EdTechTrek

Is there a difference between a “good” teacher and an “effective” teacher? The LA Times recently covered an english teacher who made a significant impact on a tough group of students in one year. The story is worth reading, but here are a few quotations that struck a chord with me.

This 35 year teacher veteran coming from a prestigious prep school into a tough urban school is described in the following situation:

“Holmes had nothing unusual planned (for a lesson where a student asked to be excused for what she thought was a good reason). He considers every lesson, every minute of class time, to be important, and, at age 66, he often stays up past midnight preparing for the next day’s lessons.”

No one can say that being an effective teacher is easy. No one can say that effectiveness can be routine. No one can be effective in the classroom without a great deal of dedication, passion, conviction, knowledge, and skill.

The article goes on to describe various attributes of this teacher in his last year of classroom instruction and also reports on a number of anecdotes. The article goes on to end with this statement describing his last class teaching:

“There are no fireworks, no speeches, no round of applause. Just this: As he walks out the door and heads to the parking lot, Phil Holmes knows that today he delivered a good lesson. He didn’t waste a second. He made the students think.”

Now I know some would take up issue with the word “delivered” and take the philosophical viewpoint that instruction should not be “delivered” but rather experienced and socially constructed, but those same folks would often sacrifice “effectiveness” for poorly implemented cooperative learning, differentiated learning, on-line learning, project-based learning, technology-mediated learning, social learning, problem-based learning… The list goes on. All of these pedagogical structures have merit. But, the bottom line is measurable results that validate effectiveness as a teacher. Here is a teacher that perhaps takes an unpopular approach to teaching. The article does not even mention all of the technology-based tools that he uses to reach a digital generation. I suspect that he uses few to none. But, he gets results… excellent results. Students care about him and appreciate his skillfulness in the classroom.

How do you define effectiveness? Is technology really a required prerequisite? Or, should we let effectiveness and results speak for what should be required?

I love this excerpt that I ran across in Darren Draper’s blog, Drape’s Takes. It comes from Carl Glickman’s book, Leadership for learning: How to Help Teachers Succeed. I re-post it here in case you missed it.

An article published in ASCD’s Educational Leadership also resonated with me. It is titled, Closing the Teacher Quality Gap and it looks at how often the weakest teachers are often paired with the weakest or most needy students and that teacher quality has everything to do with student achievement… not surprising.

We talk so much about how technology can empower teachers and students and transform learning. But we need to talk more about teacher quality in this conversation as well. Seeking improvement needs to be an active process that requires an attitude of growth and professionalism - oftentimes lacking. It doesn’t happen on its own. That’s what I like so much about the Carl Glickman excerpt. I have worked with some teachers who have approached setting mandated learning goals with resentment and would simply go through the motions of putting down goals that were easy to achieve and relatively benign. Others took them seriously and set meaningful, relevant goals.If you are going to teach, you’d better be prepared to give 100 percent… perhaps 110 percent. There is no room for less when over the course of your career you have the privilege to teach hundreds, perhaps thousands of other people’s children and contribute to their future. After all, they are not blueberries.