I was struck by the section on the changes in the military and some of the parallels to our own sister bureaucracy: education. Two ideas in particular stuck out: First, "...trust is the prerequisite for creativity. You will never be creative if you think that what you have to say will be discounted......And that is why you build authority now from the bottom up and not the top down" (91).
There is a constant pressure to innovate, as the book makes amply clear, and especially in education. I think most teachers are confident in innovating on a small scale in their departments and in their own classrooms, and we do have a very positive environment for collaboration at the high school. We're very effective in finding a more impactful way of delivering a particular concept or unit, but I don't feel I could be effective in solving the "biggies" in our profession--the issues of teacher pay, teacher evaluation, higher standards for student achievement, improving the national graduation rate, etc. Some educational experts powers visit classrooms and interview teachers, but most do not so far genuinely interested in teacher input on the high-stakes questions, and definitely don't trust our advocates, PSEA and NEA, to work with them--all of their positions are automatically dismissed as political and somehow designed to protect bad teachers.
Tangentially related case in point: Do I trust that raising the bar for rigor as drastically as the chapter on education suggests (something we continually hear elsewhere that we should be doing), which would inevitably result in high rates of failure and course repetition, would be supported? To me this is the biggest obstacle to improving education: if (from the bottom, up) we were to get real about raising academic standards like everyone says we should, we would not be supported by the community, and, in turn, by our superiors (who answer to the community). We wouldn't be "trusted" that our evaluations were in the best interests of the kids. I don't think we would be praised as creative creators......and yet, everyone I talk to on the front lines agrees this is an issue.
(Allison Miller sends 27,000 texts a month and laments her Bs? Really? The Bs sound generous. Certainly not damaging enough to her psyche to inspire her to put down the phone and read......)
The second point that struck me: "The reality today is that when a general officer speaks to a captain, that general officer has almost never used any of the communications systems, intelligence assets, or weapons systems that the captain has......How does the leader retain his legitimacy in his big organization? What is the basis for his credibility" (92)?
Elsewhere on this blog I read a comment by Jon Liguori that lamented it is hard to compete for the attention of students who have access to everything. I think this relates. We have to emphasize our skills and expertise to our students. No matter how much I know about a particular subject, even in my area, a student also interested in it might know more than me (this is especially true for me in the gifted room!). But--that student probably can't write as eloquently about it as I can (hmmm...again....let's leave out some of those gifted kids.....).
We hear it over and over again--we should be teaching critical thinking. This has been a slow shift that we must attend more to....we must expose students to complex texts, complex situations and complex problems--and then make them write (complexly?) about it. That is how we "retain our legitimacy." We have to focus on skill-building over knowledge.
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