For many of us, high school was a combination of time spent daydreaming, mingling with the opposite sex and jumping intellectual hoops.
If you’re anything like me, you weren’t particularly inspired by most of your teachers, you wondered how the curriculum would in any way come in handy in the future and you longed for the lunch and passing periods when you had the chance to shoot the breeze with friends.
While most classes involved the constant battle of trying to hide that you were playing games on your graphing calculator from your teacher or the excitement of an exotic bathroom break voyage across campus, there were some classes that didn’t induce excessive drooling.
Some classes were stimulating, exciting and useful. Sure, the homework wasn’t always a blast, but it contributed to a deeper understanding of the subject. Looking back, what made those classes great? Was it the subject matter? Was it the time of day you took it? Or was it the teachers?
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who visited ASU last week, called education “the most pressing issue facing America.”
While it may not seem as immediately crucial as securing our borders or cleaning up our economic mess, public education is a long-term investment that holds the key to solving many of our problems.
Unfortunately, it seems there is no sure-fire formula for creating productive educators. Teachers graduate from ASU’s Mary Lou Fulton College of Education every semester, and though they go through the same preparation program, in terms of actual ability, some will be good and some will be terrible.
Think of all the really bad teachers you had in school. They all graduated from teacher prep programs like the one at ASU. Why were they allowed to teach?
An article in March’s New York Times Magazine asked the question: can good teaching be learned? The eventual answer was “yes,” but not through traditional means.
According to Doug Lemov, a successful former teacher, principal and charter-school founder, students simply won’t learn unless “the teacher succeeds in getting them to follow instructions.” Lemov has written his own list of things that great teachers do in the classroom when managing students.
Known as “Lemov’s Taxonomy,” the 357-page treatise lists things Lemov has watched exceptional teachers do. Simple things like giving kids nicknames, when used properly, can increase productivity and make a kid feel comfortable in class.
On March 29 Duncan announced the winners of the first phase of his “Race for the Top” competition, which pitted states against each other in a quest to earn a share of $4 billion in federal grant money. The goal of the program was to give individual states monetary incentive to reform their public school systems. Delaware and Tennessee took top honors, winning $100 million and $500 million, respectively.
Of the 41 States that applied, Arizona, sigh, took No. 40. While those grants would have undoubtedly helped, particularly in a nation that spends more per student than any other but whose students perform in the bottom third of developed nations, teacher reform will require a cultural seismic shift before real improvements are possible.
In most professions, employees who can’t perform their jobs get the axe. If Steve Nash forgot how to pass a basketball, he’d lose his job. So why are teachers who aren’t able to get students to do what they want, and thus not perform their jobs, allowed to continue teaching?
Teacher salaries must become reasonable so teaching jobs will receive the competition that begets quality work. By forcing prospective teachers to compete with each other for jobs with large salaries, only those with the most ability will be given students to manage.
Awesome teachers are able to do more in the classroom than simply communicate content. By doing seemingly silly things like give kids nicknames, teachers can make kids feel comfortable in the classroom and in turn allow kids to associate learning with fun, and not the kind of fun you have by playing calculator games and going to the bathroom.
Tell Ben your nickname at Benjamin.negley@asu.edu
