Changing the Way Teachers Teach To Help Students Learn

2009 November 3
by Grace Boyle

In college, I felt blessed to have teachers that walked the talk. My Public Relations professor worked as a VP at Cohn & Wolfe for years, my Small Business Management class was taught by an entrepreneur who owned a small business.

When it comes to our educational system, we often look to the students but it’s important to focus on the teachers, as well.

Susan Engel reports in the New York Times how Arne Duncan, secretary of education made a recent call for “sweeping changes to the way we select and train teachers.” Sounds about right. The mechanics of lesson plans and studying specific instructional programs don’t “transform a promising student into a good teacher.”

Experience is knowledge. Reading a book on marketing theory is nothing like working on a marketing campaign project or learning and involving yourself on-site in an internship.

Engel believes that, “students should learn their craft the way a surgeon learns to operate: by intense supervision in a real setting with expert mentors. Student-teachers are usually observed only twice during a semester and then given a written evaluation. But young teachers, like young doctors, should work side by side with skilled mentors, getting plenty of feedback, having plenty of opportunities to observe and taking on greater and greater responsibility as they improve.”

“Teachers must also learn far more about children: typically, teaching students are provided with fairly static and superficial overviews of developmental stages, but learn little about how to watch children, using research and theory to understand what they are seeing. As James Comer, a professor of child psychiatry at Yale, has argued for years, if we disregard the developmental needs of our students it’s unlikely we’ll succeed in teaching them.”

Like many positions, good teachers thrive off of a community of positive colleagues. Collaboration takes away the isolation and incubates ideas.

Engel summarizes, “To fix our schools, we need teaching programs that are as rich in resources, interesting, high-reaching and thoughtful as the young people we want to attract to the profession. Show me a school where teachers are smart, well-educated, skilled and happy to be there, and I’ll show you a group of children who are getting a good education.”

I’m curious – do you teach? Have you taught? What do you think about the article and what do you think needs to be remedied in our educational system?

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  • Mac
    This is very good. Most of school is about learning theory. It's rather time consuming and you don't understand how to do something you only know the theory behind it.

    The things we remember is the things we do over and over again. We will forget the theory because we won't use it everyday.
  • @Mac You're right. Theory is almost meaningless to me. Especially for who I am, it's hard to retain much from reading dry textbooks. I always thrived when I had a "real-life" project in college and when my teacher brought in people from my industry to speak to us and tell stories that we could apply to experience.
  • I'm not a teacher, so I can't respond to your question about teaching. But what resonated with me is the quote from Engel when she says, “students should learn their craft the way a surgeon learns to operate: by intense supervision in a real setting with expert mentors."

    That is 100% true. I graduated with my Masters in Book Publishing from a program that had a student-run publishing company where we could apply what we learned in class and really see how things work (http://www.ooliganpress.pdx.edu/). It was valuable experience, and I learned things about publishing that I never would have even as an intern.

    I think you can take Engel's argument about mentoring teachers and translate that into any work environment and industry. I have had good luck finding mentors as part of internships but not in finding managers who are mentors in the "paid" world. It's a little frustrating, actually. Especially since employees (and their managers) will thrive if they have a relationship that's akin to a mentorship, versus sink or swim.
  • @Lamiki Great example from Ooligan Press with your Masters in Book Publishing. Engel is right that being hands on, supervised and mentors can really incubate great success. We aren't born knowing everything, and the mentors that I've had really help to guide me (in the past and present). Thanks so much for sharing!
  • As a current Graduate Student of Literacy at CU Boulder, School of Education and a former student of the teacher licensure program there, I agree collaboration is the key. Before being admitted into the teaching program, you have to have 20 volunteer hours working with children. Through out the program, which is practicum based, you spend every semester in the classroom. The student teaching phase of the program is a semester long. I met friends teaching that did student teaching in 6-8 weeks and never had a practicum based course and it was obvious to me the lack of preparation those teachers had.

    I can't imagine seeing a Doctor that had never worked with a patient before they were handed their MD. That philosophy should hold true for all professions, especially teachers.
  • @Denise Thanks for sharing your story about CU! The practicum is so important and it's not just for teaching, but any profession, like you said. It's good to hear of programs and also people who just "get it."
  • Do you have all day? Bottom line, the system is broken. If you are a young, idealistic teacher, working in a high-needs school, you will soon realize that your impact is limited and that -- perhaps -- you are better off finding another way to reach kids. At least, that was my experience, and I worked with a prominent, alternative program.

    There is more focus on teaching children to be obedient than passionate about learning. I was required to teach my children how to line up to go to the bathroom, every day, for significant periods of time when I could have been teaching science. When I was evaluated, I was scored lower on classroom management because my kids were excited about science and eager to participate. I got in trouble because I had strong opinions and would not line up like some barnyard animal.

    My kids were amazing, brilliant, wonderful little beings. They were routinely shortchanged, and the most heartbreaking part of it was that they didn't trust themselves. They knew all the answers, but they were told time and time again that they needed to be quiet or that they were wrong. They stopped asking questions.

    As a teacher, I tried to be a partner to my kids. I let them guide the lessons. I let them jump up and down. I took them outside. I got excited with them. This was frowned upon.

    I don't teach anymore, but I will make an impact. I'm just going in through the out door.
  • @Alma Thank you for sharing this personal story. It's also disappointing that teachers like yourself that wanted to expand their kids were frowned upon. I'm sorry to hear that, I can only imagine how frustrating that would be. There seems to be a lot of confines and red tape to work through.

    Would you say the system is blanketed with this wrong approach? Furthermore, do you think there are a myriad of solutions to help education?
  • I really think the problem is that, instead of truly trying to teach/inspire students, there is a "herding the cattle" mentality in education...even at the college level. Teachers are being criticized for not reigning in student behavior. There's a perception that students are a problem to be solved. There's a focus on negativity.

    I think there are lots of differences between higher ed and basic education, but teachers often use the excuse that their students/their families aren't participating. I would argue that it's the job of a good teacher to find a way to inspire students and their families. I worked in the most impoverished schools, where parents were working three jobs and barely spoke English. I still found a way to communicate with them and get them involved. Parents love their kids and will do what's necessary for their kids if teachers bend over backwards. A lot of teachers will say that's not their job. But the truth is, as a teacher, you make a commitment to do whatever it takes to change the reality of a kid. If a kid is disinterested or uninvolved, it usually boils down to bad teaching. I know that's putting a lot of blame on educators, but the reality is that people want to do things if they have inspiration.
  • @Alma I see your point. When a parent is involved in a child's life (in and outside of the classroom) I can see how it would help both the teacher and child. It seems to me that a teachers role is holistic. It doesn't just sit in the classroom. The best teachers I had were the ones that were involved (sounds like you were/are) and cared beyond the time we spent in the desk in their classroom.

    Thanks for clarifying and shedding light on problems within education. I know it's not easy and there are many layers.
  • as a marketing professor who brings 30 years of experience to the classroom, I couldn't agree more. Unfortunately, students sometimes resist the most. I taught a summer class entirely around a project. Class time was used to work on the project, but there was a lot of outside team work as well. The feedback was that I didn't 'teach'. In reality, it was a lot more work to set up, run and provide feedback to 17 teams doing projects. But the student perception was that without lectures and assignments they didn't 'learn anything'. I think the shift in thinking needs to happen with students as well as professors.
  • @Carol Thank you for weighing in. I really wanted to hear from teachers. You bring up a valid point that students and teachers BOTH have to contribute. I've been in classrooms with unruly, uninspired students and I feel so badly for the great teacher who is standing up there. I know it's not easy.

    What do you think students need to shift?
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