By Stephen Lazar, on January 5th, 2012%
Two months ago, Nancy Flanagan wrote a great piece about changing her mind when it comes to school reform, which inspired me to do the same at the New York Time’s SchoolBook:
I used to think that if I didn’t know the solution to the problem, I could figure one out. I now think some problems are so complex that there can never be a silver bullet.
I used to think we needed to create model schools that could then be replicated. I now think that it is so hard to sustain a model that each school needs to be invested in its own unique vision.
I used to think our goal should be to create systems of great schools. I now think great schools are so hard to create and maintain that our goal should be to create good and sustainable ones.
Read the rest here.
By Stephen Lazar, on March 27th, 2011%
Two quotes to start the week:
The first, a recent one, from Deborah Meier:
In all these years we have never seriously confronted society with the question of “why?” Do we really want schools to undo our class divisions? Do we want them to produce adults who are members of a shared and commonly cherished adult world—with inequities that we could all imagine living with? With adults who more or less equally appreciate and utilize democracy for their own self-interests, have more or less equal access to the media, to political influence, with fair and equal protection of the law?
I’d like, Diane, given the obvious reality of the above (it’s said harshly, but isn’t it the simple truth?), to suggest we shift the discussion. Maybe it’s time to think together about what schooling could be if we truly saw it as the bedrock of democracy—if we imagined we cared enough for the future of democracy to put everything we have into using schools toward such an end. We need something to fight FOR, not just against. The billionaires’ reforms take us backward, so what would forward look like?
The second, a much older one, from the philosopher Hannah Arendt:
Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it and by the same token save it from that ruin which except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and the young, would be inevitable. And education, too, is where we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and leave them to their own devices, nor to strike from their hands their chance of undertaking something new, something unforeseen by us, but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world.
~Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought (New York: Penguin, 1968), 196.
Democracy and possibility? That sounds like something worth fighting for to me. Let’s get to this first period, tomorrow morning.
By Stephen Lazar, on March 7th, 2011%
I previously wrote about the killer effects that teacher turnover is having on my Bronx school, as well as considering some of the causes of this high turnover. It is now my hope to offer solutions to this problem.
I have been thinking long and hard about a way to solve this problem that does not cost more. In times of falling budgets and layoffs, I know any idea that costs more will get little traction. Unfortunately, I cannot think of a single solution that will not cost more at some level. If we value the education of our students, we need to be willing to pay for it. I hope there will be commenters more creative that I am.
Studies have shown that the number one reason teachers leave is not because of low pay, but rather because of poor working conditions. These solutions aim specifically at improving the working conditions of new teaches. These strategies could be used in concert or individually, but all of them would make new teachers more successful, and therefore, more likely to remain in the profession:
Provide real mentoring from trained mentors to new teachers
In his 18 years as an urban teacher, administrator, and instructional coach, David Ginsburg (whom I met at the recent Education Writers Association’s conference) has seen a direct relationship between the practical support teachers receive, including classroom coaching and new teacher induction training, and their retention rates and overall effectiveness. Here’s an excerpt from an email I recently got from him:
Last year a school that was averaging around 40% turnover of new hires from one year to the next for several years brought me on to do a teacher induction program and to coach teachers, and over 90% of teachers who received that support are back this year.
What did David do? He observed the, gave them feedback, provided them with resources when needed, and talked with them. He also did this in a non-evaluative, low stakes manner. This is not rocket science.
I am attempting to provide similar coaching this year to three teachers. Unlike David, I have no training or experience to show that I can coach teachers, other than the fact that I have been successful in the classroom. I hope I am doing a good job, but I don’t have the tools to truly assess if I am. This is the flaw in the current school-based mentoring system that exists in NYC: there is no process to make sure mentors can coach. The key to making mentoring successful is making sure we have the right mentors, then giving them to time to meet, support, and actually coach new teachers. NYC currently has no screening nor evaluation of mentors, and this needs to change.
Reduce the class loads of new teachers, and make them observe
There is no other profession I know of where someone is expected to do the same work on the first day of their job that they do in their 30th year. If an experienced teacher can handle five classes with a maximum load of 170 (which is already too high), new teachers’ loads should be capped at three sections with no more than 75 students total. Teachers should spend the rest of their day formally reflecting on their classes and students’ work, as well as observing all other teachers in the school, both good and bad.
