Right now I’m in the first couple of weeks of teaching a class during our middle campus “academic growth period”. For 30 minutes each day, I’m in a classroom of 18 middle school students discussing and debating whether and how the amendments in the U.S. Bill of Rights should apply to students through holding fictional court hearings and studying actual Supreme Court cases. This class marks my return to the classroom setting after a few years away. I got my start in education as a middle and high school humanities teacher, but, after becoming a school principal and now the executive director at ANCS, I’ve not had daily direct teaching experience with students (save for a stint as a co-advisor at our middle campus). I felt up to the task again this year, and this opportunity is in part about reconnecting with students and the content that drew me to teaching to begin with and keeping my skills sharp, but it is also about gaining the first-hand view—even for just a little bit of my day—of being a classroom teacher and all that comes with it.
Almost 30 years ago, Deborah Meier, a MacArthur “genius” grant award winner, an early leader in the Coalition of Essential Schools and the founder of two successful small charter schools, wrote about her transition from teacher to principal in an article titled “Retaining the teacher’s perspective in the principalship”. Upon becoming a principal, she says, “I had many ideas, lots of pet theories, and years of waiting to try them out in a school of my own. I found that attempts to impost my methods were, not surprisingly, of minimal value to the staff or children. I fell back on what I had learned as a teacher. When I felt trusted, I was more likely to seek advice, discuss my concerns, and, in time, arrive at the solutions that fit me best. It turned out that although trust took a long time to build—sometimes years—it was the most efficient form of staff development.”
While I don’t expect my time with students in this class each day will, on its own, sustain the trust that’s needed to help me support our principals and teachers, I do hope it provides me with important insights about the work they do every day and shapes my thinking as we consider what’s best for our students and school. It’s the same reason why I’ve tried to make it a point the past few years to invite teachers and staff to come meet with me in person—to talk about what’s going well for them and what could change to make their work with students better. There are probably other ways I haven’t tried or thought of to keep the perspective of our teachers at the forefront of my mind, but these two have seemed like good starting points. It doesn’t mean that teachers will always agree with every decision that gets made, but I do hope that it’s clear that their input, ideas, and thinking are valued and necessary to creating a school that does right by its students and staff.
A good bit of what gets crafted as policy for K-12 schools these days does not always seem to have the perspective of teachers in mind. I imagine that most policymakers don’t mean for that to be the case. There are well-intentioned educational policies that, when implemented, cause lots of frustration and stress for teachers who don’t see the same value in it. And, in those instances, it is wise when policymakers press pause on the policy to gather feedback and make adjustments—as happened recently with the U.S. DOE decision to allow states to delay tying teacher evaluations to student test scores when so many issues were apparent.
But I wonder if better ways exist to get this kind of feedback before policies are implemented or even written. Sure, some focus groups can be held—as was the case with Georgia’s new teacher evaluation system—but if you hold them during the school day away from a school, will you really get the feedback you need? Perhaps every legislator on an education policy committee and members of the DOE central office could make time to spend a couple of weeks each year shadowing a teacher to see and hear first-hand about the profession and the impact of policies on it. I know that most all of the legislators and state education officials with whom I’ve ever met are smart, dedicated individuals, and I also know that they have busy schedules, so maybe this idea seems like a bit much. But I think it would make their work that much better—as it does mine—to keep the perspective of a teacher in mind.