My husband and I recently moved to Sedona, a small town out in Arizona's rattlesnake, sagebrush, and cactus country. At first, we watched old westerns, many filmed in our area, drinking in the culture, myths, and legends of the Wild West. While we hooted and yahooed our way through cattle drives, runaway stagecoaches, and moonlight-behind-the-saguaro kisses, we noticed that in classic westerns, “straight shooters” are much in demand. Not gunslingers who can shoot straight, but guys who tell the truth, who like to get things out in the open so everybody knows where they stand. Guys who neither avoid necessary conflict nor engage in unnecessary conflict. Rustlers and bank robbers aren't crazy about straight shooters because of their ethics of fair play, honesty, and interest in all sides of the story.
Straight shooters are hard to find, though, and based on my experience, we need more of them on the school reform frontier. For the past five years, I have spent most of my time in schools that have joined the Coalition of Essential Schools, a partnership between Brown University and more than 700 U.S. schools that seek to interpret according to their own culture and community the nine principles that Theodore Sizer describes in Horace's Compromise (1984). The central aim of these schools is to help students learn to use their minds. Breadth is stressed over depth of knowledge. Educators strive for pedagogical variety, an emphasis on cooperative problem solving, and an expectation that students will demonstrate what they know and can do. All these require serious restructuring that, Sizer believes, cannot proceed without honest confrontation.
In Hollywood, straight shooters often ended up exposing the folly of the scoundrels to the public. In schools, there are no such clear distinctions between right and wrong. School-based straight shooters want to clarify their own position and also hear those of colleagues. Recognizing that various perspectives are important, they look for respectful ways to articulate important differences. They also assess whether an issue really requires confrontation, and so engage the group's time and energy only when it is critically important to do so. In addition, they are quiet about their own role, which tends to make their colleagues more receptive.
In the movies, there is generally only one straight-shooting cowboy, who ends up riding off into the sunset. He has a legendary reputation or a sheriff's badge, making him the designated problem solver. In reforming schools, however, we need many people who will take personal responsibility, not because of their formal positions but because of their professional commitment to the entire group and its shared goals and, ultimately, to the students.
Obstacles to Reform
Everyone involved in school reform knows that several major obstacles stand in the way of transforming common practices that do not work well. Most basically, it's difficult to get people to agree about what needs to be done—or whether anything should be done. Change challenges teachers' training, experience, and beliefs. Therefore teachers, as well as administrators, parents, and kids, need adequate information. Agreement means that people are clear about what they believe schools are for, and what they think their roles should be.
A second problem is that schools, as Rosenholtz (1989) points out, are accustomed to promoting a problem-free work environment, regardless of whatever faction or turf war might be raging inside or outside the school. In the typical school culture, politeness is valued over effectiveness or problem solving. As a result, the status quo holds sway and people hesitate to make their perspectives known. But people must deal with real issues if any gains are to be made.
In the current reform movement, much greater attention is being paid to curriculum change and authentic assessment than to pedagogy. Yet all three are interrelated pieces of the teaching puzzle (Wasley 1994). We need a more direct focus on instructional practice to bring what happens behind closed doors out into the open. Teachers often have yearly evaluations with their administrators, but most teachers say these sessions are not deep enough, interesting enough, or sustained enough to promote real teaching growth. They add that the peer coaching sessions many of us experiment with often turn into replicas of clinical supervision, or are too contrived, unfocused, or infrequent to make a difference.
Finally, time is ever in short supply. But we need time to talk in order to overcome these barriers.
Where to Begin?
Teaching practice has been so private for so long, how does a faculty open and sustain a growth-producing dialogue about instructional practices? To make progress, straight shooting within and among groups is required.
Following are several examples of schools where this is happening and reform is working. Although the problems expressed are common, the staff's ability to engage in straight shooting is not. The examples show how much teachers want to reduce the isolation in which they work, but how fragile they are in the midst of their peers. They show that we must proceed carefully if we are to redesign teaching as thoroughly as is needed to reform schools effectively.
Reconciling the Old and New
At a small northeastern high school that has been involved with the Coalition for five years, an argument was brewing over whether the changes made were worthwhile. The question had divided the faculty into camps where both groups felt defensive and irritated. In faculty meetings and in many private conversations, some teachers challenged the interdisciplinary work, the teaming, the new pedagogical techniques, or the curriculum changes. Even students admitted that some teachers were telling them that restructuring classes were engaging in less rigorous and challenging work.
Meanwhile, those who were trying new approaches—the majority of teachers—perceived the skepticism as unprofessional griping. Finally, the dissension blocked the faculty's ability to make further decisions as a group.
A team of Coalition researchers who had been working in the school pointed out that all teachers shared the common goal of making the school as good as it could be for the students. Shouldn't this common goal fuel an investigation of what was working and what was not? The researchers also advised the staff that the whole school should engage in mutual critique and feedback as a matter of course.