I was blessed to go through a student teaching program that capped my load at two sections, then required me to do observations. I learned a ton from watching teachers on whom I wanted to model myself, but I learned even more from watching the others who I did not want to be like. This allowed me to enter the profession with a clear conception of both who I wanted to be, and what I wanted to avoid becoming.
Moreover though, I got to be a “perfect teacher” for four months. At my most idealistic moment, I had the opportunity to actually put all my ideals into action, and then had time to reflect on my performance. I could spend ten minutes grading every essay (now if I spend three minutes per essay, that’s 2 hours per section), make weekly calls to parents, and truly know every one of my students on a deep, personal level. I will never have the time to be that teacher again, but I know what I am aiming for. Most teachers do not get this experience.
Create new teacher support groups, with guidance from novice teachers
A very common complaint from new teachers is the feeling of isolation they have when entering the profession. It is important that new teachers be given the time and space to reflect, vent, and share their successes and failures in a safe environment. This group can take many forms. At schools with lots of new teachers, this can take place at the school level, elsewhere on a district level. For those places where it cannot, this can happen online through blogging, chartrooms, or on Twitter (there is a weekly chat for new teachers on the hashtag #ntchat that many rave about). This, ideally, should not be something extra new teachers have to do, as they do too much already, but should be part of their paid work time.
However, these groups should not happen in isolation. Teacher who have survived the early part of their career should be participant-leaders in these groups to help bridge the social divide between new and experienced teachers, but also to ensure new teachers learn that success is possible.
I would also like to point an optimistic eye towards the DC’s Center for Inspired Teaching Resident Program, which provides a new model for teaching training which I think makes a lot of sense, and hopefully can yield long-term results. I will be keeping an eye on the work of Aleta Margolis and her organization as they move forward with this ambitious plan.
These are but a few ideas, and I am hopeful that others will add to this list; from my point of view in the Bronx, there is no bigger challenge facing urban schools right now.
By Stephen Lazar, on February 24th, 2011%
I spent last Friday at the Carnegie Corporation of New York along with a handful of other teacher bloggers and a number of education journalists for an Education Writers Association seminar on “The Promise and Pitfalls of Improving the Teaching Profession.” Stacey Snyder, Ken Bernstien, Mark Anderson, Mark Roberts, and Dan Brown have already offered full narrative accounts or sumaries of the conference, so I will yield to them (Ken’s take on things most matches my own). Instead, I offer three lessons-learned that are still with me a few days later:
- There is no reason ever to have a panel on teaching without teachers on the panel. It’s simply inexcusable. The clearest moment where there was a need for teachers was during the third panel on Professional Development when the panelists were asked about the value of National Board Certification. All three panelists said they didn’t know much, but offered the limited anecdotal evidence they had to offer, and this is where the question died. Yet, there were multiple National Board Certified Teachers, myself included, in the room. Why not ask the teachers?
- Luckily, whenever the journalists had the chance to talk to teachers, be it in the hallways, over lunch, or at the formal roundtables that ended the event, I found I was asked good, tough questions and I was genuinely listened to. I was extremely impressed with nearly every interaction I had with the press in the room, even those who I’m certain I disagree with on every educational issue. It is very easy to critique the “media” in the abstract, just as it’s easy to critique “teachers”. However, nearly every individual member of the media I talked to struck me as intelligent, thoughtful, and filled with a desire to do their job well. The only exception was a journalism student, a former Teach for America teacher who shockingly has left the classroom, who clearly had an agenda to root out and expose “bad” teachers. Don’t get me wrong, there are bad and lazy journalists out there, there are good journalists who sometimes write bad pieces, and there are those who, for whatever reason, don’t challenge established narratives, but my assumption is that, much like teaching, these are a very small number of professionals who get a disproportionate amount of attention and vitriol.
- We don’t know what makes someone a good teacher before they’re in the classroom.. This was the consensus of both Vicki Bernstein, Executive Director of Teacher Recruitment and Quality for the NYC DOE, and Spencer Kympton, Vice President of Recruiting for Teach for America. I must admit, I was prepared to despise both these people. Both, however, were magnanimous in their willingness to talk more about what they don’t know than what they do know. This flew completely in the face of Talia Milgrom-Elcott, a program officer the Carnegie Corporation and previously a special assistant to Joel Klein, who began the day advocating for getting more people from the top 1/3 of college classes into the teaching profession. The bottom line is there is evidence that this will not improve student performance, which the much referenced McKinsey Report that makes the same conclusion fully acknowledges. If people from the DOE and TfA publically agree on this point, it’s time for McKinsey and the Carnegie Corporation to move on to finding better solutions.
