Framing Change

This past week, we had our first Professional Learning Community of the year. At our school, we call them WOWs (working on the work), which is a pretty kid-friendly way to communicate to our students why teachers have this time every other week to meet. While we are meeting, the students have other classes, like PE, Hawaiian Studies, or guidance. 

A representative from our restructuring provider led our first WOW, was asked by our principal to explain the concept of Data Teams, which we have been doing for at least 2 years already. She framed it by saying that education is changing from a deficit model, which goes that students came to us with deficits, that our job was to teach and if they didn't learn, there wasn't much we could do about it. The change is away from that model into one where we believe that all students can learn and it is our responsibility to make that happen. I had never heard of that "deficit model." In my snarky way, I said to the group, I don't remember ever taking a class in Deficit Model 101.  

It struck me as a misleading frame, especially because we have been saying "all students can learn," as a frame since I entered teaching almost thirty years ago. As a model, it has been around a long time.  I guess her point was that we may say we believe that, but do we truly act on that belief? Perhaps her implied point was that if we truly believed it, we would have better results. And since our school's test scores (and yours in particular, the paranoid voices in my head say) are so unimpressive, maybe we do give up on the students, that we don't take responsibility for their learning, that we blame their test scores on their deficits. 

Perhaps there are teachers who would just rather teach subjects rather than students, and who don't think that all students can learn, but I don't know any. Most teachers make it their business to try to make an impact on their students, they want students to learn, they agonize over slow progress and all the obstacles in the way of that progress, and they keep trying because they do believe that all students can learn. They may not make it to grade level attainment, but if they come to you two or three years below grade level, and they progress a year or even two years beyond that, they did learn, but it would not show up in standardized testing. 

But yes, education is changing,  locally and nationally. We have almost national standards. We have a completely new teacher evaluation system based on federal guidelines via the Race to the Top competition. These are huge. But it has nothing to do with changing the belief that "all students can learn."

It is all experimental, both the Common Core and our Educator Evaluation System. We don't know if it will be good for education or not. However, we can make predictions based our background knowledge, our lived experience. Standards are great as a guide and to articulate ideals, but they don't improve the quality of education. Instead, they have a tendency to take you away from focusing on children as individuals. High stakes testing makes things worse, whether it is a growth model or a cut score model. Losing valuable class time to all sorts of things related to these changes - from mandated trainings, to student surveys, to pre and post observation meetings, to testing - may do more harm than good.  

I am not resistant to change. But not all change is inherently good. Change should not be the focus, being student-centered should be.  I will do my part in the year or two that I have them (I loop with my class, generally for two years) to help them to improve their math skills, to ignite their curiosity about science, to sharpen their thinking skills, to learn the content, to help them to be better communicators and problem-solvers, to encourage them to be good citizens, to cultivate confidence in their ability to learn, to guide them to know their strengths and to strengthen their weaknesses. 

I know I have room for change and growth. Lots. But I want to change and grow into my ideals as stated above.  I hope I will not be hindered by the powers that be, or by the need to focus on Data, the point of the meeting presentation. I want to be a teacher on fire. A call for data and false frames won't help me to be that teacher. What will? Truth. Authenticity. Respect.