Holding on to Our Heroes

Teachers and administrators join the education profession because they want to make a difference in the lives of children. In college these individuals are surrounded by future business leaders, stock traders, scientists, doctors, and lawyers. They choose a path that does not provide fiscal fortune but rather huge internal gain. Educators opt in because of the aha moment, that child's smile as they get it, the celebration of achievement, the light bulb moment of discovery. Teachers select this career for the personal gain of changing lives. Relationships that start in the moment and often last a life time.

In the first year, they discover what the job really is. It's more than setting up activities, running reading groups, and comforting the crying child. In that initial go around they learn that preparation time isn't the 3-5 hours a week embedded in their schedule but the 3 hours a night in addition prepping materials, grading assessments, emailing parents, it's the Saturday or Sunday afternoon making copies, rewriting materials, stapling projects together. In that first year our teachers discover the challenges of classroom management, the office politics of any working environment, and they discovery the world of educational acronyms. Teachers learn about: IDEA, IEP, 504, PLOP, ISAT, IRT, MDC, NCLB, RTTT, NAEP, PISA, and many other points of jargon. Their world spins and they remark, "I just want to help kids learn." 

The McKinsey Study in 2010 noted that 14% of teachers leave the profession after their first year. Nearly half (46%) leave after five years. It notes challenges that face the profession from a macroscopic profession including relative wage level decrease compared to other valued professions, lack of high achieving professionals entering the profession, and lack of governmental prestige placed on those entering the field. Other studies focus, on teacher burnout, testing pressures, and working conditions. In the several years since these studies have come out, as a profession, we have increased rather than decreased these pressures. Since 2010, schools have brought through another round of "more rigorous" standards and testing with CCSS, NGSS, PARCC, and SmarterBalance. We have gone through a period surfing the ripples of the 2008 recession with reductions of wage increases, reductions of staff, balance tightening, and reductions of retirement benefits. We have doubled down on data and assessment by focusing on both growth and achievement. At schools throughout the nation we are staring carefully at the precipice whether we break our profession or find a way to save it.

Leadership matters more than ever; administrative leadership, teacher leadership, and legislative leadership. In this world in which everyone worries about increasing standards and increasing rigor, leadership needs to build bridges between the past and the future. For generations our teachers and students have done great things. When assessment factors in SES (socio-economic status),  schools in the United States outperform the best-fit line compared to schools across the world on PISA.* More interesting in looking at PISA was how few developed countries have more families in poverty than the United States. Reading through the Common Core State Standards can at times feel like you are reading the diagnostic manual for your computer's CPU. It is filled with technical words, carefully crafted language that is word-smithed to provide an exacting meaning by the authors but language that leaves parents and practitioners in the dust. Leadership needs to connect the best practices of our past with our growth towards the future. We need to identify those growth steps we have made in our classrooms and clarify the next step as not a moonshot but rather an evolutionary development. The phrase "Race to the Top (RTTT)" implies a need to react quickly. An anticipation that we are not there and if we do not expend great energy in a quick fashion it will pass us by. "Race to the Top" ignores that after any sprint the athlete is exhausted. They move fast, react swiftly, and then stagger afterwards. This is not the vision of teaching we should desire, but rather that of the tortoise beating the hare. The methodical journey down a path that leads to ongoing success. 

Teachers join this profession to become difference makers. They seek work environments in which they can improve the lives of children. As leaders, we need to look at each new initiative and identify how much of this is based in the best practices that we do, what in the initiative is absolutely necessary, what components fit within what we believe is morally right and viable for our students, and what time and resources will it take to implement it well. Governmental leaders may be in a race, but if we want teachers and educational professionals to be in it for the long run, we need to take the multitudes of acronyms and right size the pace for our staff, students, and community. Our teachers can only be heroes if we create the space for it. 

*Please note, I believe there are enormous challenges with international assessment and PISA, but it was nice to be able to cherry pick a statistic.