My Previous Posts on EWA:
Other’s Story Ideas for Journalists from teachers at EWA:
By Stephen Lazar, on January 26th, 2011%
Along with the rest of my history department, I had the great pleasure to spend my Tuesday at East Side Community High School in Manhattan as a guest evaluator of their students’ semester ending roundtable presentations. While my students in the Bronx, and at many other New York high schools, spent the day taking a three-hour Living Environment exam which emphasizes memorization of a breadth of factual content, students at East Side, thanks to a waiver from most Regents exams, spent the day in deep thought and reflection, applying and showing off what they had learned this semester. We learned much to take back to our school, but what I saw also has much larger implications for the current local and national educational discourse.
I participated in two, 90-minute long sessions, one for an 11th grade English class, and the other for a 12th grade AP English class. While there were a range of skill levels and fluency in English amongst the students I interacted with, all six were impressive in their presentations and reflectiveness. Students in the 11th grade class each chose one piece of writing to share, along with a cover letter which summarized their learning. The seniors, in addition to the above, held a debate in which they each had to argue, using the lens of a school of literary theory, which character from a text they read most challenged the status quo. In my group, students used the lens of feminist theory to articulate which character most undermined and transcended the patriarchy in their societies. I cannot possibly explain how enjoyable and impressive it was to listen to the students. Particularly in the senior class, the standards for students were higher than any school I have ever encountered. Students were not only doing high-level college literary analysis, but they displayed an amount of reflection, self-awareness, and thoughtfulness that most adults do not have. Others in my department observed roundtables in 7th and 9th grade history, and everyone came away impressed with what they saw.
There were a number of conclusions I was hoping my department would take away from watching these presentations, and thankfully, many of them came out over lunch together afterwards. While in the long run, I would love nothing more than for my department, if not our school, to implement a similar program, in the immediate future, we saw the value of having students formally reflect on their learning. We saw how much more impressive students’ understanding and complexity of thought is when they have the opportunity to go in-depth over a smaller amount of skills and content, rather than emphasizing a limited understanding of a breadth of content. And we saw that students are capable of much, much more than what is tested on the state’s exams.
In a time when much of the public discourse on public education focuses on accountability, teachers’ resistance to so-called accountability measures is often mistook for laziness or a fear of change. These people are mistaken. In his welcome letter to his guests today, East Side’s Principal, Mark Federman, wrote:
We, meaning the students, staff and school as a whole, will put it all out there for each other, our families, our friends, our colleagues and our community to see: the good, the bad, and everything else. This is not an easy thing to do. Our students’ work and our own work is not always as pretty as we want it to be. And no matter how hard they have worked and we have worked, we are never quite satisfied. However, we offer it to the public because it is to the public that we and our students are ultimately accountable.
The work I saw today from East Side students was real, meaningful, and is worthy of public accountability. The work Bronx Lab students did today was arbitrary, meaningless for students’ lives, and not worthy of their time or capabilities. I am more than happy to have myself and any teacher in this country held accountable for the kind of work I saw at East Side, for it was truly work that asked students to meet high standards, not just to get a high score on a multiple-choice test.
By Stephen Lazar, on November 1st, 2010%
Two weeks ago, I wrote about the biggest challenge my school, and others like it, face: teacher turnover. I discussed how of the 76 pedagogues who have worked at my school, 36 have left. Last week, that number hit 37. A tremendous amount of our school’s human resources are needed to help support and develop the new staff we bring in, thereby taking away resources from students. This begs the question, why are so many people leaving?
Common perceptions of urban teaching is that most people who leave go to teach in the suburbs or private schools. This has not been the case at my school; none have left for the suburbs, and only one for a private school. Last week I posted the individual reasons people leave, but this week, I aim to speculate on broader trends that cause people to leave. In many cases, these trends overlap for individual people:
Trend 1: Teaching is hard; teaching in the Bronx is really hard
Of the 37 who have now left, many were teachers who really struggled in their classrooms. Some of these teachers may have been more successful with suburban students who will do almost anything they’re asked, but they struggled with the challenges our Bronx classrooms present. This trend exists in all urban schools, though, and is much discussed, so I will stop there.
