Same old same old

In thinking about this blog, I realize that I probably have a cranky sounding voice. I really am not a cranky person, but I perceive of our education system as being in crisis and I am really interested in being part of creating change--effective change.

I forget who said that the definition of crazy is doing the same thing over and over again in response to a problem. I always think of a colleague of mine 20 years ago who had a notebook, the front cover of which had come off. He had originally fixed it with six or so pieces of horizontal tape, from the front of the notebook, onto the spine. The original six pieces of tape had broken, so he had taped over those pieces. By the time I saw the notebook, it had a quarter of an inch of horizontal tapes on it. That's crazy.

We've done the testing thing. We've done it to death--intellectual death of millions of students. We have done the hippie granola thing (that was the biggie when I was a kid in the sixties). Not enough accountability.

Kids (and their teachers) are not french fries, so we can't just import a program that was successful 1000 miles from here. Education is a delicate art, involving the personality and interests of the educator and the educatee.

We can demand professionality on the part of teachers and not just define this as a set of behaviors that someone unprofessional can fake. Professionality is having a plan, having a sense of who individual kids are and what they need. There are plenty of documents that describe professionality. The Educational Testing "Service" does a good job with its four domains, as does INTASC. My main beef with ET"S" is how those four domains are assessed, particularly in Praxis II. Not to mention ET"S"'s virtual monopoly on gatekeeping tests across all professions and the obscene amount of money it makes from all the people who have to take those tests. But, I digress.

We know that people are far more than their external behaviors, so let's start assessing teachers this way. Let's ask them what they are thinking and as teacher educators, let's help pre-service teachers learn how to articulate their thoughts and to make thoughtful decisions.

Let's encourage teachers to use their professional judgment to address the educational needs of each student. Let's require that school administrators be equally professional. I think we can do this--moreover, I believe we must.