The ability to producenovice teachers who are resilient and persistent in the face of the complex problemsencountered in todayís schools is a goal to which every teacher education programaspires.
More than just educationally, but also in society. If educators are unable to model resiliency and persistence, the question arises: how will the next generation learn those qualities? It is our responsibility as educators to push the next generation to be greater than we are today.
Both teachers spoke of their new positions as being an excellent fit for them
In my opinion, an educator's fit for the given role or school is not discussed nearly enough. If a person is not comfortable in some part of their occupational arena, the year can become a treacherous experience. A belief exists that one should be comfortable being uncomfortable. While that is aspirational, at some point one has to embrace something as comfortable if nothing else to have confidence that tomorrow is a new day.
All three left theirpositions because of the perceived lack of administrative support and the failure ofthese schools to attend to the needs of their students.
Leadership in education is the secret sauce. In my time in the classroom, I’ve seen good teachers leave the classroom altogether because of questionable leadership. With that said, I’ve seen people who may not have been at the top of their class in education be brought under the umbrella of great leaders and have their entire perspective changed.
Chandraís desire to continue teaching at this school despite the overwhelmingchallenges she faced might have to do with a strong sense of personal mission, whichwas linked to her twin sisterís work as a volunteer with homeless women as well asher family ethos
Chandra’s experiences are heartbreaking. She is the type of fighter that needs to be in education. Chandra’s lack of behavioral management is tough because she wants to give back so badly that she closes her eyes to problematic behaviors and the methods needed to fix them. She is the type of person who could potentially figure it out with time or when paired with a disciplinarian co-teacher. She also sounds like the type of person who could burn out very quickly. She could really go either way. In my opinion she has to find her niche’ and exhaust all options to accentuate those to her advantage. It may turn into a situatuation where she has to fake it till she makes it.
Sally noted that one day of her teacher induction program was very goodbecause she got to share a bad situation she had with a student with her mentor group
Everyone loves success stories, but humbling dialogues with your mentor or other educators about reflecting on negative endeavors are where true growth arises.
All had long and detailed stories of theacademic and behavioral student-related problems they encountered in their firstand second years of teaching.
In my experience, finding the symptoms of deep-rooted problems is one of the easiest things in education. One of the hardest things to do when teaching is correctly diagnosing what to do to fix those symptoms. That mission requires self-reflection and playback, especially when dealing with behavioral issues.
These teachers were also observed to use questioningas a formative assessment tool, variations in groupings to ensure that students werelearning at appropriate levels, and a wide range of instructional practices, such ascooperative grouping, centers, and inquiry methods, to ensure that all styles oflearning were accommodated in the classroom setting
It is fantastic that they were using the listed learning strategies, but were they using them effectively? From experience, I believe that transitions are among the hardest things to implement in education. Perhaps it was a product of throwing a bunch of ideas against the wall and seeing what sticks? Without the educator himself reflecting, only the students know the quality of the education they received.
the reader should understand that the resultsof this study cannot be generalized to the teacher candidate population as a whole
The use of the word 'should' is a dark piece of diction in the education world. The public is the populace reading this article; they are the clientele in charge of voting to pass levies, voting for representatives to change the rules educators work with, and they are the ones to call the school when educators attempt to do their jobs. This word might be one of the culprits that drives the most educators from the profession when young teachers are introduced to the occupation, and the position is not what the new teacher believed it ‘should’ be.
The literature on teacher education has focused on novice teachers who leavethe profession, which has substantially contributed to our understanding ofimportant variables related to teacher retention.
Taking the time to examine why young teachers are no longer teachers should be the focus of all final semesters, in my opinion. Granted, institutions are tasked with producing educators, but to address the nationwide shortage, those same institutions have the obligation to shift their focus to developing teachers with longevity.
The studiespresented in this review also point to self-efficacy and reflection as two importantcomponents related to teacher retention, persistence, and resiliency
With teaching experience as a guide, this is absolutely true, but there is so much more to it. It is the extra things that those two actions force you to do as an educator that help teachers stay teachers.
Studies on teacher retention demonstrate that some teachers are both resilientand persistent, remaining in the profession despite being confronted with the samechallenges and obstacles of those who leave
The problem with being resilient and persistent is that burnout is far more prevalent in our world. You cannot light yourself on fire to keep others warm and survive to tell about it, or even better, keep doing it.