Trend 2: Starting a new school is a lot of work
Teaching is hard work, but creating a new school from scratch is even harder. When a school has only a small handful of teachers in its first years, no one is just a teacher. By my second year at my school, I was our tech guy and a grade team leader. With all the extra work, people burn out quick. Additionally, with so many people with limited experience in their jobs, things rarely work smoothly at first and teachers are required to constantly roll with the punches. It makes for an extremely stressful work environment.
Trend 3: New schools get lots of ambitious, young, teachers
Given all the extra work that goes into a new school, it should not be surprising that many of the teachers willing to work in these schools are young, ambitious people without families. New schools need “supermen” and “superwomen” and therefore seek them out. Many of these people are not native New Yorkers, but see NYC as a good place to spend their 20′s. These teachers are likely to leave for four reasons:
- They move on to bigger and better opportunities within education
- Teaching was always just something to do after college, and after their 2-4 years they move onto something else
- They leave NYC to go back home
- They start a family and no longer want to spend the amount of time teaching requires
Let us consider the first three cohorts of teachers hired the pioneers of the school. Of the 34 pioneers, 16 were under the age of 30 when they started; only 8 of us remain. Of those 8, only 2 were non-natives and unmarried. Both plan on leaving at the end of the year. We were the people who should have grown with and sustained the school when the initial group of leaders moved on, but this has not been the case.
In my next post, I’ll suggest some ideas for dealing with these problems.
By Stephen Lazar, on October 25th, 2010%
Today, I was invited to give a presentation to coaches from the Institute for Student Achievement (ISA) on the Senior Seminar and Capstones that are meant to be the culmination of the student experience at my school, now in its seventh year. I’m not sure how much interest this will be to most, nor if it will make much sense without my talk, but thought I would post my presentation nonetheless for others to learn from. I’m hoping, also, to continue the conversation I began at the presentation with many who were there.
In the presentation, I make reference to two methods of planning backwards, planning like a staircase, and planning like a spiral. Here’s an example of the first model, created by our English Department Chair, and one of the second model from my Senior Seminar last year.
By Stephen Lazar, on October 21st, 2010%
Ted Sizer passed away a year ago today. Below is the email I shared with my staff when I heard the news, which I thought I would post in his memory today.
Ted Sizer is solely responsible for me becoming a teacher. If I hadn’t read Horace’s Compromise my sophomore year of college, I would not have ended up in a classroom. This book shows what schools should not be – and made me realize there was an alternative to the mediocrity I had known throughout my public school education. Horace’s School, which I read the following year, showed me for the first time just how powerful schools and teachers could be in terms of not only effecting individual students’ lives, but in re-imagining the human relationship of teaching in order to help build a better society. When I started my career, I sought to make my classroom a smaller version of Horace’s School, and was thrilled to latter find in Bronx Lab a school striving for many of the same goals.
I had the blessing and pleasure of getting to meet Ted and his wife, Nancy, on a couple of occasions. The great optimism and hope of his writing was matched by the warmth and generosity of his personality. What struck me most about him though, was his complete confidence that people and schools could change. This was a man who had been fighting against the grain for 40 years. But despite all the failures he had encountered, all the students he saw suffering in poor and mediocre schools, all the resistance to change that he encountered, he seemed to know that change would come, and he put his faith in a new generation of educators to carry that change out. I can only hope that he was right, and that we are worthy of his trust.
By Stephen Lazar, on October 19th, 2010%
At the Education Nation panel I attended, AFT President Randi Weingarten begged the moderator, NY Times reporter Steven Brill, to ask me and the other teachers about the biggest problem we faced in our schools. Here is the answer no one else bothered to ask me to share:
The biggest problem my school faces in our efforts to reform education is not the students nor their poverty; it is not the union contract, the union, or the administration; it is not too much testing or too little accountability. No, the biggest problem in my school is the turnover of our pedagogical staff. If I could ask the education genie for one wish, it would be a group of teachers who would stay and serve our students for a career.
