"We've had about all the help we can stand."

It's PD season in schoolworld and I've written a fair bit about my professional development experiences through the years, so I thought I'd review my thoughts and see how they match up with what many of you are going through (based on the descriptions some of you have shared on EX). Unsurprisingly, I see things haven't changed much. First in a series.

Wednesday, September 14, 2022

We've had about all the help we can stand.*

Experts. 

The word itself makes my skin crawl. In my twenty-five years in the classroom, I must have sat through a bazillion "professional developments" and trainings conducted by people who didn't understand the classroom and often knew less about the topic of the training than I did. I'm sure many all of you have experienced similar frustration.

It wasn't actually horrific during my first few years. We all met in the auditorium and everyone, including the bosses it seemed, understood the performative nature of these meetings and we got through them together. As quickly and painlessly as possible. While grading papers. Once in a blue moon you might look up and say to yourself or your neighbor, “Wow. That could work.” Then you would take a few minutes figuring out how to use it.

Then, I think it was about 2000 or 2001–that would make sense–the faculty was suddenly offered the opportunity to create a matrix of PDs that would carry through the year, address our concerns, and be conducted by our own expert teachers. It was awesome. 

We dedicated two department meetings to making a schedule and in the third meeting we were told the deal was off. Back to the dictated meetings, only this time the bosses would be taking them seriously.

It was all downhill from there with more and more time dedicated to testing and whatever the latest brainchild of "Downtown" might be. And testing. 

We got more and more consultants and program preachers of one kind and another, and instead of being able to ignore them and do the work we were paid to do, the work that wanted to do--even the grading, sort of--we were now watched, monitored like prisoners in the yard to make sure we were there in the correct spirit. 

Meanwhile, our spirits were low.

Terrible experts who knew nothing about how their concepts would work in the classroom, nothing about the actual thing they were trying to fix, nothing about teachers and nothing about kids. 

I take that back. They all knew that teachers were the problem.

It was around this time that I remember starting to read about the profession and all the things that were wrong with schooling. All these articles by think tanks and foundations, by researchers, by economists and politicians and "thought leaders"--anyone but teachers.

Articles written by people who have never worked in a school. Articles full of interviews with people who have never worked in a school. These people have ideas about everything!

They have ideas about testing and standards and what the curriculum should and should not be. They have ideas about classroom management and teaching reading. They have ideas about class size and educational technology and how expensive school is. They have ideas about our pensions.

They have ideas about unions. They have ideas about school choice. They have ideas about the teacher shortage.

And they have power. They flood the zone with their essays and reports and studies that reflect their specific agendas and those of their funders. Do a Google search on topics like teacher pensions or school choice and the first ten or thirty results will be from one of these experts giving you their slant, and creating impression that theirs is the one true way to think about it. Look up one of their organizations and try and find information about them that doesn't come from them. They are a well-funded, committed bunch.

From the numbskulls that used to come to a room full of English teachers to offer advice on quick writes, to the motivated thinkers suggesting that the problem right now is too many teachers, it's no wonder that teachers continue to feel that their experience, intelligence, and expertise are not valued. And just try and ask a penetrating question or propose an answer that conflicts with the program of the day.

I write all this because I'm feeling it right now. As I've been looking at what Big Thinkers are saying about the teacher "shortage." As I'm now researching what some educonomists are saying about teacher pensions. These people have ideas.

Anybody who is or has been a teacher knows what is true and what is not. We are the ones who have asked the questions and dug deep to find real answers.

I can't help but think that we've had about all the help we can stand.

*h/t John Sayles, Matewan