Overall,advisors enable schools and families to work together toprovide students with the support they need to navigate theintricacies of school in a productive and positive manner.
This is such a vital piece of education that is often overlooked. Education is a shared approach that requires coordination among students, families, schools, school districts, and the education system. If any one of those things is not where it should be in a productive manner, all elements tend to suffer.
Advisors are charged with making sure that studentssucceed academically, too. When students struggle, theadvisor reaches out to their teachers to develop strategiesto turn things around.
We focus heavily on student success and ensuring students are supported academically, but teachers also need advisement. Resources that support educators while promoting student success are the most effective investments any school system can make, in my opinion.
Student-centered schools emphasize the use of variedinstructional strategies that accommodate the wide rangeof skills young people bring to the classroom.
These schools have excellent results, but the lessons and assessments that accompany their curriculum tend to take longer. This trade-off often results in less of the written curriculum being covered, but the content that is covered is usually absorbed at a higher cognitive level.
In recent years, however, educational policymaking hasdiverged from contemporary knowledge about childdevelopment.
Rather than child development experts serving as the guiding light, political agendas, increased emphasis on adult development models, and fluctuating conditional funding have all shaped policymaking at all levels.
Fortunately, we have models of excellent practice in themany teachers, schools, and districts serving low-incomestudents that have drawn on research from the learningsciences to provide students with the instructional supportsthey need to learn in deeper and more meaningful ways
These are the models and accounts that teachers and administrators need to research and adapt, along with their teachers, to put into practice. That said, mindlessly implementing something because it worked elsewhere is not always sustainable. Extenuating circumstances are very real and part of every instructional support. Those factors need to be taken into account when developing a success schedule.
For years, schools haverelied on testing to sort students into groups or tracks,presumably for the purpose of efficiently meeting theirlearning needs.
This is often because we have used adult brain development models as our guide in education, rather than child development as our north star. Yes, we aim to reach the adult stages, but as our brains develop, educators and education professionals need to meet the basic needs of child development.
For low-income studentswho spent all 12 years of school in districts that increasedspending by at least 20 percent, graduation rates rose by23 percentage points and educational attainment levelsrose by a full year.
As I started my career in special education, I found that when you showed kids you cared, they typically responded. Now, the spike in per-pupil spending is nice, but it would be more important to know how these districts used the money. That is the important part of the equation. Money and resources are not the same thing. How you use the money to accumulate and use resources correctly is the key.
Rather than creating an enriched environmentthat would provide robust linguistic and hands-on learningexperiences that could develop higher-order thinking andperformance, students are often subjected to a seriesof drills and learning experiences designed to developlow-level skills.
Closing the gap from below expectations to meet standards on a standardized test becomes the focus for kids who are behind. Instead of working backward and using creativity to spark a struggling child's imagination, educators often focus on skill- and drill-based methods. Sometimes it helps, but many times it just has children check out more.
By first grade, only half as many studentsfrom low-income families are as proficient as students frommore affluent families at understanding words in contextand engaging in basic mathematics (Denton & West 2002).1
Education is a vital pathway out of poverty; however, it is often not accessible to those who need it most. This disparity highlights a significant concern that warrants our attention and action.
In short, recent policies have created a vicious cycle thatexacerbates existing inequities.
Local, state, and national policies have devastated public education in the past few years. The focus on school choice and breaking away has led to a woefully inadequate focus on actually fixing a broken system.
For a number of reasons, advocates for such teaching andlearning never gained much traction in schools servingchildren of color in areas where poverty was concentrated.
Yes, areas of color are a very sad epidemic, but areas of poverty in all races are often held back. Poverty is one of the most cumbersome obstacles for all races. When your focus is on surviving or learning this math problem, survival instincts tend to kick in before the bigger picture view of education being the ticket to a better life.
critics of the accountability movement haveargued that its emphasis on narrowly framed academicgoals has made it more difficult to pursue deeper learningwith students.
Even supporters of systematic standardized testing have admitted that its narrow focus and strict guidelines do not always tell the whole story. What it does is give a glimpse of where to start and statistics that indicate success in the core areas tested. It's part of the puzzle, not the whole thing. Unfortunately, when presented to politicians, scores are often used to paint entire portraits.