When I interact with teachers at conferences and online, they’re shocked to hear my school has such high turnover. They’re shocked because we have such a good reputation, or we’ve had such strong results, or the economy is so bad. And I’m shocked they’re shocked. We all know 50% of teachers leave teaching within five years. Why would anyone be surprised that this hits the Bronx and other students in most need the most?
There are 40 adults who work at my school as teachers, administrators, or in guidance roles. This is only my school’s seventh year, and already, 76 different people have filled those positions. This current staff shares an average of 3.15 years at my school. The average number of years all teachers have spent at the school is a measly 2.84. The data by department follows bellow.*
Why do people leave? Of the 36 people who have left my school:
- 10 moved away from the city
- 8 remained in the city, but left teaching
- 5 have moved to higher positions in education in the region
- 5 have changed schools (4 to other public schools, 1 to a private school)
- 3 have been fired
- 3 left to go to grad school
- 2 have been excessed
- 2 are unknown to me
When people leave, they take with them the institutional knowledge we so desperately need to build a new school’s culture. They take with them the trust earned from students, who are less likely to then give new teachers a chance. After all, many students think, what’s the point of building relationships with new teachers if they’re just going to leave anyway?
I do not blame any of the individuals who left. They each did what was right for them and their families. I used to be quite mad at them, but I have since come to blame the logic of capitalism.
It is difficult to state the challenge, though, each departure brings the school and our students. First, there is the huge amount of time we are forced to spend annually recruiting, interviewing, and selecting new candidates. To fill an open history spot this summer, I went through over 100 resumes, and interviewed a dozen teachers on the phone for at least 30 minutes each. I only spent that little time because it was two weeks before the start of school; normally, we would have had 3-5 finalists come in to teach sample lessons and then interview with a full panel of teachers, administrators, and students. I have a friend who is a full time director of recruitment with a staff of three people who work full time to recruit for a network of three charter schools. At my public school, all this work is done by teachers and admins, whose plates are already plenty full.
The selection process is only the beginning of the time investment we make in each new teacher. Even previously successful teachers need significant coaching and mentoring to adapt to our schools’ culture of project-based assessment, inquiry-based learning, and advisory. We run a new teacher group, and provide each with a mentor to meet with them weekly.
Many of our new teachers though, come with little or no experience. These teachers often need significant help with all aspects of pedagogy, most visibly in classroom management. The most challenging new teachers require hours and hours of time from administrators, coaches, deans, and their peers in order to help them be functional in the classroom. For a really struggling teacher, we often invest two years before that teacher can stand on her or his own two feet in the classroom, which usually is just enough time for them to leave us. In the meantime, okay teachers only receive minimal support, and therefore often do not reach their full potential.
I am in my first year as an official instructional coach at my school, and I love working with the three novice social studies teachers I support. All three are good now, and I believe all three will be great in the near future. But at the same time, it concerns me that at this young stage of my career, I am already being pulled out of the classroom. The time that was invested in my development, rather than going straight to more students as it should, is being redirected to other teachers. This is not a sustainable model for educational change. But as department chair and the most experienced history teacher in my school, there is little choice.
Coming up: Part 2 on causes of the problem, and Part 3 on possible solutions.
*Note: the data is my recreation and accurate to the best of my knowledge, but has it been verified by anyone. There are many limitations to it, so I would not encourage anyone to use if for other purposes without further research.
By Stephen Lazar, on September 28th, 2010%
Welcome to those finding my blog for the first time. After you finish this piece, I hope you will take the time to read this one, Everything That is Right in Public Education, as well, which describes an experience in which I can actually take pride.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
~Macbeth
Over the past few days, I have had the unbelievably depressing and deflating experience of being part of NBC’s Education Nation. I was one of the first teachers on stage for Sunday’s Teacher Town Hall, and I returned on Monday for a panel entitled “Good Apples,” taking up a so-called “Oprah Seat” which promised the chance to respond to the panelists, who included the Waiting for Superman Three: Randi Weingarten, Geoffrey Canada, and Michelle Rhee, moderated by Times reporter Steven Brill. Continue reading Education Nation: I Should Have Known Better
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About Me I am a NBPTS Certified Social Studies and English Teacher in Brooklyn. I work with teachers to support Project and Inquiry-Based Learning. My writing on policy and practice has been published on the New York Times, Education Week, and Gotham Schools websites.
You can also follow me on Twitter @SLazarOTC. |