The faculty did work to clarify the differences in philosophy. The Building Planning Council, which includes one member from each department and develops the agenda of faculty meetings, put the issue on the table. The council agreed that sharing individual teaching practices would be an important part of its group's work.
For the rest of the year, teachers held various work review sessions to scrutinize both old and new practices. A panel of staff, parents, and students observed new techniques in action and gave constructive feedback; department members examined students' work; and a number of teachers invited colleagues into their classrooms and planning sessions to provide feedback.
- Publish a news sheet in which all teachers contribute blurbs describing what they are engaged in, what conferences and workshops they have attended, and what reviews are under way.
- Regularly share teaching practices.
- Respect professional differences and refrain from categorizing teachers as reformers or nonreformers. Talk directly to teachers whose methods seem questionable rather than discuss colleagues with students.
- Eliminate negative talk about the students.
To share teaching practices, the entire staff held an end-of-the-year retreat. There they viewed videos of student presentations and reviewed new assessments in science, math, and the humanities. A couple of staff members continued to feel isolated and unhappy with the school's direction. In general, however, these activities did clear the air, counteract divisiveness, and enable the faculty to move on with renewal.
Confronting One Participant
At the new Sedona Red Rock High School, a group of teachers were hired last winter. At planning meetings, it became apparent that one teacher, Tina, talked far more often than others. A colleague of hers, Sue, felt strongly that without some early intervention, the rest of the faculty would begin to discount Tina's contributions. She was convinced, however, that Tina talked frequently not out of arrogance, but because she processed her thinking out loud.
Sue came up with this solution. During one of their marathon planning meetings, she quietly kept track of how many times each teacher spoke up. After the meeting, she sat down with Tina and helped her to see that she talked substantially more than anyone else. They very frankly discussed Tina's verbal processing, and Sue pointed out the likely negative consequences. Sue told Tina that her ideas were important, and that if she moderated her input, she would be more likely to influence the group. Tina expressed appreciation for the helpful feedback. Since then, Tina continues to work on her behavior, and her relationship with Sue has grown stronger.
Working as a Team
In one of the country's largest northeastern cities, the faculty of a small alternative high school has been working in teams to further their own professional growth and increase their effectiveness with students. Four teachers from several disciplines serve on each team. Together they determine their own curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment. They've learned that each time teams are reconfigured, they need to work collaboratively to establish ground rules and common definitions of their roles and responsibilities.
- The goal is integrated instruction, not interdisciplinary instruction.
- Everybody must work together for the full semester; no quitting midstream over differences.
- If a team member asks for help, the rest of the team has to pitch in.
- Any team member may ask any other team member about his or her performance and responsibilities.
- No one can complain to another team member about someone else unless he or she has first been honest with the person who's irritating him or her.
Because the team had regularly shared the ups and downs of the experiment with the entire faculty, the rest of the faculty became increasingly interested in this approach. Instead of establishing a them-vs.-us atmosphere, the team used the larger faculty to help solve problems as they came up. At the end of the semester, the team also involved other faculty in a review of the program's successes and failures. As a result, the entire faculty elected to try the whole-day approach the following year.
As the semester went on, one teacher had a hard time integrating subjects and asked the team for help. The team made suggestions, but the teacher did not act on them, preferring to teach in isolation. At the end of the semester, team members reviewed their ground rules and, without rancor, three of them told the teacher who'd had difficulty that they would prefer not to team with him again—and why. That teacher had received very direct feedback all along, and so was not taken by surprise. He eventually transferred to another school, recognizing that his beliefs about curriculum differed from those of the rest of the faculty (Wasley 1994).
Opening Classroom Doors
I have been working with several groups of teachers who are discussing classroom instruction. Such discussions can help everyone develop a broader range of teaching techniques and give individual teachers more meaningful feedback. Doing this in smaller groups is more productive and provides more consistent support. To facilitate these sessions, teachers may submit a video, a lesson plan, a written description of their work, a journal entry, or a reflective report from students.
- The point is not evaluation, but learning from one another.
- In the course of a year, faculty in all disciplines participate to elicit suggestions and alternate possibilities, and to learn from the work of others.
- Administrators also participate by bringing some aspect of their own work to the table.
- The discussions focus on actual work in progress instead of “best lessons,” so that the feedback can be put to use immediately.
- The conversation stays focused on the presenter's work rather than on others' war stories.
- Presenters select the process for the session in which they highlight their work. For example, a presenter may walk everyone through the material with appropriate explanations, then answer questions, then listen without comment while other members discuss what they've learned, and finally offer closing comments.
- Process observers are appointed to keep time and to ensure that the ground rules are observed.
These exchanges have been among the most exciting I've seen. They have demonstrated educators' strengthened commitments to transform their professional relationships into more honest learning communities. They send the message that the covert griping that is so common in schools is unacceptable because it is the antithesis of professional responsibility. The activities also show an understanding that you can't get beyond obstacles by ignoring them. And, finally, they signal a renewed conviction that kids deserve the extra effort.
