even mediocre performance—wrote a much better column than you? No, you would laugh at the fool. What if you were that fool? That is, a first or second year teacher teaching all day and preparing lesson all night. Then you begin to see how little those teachers who have been around years and years are doing. Intrinsic motivation and personal integrity do not have enough magnetic pull to counter throttling back and fitting in.
Parental Role, By Invitation
Darling-Hammond (1997) prefaces The Right to Learn with the assertion: “Educating all children effectively is the mission of schools today, yet great numbers of children still have no reasonable opportunity to acquire the knowledge and abilities that will help them” (p. xi). I do not agree with the second part of the statement and I am not sure I agree with the first half either. In schools that do not have overriding discipline problems, the opportunity is there, but what exactly does she mean by “educating.” All the public expect is that people are able to read after 12 years of school, and maybe write a little for certain jobs. Since many students, maybe even the majority, are reading and writing adequately by middle school, perhaps the real purpose of public schools is to be a public works baby sitting service. Many parents would probably find this adequate.
I say "many" parents only because it makes me too sad to think it is probably true for most parents. Less than ten percent, probably less than five percent, have or want any contact with their children's' schools or teachers. By the same token, most would be okay with the teacher running his or her classroom anyway the teacher chose. Too many teachers do not choose to have and enforce their own rules and use the excuse that they don't want to deal with irate parents. Similar to our foolish new teacher who learns to lay off and get along, otherwise good students see their peers behaving selfishly, having fun and getting rewarded with attention for doing so. It would take a student more mature than most in K-12 education are to resist the impulse to be just as selfish, have fun, and get rewarded.
Ethics, Morals, Care, and That Pesky Curriculum
Schools are being asked to feed the students and make them moral, ethical American adults, while still clinging to the time lines and classroom structure developed in the nineteenth century. What's magic about the 180-day year and the 3 o'clock day ending? Especially if breakfast is going to be included now, which we know it has to be because parents are either too neglectful or too busy to send off their little ones with food in their bellies, we need to think about a longer day. For twenty years, I've been thinking schools needed to end later. The selling point could be that the child's work day would match their parents', but the real reason I'd be for a longer afternoon is that homework is a thing of the past in both rural and urban settings, so we need to build in the "home" work during the school day. Some educators think of the school as the children's home away from home, but it isn't and shouldn't be. Yes, character does count, but is it the schools' job to instill it? Can virtue be taught in schools at all, let alone in schools as they operate now? (See Noddings, 2002, wrestling with this problem, p. 3.)
I'm am not abdicating all but academic responsibility, but my view of “cultural literacy is more akin to Hirsch’s than to Noddings’. I don’t know whether to be amused or afraid when she pens lines like “students are not getting what they need for full personal development” (as cited in Ornstein, Behar-Horenstein, & Pajak, 2003, p. 61), as if it is the school’s job to meet this need. While I wouldn’t go as far as Hirsch (1987) does in blaming the decline in American literacy and fragmentation of the curriculum on “the growing dominance of romantic formalism in educational theory” (p. 110), schools need to realize their job is to teach these students, not rear these children. Granted, teaching children to be good students is part of teaching them to be good, or as Noddings (2002) puts it, schools should be places where it is "possible and attractive to be good" (p. 9). Schools need to care about kids, their parents need to care for them. (I'm disagreeing with Noddings now, but the one little preposition makes a world of difference. I'm not as convinced as Noddings appears to be that being cared for reduces violence [unless she is addressing domestic violence rather than societal.]) The place where I am willing to part company with Hirsch and almost join the company of Ornstein (2003) and Noddings is in the emphasis the latter two authors give to the student rather than the curriculum. I say almost because I still believe that during class time, content is paramount and the main care taking place should be caring whether or not the students are learning. There is plenty of other time in the school day for getting to know the student as a whole person. But, fortunately, full knowledge of all of the students individually isn't necessary for good teaching to occur.
This is not to say I am any big fan of period by period, isolated subject-based, grade level based learning. Of course an interwoven project based curriculum with math and science and literature all included in a block of instruction with easy to see real-world tie ins sounds lovely. This fits Darling-Hammond's (1997) idea that we are teaching students, not subjects (pp. 7-12). But to put it in marketing terms, knowledge is the product we're selling; students (and ideally, their parents) are the customers. Mixed subject, unit based instruction may also offer the good side of tracking without the bad. Pardon my idealism creeping in, but if the annoying students have a strength area to contribute maybe they won't feel compelled to ruin the block of instruction for everybody.