Meanwhile, policymakers and administrators are learning more about school conditionsthat allow teachers to document and spread effective practices.
Listen to the educators, visit the classrooms, talk to the teachers, have conversations with the students, and generally stop avoiding the front lines of the educational process. So often, the numbers do not reflect the work being done because they are rigid constraints tied to broad working conditions.
The movement is already afoot
Educators need to be turned loose to be educators. Instead of being told how inadequate educators continue to be, let the vast number of us surprise you with what we want to accomplish!
Federal lawmakers can support states in using the new accountability rules underESSA to invest in teachers’ learning and demonstrating skills in designing and scoringnew student assessments.
Please support something that actual educators jointly request. Listen to your constituents and what they want, but please listen to the experts when they tell you what is needed.
use new technologies like ShowEvidence to assign engaging tasks tostudents for deeper learning—andalso to monitor their progressand report the results to parentsand the public.
This will take a huge reset in our educational norms. Teachers in the classroom now are as much digital immigrants as ever before in education. Almost all students know more about the technology than the educators assigning the endeavor. While I agree it's needed as a resource or tool, technology cannot replace the entire educational system, given the current client base.
Leadership in any field,but particularly among teachers, rarely occurs as“a chance organizational event.”54
This is beautifully said and completely true. In most aspects of professional life, leadership is taught as a matter of institutional control. In education, educators are often given a roll sheet and told, "Good luck." The leadership comes from trial and error and experience.
researchers and other educators havewritten a good bit on what teachers must know anddo to lead—drawing on teaching and learning andtheories of adult development, as well as cultivatingtechnical proficiencies in guiding colleagues throughreflection on teaching practices.
The wrong policies are guiding the educational purview. We depend so much on adult development that the aspect of child development remains underappreciated in educational settings. We spend so much time growing up in education that we neglect the transition to adulthood.
Some of the resistance boils down to politics anda lack of commitment to investing in the teachingprofession. But I also suspect that many decisionsabout teachers and their leadership are made withouta deep understanding of how teachers learn to lead orof how their expertise can be spread.
Until education is not viewed through a red or blue lens, arguments will always arise in the political realm. Along those lines are the obvious facts that we have unqualified politicians making educational laws and guidelines. Just because you were a student does not make you qualified to speak on educational policy any more than my attending a dental appointment makes me qualified to set dental guidelines.
SJHA relies onteacher learning and leadership and communitypartnerships, not rigid curriculum or high-stakestesting, to ensure educational excellence and equity.
The missing aspect of teacher buy-in and willingness to take major risks to change norms is being massively underestimated. Without the teachers' willingness to try something new, the SJHA would not have the data needed to tout its success rate.
New designs areemerging, but taking them to scalewill require a game-changing strategy:unleashing the potential of teachersto lead the transformation of theirprofession.
Over time, an increasing number of responsibilities have been placed on them, leading to a decline in their effectiveness in their primary area of expertise. To foster a more productive environment, educators should be encouraged to exercise their creativity. They should not be burdened with additional roles such as social worker, police officer, counselor, or, in some cases, a substitute parental figure. Addressing this issue is important for improving the overall educational experience and supporting the best outcomes for students.
Parents, too, are attuned to the failures of recentreforms. Frustrated by a narrowing curriculumand inaccurate assessments, many are havingtheir children opt out of standardized tests.
This, too, is leading to incredibly misleading information. It's no secret that this type of educational analysis is incredibly flawed, but with parents opting out of the information-gathering assessments, it's skewing the data. However flawed it is, when participation is limited, data is not accurately reflected.
The Standards Push era triggered deep,widespread changes in school practicethrough the use of heavy policy artillery.
While this era will ultimately be seen as unfavorable in the history of education, it's a misstep that can serve as a foundation for improvements to what education should be for everyone.
I predict new investments thatwill be made in the teaching profession (including the emergence of micro-credentials)and offer next steps for crafting the excellent and equitable public education system allstudents deserve.
While this new infusion of capital and investments is vital to education, it is important to note the connections that accompany these new influxes. In many instances, they have significantly transformed educators' roles.