The metaphor (From Dr. Stock’s post yesterday) of a Picasso or a Rembrandt painting the blank canvas compared to a phenomenal teacher painting the minds of his or her students reminds me of the movie The History Boys. You can read the reviews and watch a trailer at http://www.foxsearchlight.com/thehistoryboys/. The main premise of the movie surrounds a group of gifted, semi-unruly boys preparing for their entrance exam to Oxford. Their General Studies teacher is a Picasso of a teacher. His lessons range from classical music to history to poetry to French, basically whatever he or the boys feel like learning about on any particular day.
One of the conflicts, that I find parallels to today, revolves around a new teacher that the school hires to teach the boys about the entrance exam. His sole purpose is to teach to the test. Most of the boys detest this type of teaching compared to their beloved history teacher, but they all want to be accepted to Oxford. The new teacher can’t understand why they would waste their time learning “useless” information.
I’ll let you watch to find the resolution to the conflict. But, in the end, many are left wondering what is knowledge and more importantly how can this knowledge be applied to life?
This movie makes me ask a few questions of myself. First, what makes a good teacher? The Reading Workshop blog posits the qualities of a good teacher: http://www.thereadingworkshop.com/2008/12/what-makes-good-teacher.html
I have my own list that shares some of the same characteristics. Mine is borrowed from a workshop I attended by Jeff Wilhelm, an inspiring educator from Boise and the author of Reading Don’t Fix No Chevys. He calls it the teaching social contract:
1. My teacher will try to get to know me as an Individual.
2. My teacher will Care about me.
3. My teacher will address my Interests in some way.
4. My teacher will assist me to learn and will work hard to make sure I have learned.
5. My teacher will be Passionate about the subject and about teaching.
It is said that a teacher who can even address one of the five on the list will be memorable to most students. I have the list posted next to my computer with the adage: “Am I bringing my A-game to School.”
A second question that I ask myself is, “How can I balance good teaching with set, prescriptive methods to prepare for Wyoming’s standardized tests?” a season about to dawn on us. How many educators feel pressure to teach to the test? In our school district, there really isn’t a lot of pressure put on teachers or students, but it does seem to be the main focus of success.
Countless meetings are devoted to achieving PAWS proficiency and hours are spent evaluating the data. Rarely is this amount of time dedicated to the 180 or so other days that students aren’t testing. Where do we, as educators, see the fruits of our labors? In the faces of our students? Their return visits? Their successes? Their PAWS results? Our paychecks?
What do you think?
Unfortunately, we do spend far to much time counting beans and fail to recognize the true accomplishments of our labor. Having taught long enough in the same place I have seen the products of my labor and now their children. Its makes me feel good when I see successful former students. However like everyone else I sweat out the success or failure of current students on PAWs and other assessments. But in the long term view provided by several years of classroom experience I have noticed that the tests of the pass seemed to be a poor indicator of future success or failure.
Matt,
I wish schools were better at measuring things that truly matter. It seems to me that we spend way too much time trying to measure the less important while the more important things slip away.
Look at the list you provided as a “gut check” for the educator. How many of those things do we spend time evaluating? Not many.
Yet our state tests and other measurements dominate our discussions.