Noddings makes the point that teachers have to teach the group, but care about the individual student (Nodding, 2002, p. 16). The opposite feels more true in my teaching experience, especially in SpEd in which individualized instruction is codified in law. We have to care about the class, but teach the individual. To be frank, I'm even uneasy with Noddings idea of caring. Is being responsible to equal to caring about? Teachers who talk about how much they "love the children" make me extremely uneasy. They aren't ours to love, but to teach. Of course, you have to care about them collectively. Adults who hate kids aren't going to be very effective teachers, but teachers don't have and never will have the luxury of fully knowing each student. All the teacher needs to know is who is trying and who isn't. Nobody who tries should fail and nobody who doesn't try should succeed.
Fortunately, individual instruction isn't necessary for individual learning to occur. Hirsch (1999) points out the paradox apparently borne out in several studies that "individual students get more effective tutorial attention. . .and seem to make more progress when there is greater emphasis on the whole class and less on individual tutorials" (p. 11).
I am no huge fan of mission and vision statements and codes of ethics, but sometimes it is worthwhile to commit the obvious to writing. Schools may benefit from a code of ethics that describes what they mean by considering the students first (and the professional staff last, if they even dare to put in writing this second bit). Between these two should be the community the school works in and for. Formal education that does not put the student first would cause anyone to question its priorities, as would any school that thinks putting the students first means letting the students run the school. This is especially true of kindergarten through secondary education, but also holds for higher education. One benefit of this mind set is that it guards against abuse of power by those in positions of power. This could be directly addressed by commitments to engaging in appropriate relationships with students and indirectly addressed by actions such as keeping confidential students' records and progress. However, the main point of putting students first is that those in leadership roles are obliged to improve the community by improving the school system and improve the school system by improving the student body.
Ethically organized schools would demonstrate shared accountability (Darling-Hammond, 1997). One step in this direction would be to have teachers evaluating teachers, not administrators doing it. Another would be for schools to stop trying to supplant the parents' role and settle for supplementing it. If kids aren't learning math at home, schools can do something about that. If they aren't learning how to get along with other kids in their families or neighborhoods, school are obliged to show the way there, too. But if kids aren't eating at home, then they ought not be living at home.
Two final components of ethically
organized schools are that students would be singled out for praise only rarely
and never singled-out for ridicule. There is too much competition is schooling
already and precious little cooperation. I have seen competition work to make
rote learning more interesting and fun (boys against the girls multiplication
table races come to mind), but sports already do enough to sort the
"good" from the "bad."
Pointing out who the best students are rarely makes the worst students
want to try harder. There is also enough negativity in the world without
teachers adding to it. Hargis (1995) cautions against requiring students to read
aloud to the class (Hargis, 1995). Tyack (1974) notes that ridicule was a
popular teaching method in the large classroom of the big cities early in the
twentieth century, but he does not support it as a good practice.
References
Darling-Hammond, L. (1997). The right to learn: A blueprint for creating schools that work. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Foster, W. (1986). Paradigms and promises: New approaches to educational administration. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
Hamilton, E. (1940). Mythology: Timeless tales of gods and heroes. New York: Mentor.
Hargis, C. H. (1995). Curriculum-based assessment: A primer (2nd ed). Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.
Hargis, C. H. (1999). Teaching and testing in reading: A practical guide for teachers and parents. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.
Herrnstein, R. J. & Murray, C.
(1994). The bell curve: Intelligence
and class structure in american life. New York: Free Press Paperbacks.
Hirsch, Jr. E. D. (1987). Cultural literacy: What every American needs to know. New York: Vintage Books.
Hirsch, Jr. E. D. (1999). The schools we need and why we don't have them. New York: Anchor Books.
Morgan, G. (1997). Images of organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Murphy, J., & Forsyth, P. B. (1999). Educational administration: A decade of reform. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
Noddings, N. (1984). Caring: A feminine approach to ethics and moral education. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Noddings, N. (2002). Educating moral people: A caring alternative to character education. New York: Teachers College Press.
Orstein, A. C.,
Behar-Horenstein, L. S., & Pajak, E. F. (2003). Contemporary issues in curriculum (3rd
ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Orstein, A. C., &
Hunkins, F. (2004). Curriculum foundations:
Principles and theory (4th ed). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Owens, R. G. (2001). Organizational behavior in education: Instructional leadership and school reform (7th ed). Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.
Shafritz, J. M., & Ott, J. S. (2001). Classics of organizational theory (5th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Tyack, D. B. (1974). The one best system: A history of american urban education. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.