in the red #25 by clickykbd

“All I ask of you is one thing: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism – it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere.”
-Conan O’Brien

“The tension between what I’m actually doing in my classroom and what I think I should be doing in my classroom has gotten to be almost unbearable. I don’t believe that I’m preparing my students to be successful in a world driven by innovation and creativity, but the ONLY tangible indicator of my performance—standardized test scores—says that my students are not as “accomplished” as students in other classrooms in our school and district.”
-Bill Ferriter

What I read most in Ferriter’s (@plugusin) quote is his determination not to be cynical, but rather to hold on to his beliefs about teaching and learning despite the compromises we are asked to make daily in the name of student “achievement.”  I don’t know an American public school colleague who doesn’t feel this tension.

What can we do? How can we resist cynicism? How can we go somewhere else?

In response to these quotes, I suggest we lobby for the creation of a red team per school or division made up of

• Teachers of all sorts.
• Students – especially those who struggle and/or feel disengaged.
• Parents – including home-schoolers, private-schoolers, and virtual-schoolers who will rejoin the division provisionally to champion and monitor change.
• Community partners who will invest human and/or financial resources in the team’s initiatives.
• Building-level and central office administrators who get carte blanche from the school board to speak according to the dictates of their consciences.

Each team would ask two questions:

• What’s our objective?
• What’s in the way?

The red team would report to the principal or to the superintendent and the board.  The school or school system would own the objective and dedicate itself to achieving it and eliminating the obstacles to it through a project-based, balanced scorecard approach.

Or we could hang out here for a while longer and risk Coco’s ire.

Teachers: could you do this with students and/or parents in your classroom?  Frankly, the idea scares me, which is probably a clear indication that I should do it.  I’ve asked for feedback before, but not in a way that invites such honesty about my role in presenting obstacles to individual students’ learning.  Stay tuned.

089/365 Money...What Money by stuartpilbrow

Many school systems, mine included, face unprecedented budget challenges this year. I imagine that in addition to implementing or continuing pay freezes, many divisions also have to consider eliminating teacher leadership stipends. I worry that we’re going to lose great teacher leaders. Why take on more work without more compensation? With looming increases in class size and corresponding cuts in staffing and materials, including IT, teachers will have to do more with less next year regardless of their leadership roles. Is it fair to ask teachers to lead others while they have to negotiate their own responses to rapid change in working conditions?

Certainly a bevy of teachers lead now and will continue to lead with or without a stipend or title like “department chair.” Leaders may also take the loss of stipends as an opportunity to pass along their mantles and duties to a new leader and to coach their successors less formally.

I’m not at all cynical about educators’ desire to do right and to help one another help children.

I’m concerned that teacher leadership will become less attractive to teachers and that uncompensated leadership will become the status quo during the economic downturn.

How could teacher leadership and compensation for it be saved systematically without unfair expectations put on classroom teachers? What do you think? What kinds of compensation remain available to divisions and teacher leaders apart from stipends and IT?

Lately, I’m thinking a lot about grants. I think I can take a much more active role in securing the materials and technology I see my students using in the future. I’ve posted about how I might better resource my class. So far, I’ve pursued two grant opportunities – one for e-readers and another for the tools necessary for student app development and learning space design.

What if we used grants to help replace stipends? What if lead teacher positions rotated fairly and part of the lead teacher’s duty was grant-writing?

Imagine a lead teacher earning more time during the school day to pursue grants that benefit both the department and the lead teacher. Imagine a lead teacher drawing 3-5 more students a piece from concurrent classes in the same content area so the department reaches more children in a shorter amount of time.  Imagine a class size of 30-32 instead of 26-28.  Imagine the lead teacher earning an extra class period, half-block, or duty-period off for the pursuit of grants. Imagine 5% of the curriculum development line-item in each grant budget going to the lead teacher for the R&D necessary for the grant proposal.  This isn’t a new idea – awarding commissions to grant writers – but it could be systematized in a new way for teacher leadership.

Could that lead teacher recoup the cost of a lost stipend? Maybe. Could that lead teacher continue to model scholarship and innovation in best practices? Absolutely.

What do you think, teachers? Would you agree to greatly increased class size one or two periods a day to earn grant-writing time that could underwrite your stipend?

Another thought: what if a lead teacher or department social media maven could earn time to tweet and blog about the great work going on within the department? What if the division’s legal team created a framework for advertising professional texts or professional development on the blog with most of the revenue from clicks going to the department while 5-10% of the revenue went to the lead teacher/department blogger in place of a stipend?