[Winona Online Democracy]
I am posting my response to an email from another subscriber, who raised
some interesting questions about what I said earlier about teacher
empowerment. Since the email was addressed to me and not the listserve, I
have not included it.
Dear XXX,
I think you should post what you sent me online. Maybe it would generate
more discussion than the Bianchi talk has so far. Besides the responses
from the panelists, I haven't seen any posts speculating "about what
Bianchi would think of this and that", but I may have missed some because I
only recently re-subscribed to the listserve. I'm puzzled and disappointed
that there was so little response, and I know the organizers of the event
are too.
It sounds like you must have had some very negative experiences with
teachers. It's hard to know how to respond in a general kind of way. Our
two sons have been in the Minneapolis and Winona public systems preK
through 12 (our youngest is a senior next year). They've had some teachers
we all felt were outstanding, many who we thought were OK, and a few who we
didn't like very well. My point of view is that those proportions are
somewhat better than what I've experienced from other sectors of the
workforce, say doctors, customer service reps, real estate agents, college
professors. But then it's pretty untenable to generalize about such things.
Anyone in education certainly realizes that there are practitioners at all
levels who are not very good at what they do. I think it's equally
problematic to try to generalize about what should be done about that fact.
Specific problems would require skillful intervention from supervisors,
working within the framework of contracts, HR policies, etc. Preventive
measures would include improved teacher education, better career
counseling, mentoring programs for new teachers (we're doing that), and
on-going professional development and evaluation. I think teachers'
organizations are actively promoting and supporting all of the above.
Beyond that, you would have to explain what you mean by "policing your
own." How do you envision that working? How does that happen at the
post-secondary level, or in other human services?
In my view, teacher empowerment is part of the solution and includes all of
the ways I've mentioned to improve the quality of preK-12 teaching. You
mention the issue this past year with before-school supervision of kids at
WK. Since I was the union rep, I am very familiar with that situation.
While I can't say much about specifics because of my role, I think that was
an excellent example of how problems occur when teachers are not empowered.
>From the teachers' point of view, their objection was not about spending an
extra 5 minutes greeting students, it was about what was the most effective
way of starting the morning throughout the building. In a sense, the 5
minutes was the contractual technicality that even allowed us to bring the
issue forward and try to do conflict resolution, which we eventually did
successfully with the involvement of a mediator from the state.
In a more teacher-empowered system with a meaningful site-based management
policy, I don't think that issue would've ever happened. If the change in
the supervision plan that we grieved had gone through a process of
discussion with teachers/parents/administrators, the bugs could've been
ironed out before it was implemented. Instead, we all ended up spending way
too much time and energy disputing whether or not the contract had been
violated. I'm still disappointed that the District chose to use it as an
opportunity to complain about its own teachers, and I'm sorry that the
papers weren't willing to try to portray our side of the story.
Bottom line: the best way to get the most out of teachers is to give them
the resources and environment for good teaching and a meaningful voice in
determining how their school functions. Thanks for the dialogue. I think
I'll post a version of my comments here, hoping for more responses.
Scott
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"There are years that ask questions and years that answer."
Zora Neale Hurston
sent by:
Scott Lowery
461 Sunnyview Drive, Rollingstone MN 55969
home phone: (507)689-4532
school phone: (507)450-2256
home email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
school email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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