I would like to challenge CEOs and education policymakers, and anyone else who thinks they know best what teachers should do, even though they have never been in a classroom, except perhaps for a few photo opts, to take the teaching challenge.
Spend at least a semester teaching in a poor public school, which now, due to funding cuts, includes what used to be considered middle class schools.
I am talking about all those who intentionally or unintentionally demean teachers and what they do as ineffective. If you have spent a nickel funding Teach for America, this challenge is for YOU!
If you have time to redesign schools, and tell teachers how to teach, you have time to get in there and actually teach how you preach!
Let’s call it CEOs or Policymakers for Public Schools! This is not an odd idea.
Early in 1974, Florida’s Gov. Bob Graham impressed many when he spent time working, a full eight hour day in different jobs. He experienced first-hand the hard work and problems found in those work positions. His jobs included service as a police officer, park ranger, iron worker, bus boy, railroad engineer, construction worker, fisherman, garbage collector, and teacher. Here’s a more complete list of the jobs.
But did you know that all of this began because of a teacher? Her name was M. Sue Riley.
As a Florida senator on the Education Committee, Mr. Graham complained about civics classes in public schools. Riley, an English teacher, said, The only problem with members of the Education Committee is nobody has any experience in education. Ms. Riley contacted Senator Graham proposing he teach civics for a semester. He accepted her challenge, taught the class and went on to work in several hundred jobs.
Graham said this about the experience:
I was chairman of the State Senate Education Committee, and I had been in some classrooms where I didn’t think civics was being taught very well.
I mentioned that to some civics teachers and they said ‘the only way you can find out what’s going on is to actually go in a classroom.’ So, I accepted and ended up teaching 18 weeks of high school civics. It was a wonderful experience. I did, in fact, learn a lot about what was going on in a modern high school, but the most important thing I learned was the difference between learning by somebody giving you a lecture or reading it in a textbook, and learning by actually doing it.
So, like M. Sue Riley and those civics teachers, I challenge Bill Gates, any of the Walton clan, Mark Zuckerberg, David Coleman, Reed Hastings, Joel Klein, Ed. Secretary Arne Duncan, and Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton (why not?) and all other political and/or corporate education reformers, including those in Chicago and New York, who, in the past, and/or today, criticize public schools and think they know best what kinds of programs should be done there. Or they think that it’s alright to cut funding from schools.
When President Barack Obama finishes his duties he can take the challenge too!
Media pundits who unfairly criticize public schools and teachers are welcome.
Also, to be fair, while the Presidential candidates are busy drumming up support, they can take the challenge but spend less time—let’s say a month—in the classroom too.
Let’s see how Donald Trump holds up with 33 middle schoolers! Hillary seems to especially love young children, so place her in a kindergarten class to teach reading. Pick one of those schools that denies recess and see what she thinks.
Actually teach in a poor public school! Doesn’t that have a nice ring to it?
They should teach in classrooms where parental support might be missing, maybe because Mom and Dad have to work 4 low-wage jobs between them to make ends meet, and they don’t have time to help with mounds of “prep for the test to get ready for college,” homework.
Students with a variety of disabilities and language needs will be slipped into these classes too so these temporary teachers can experience the challenges found when the message is that everyone can learn if you have the right teacher!
Really…I can come up with a long list of people who I’d like to see getting real teaching experience.
Eli Broad could be an art teacher, perhaps in a school in danger of losing the arts.
If you have ever said, “public schools have failed” or “students need high expectations” or “unions suck” or “teachers have it easy” or “we must get all students with disabilities to pass the regular test” or “we don’t need to lower class sizes,” or a myriad of other outright or nuanced public school and teacher put-downs this challenge is for you too!
You cannot hide behind the fact that you have no experience working with children or that you have not studied child or adolescent development or anything involving teaching pedagogy. If you want, you can get 5 weeks of training.
The classroom you will be placed in will be at random out of K-3rd, 4th or 5th, middle or high school. You will do all the other things required of teachers for the age group.
If you are a high school teacher you will also be responsible for coaching a team after school, or you can be the newspaper adviser, we’ll let you pick what you want there.
You will follow the teacher’s exact schedule—no special bathroom breaks—sorry!
It would also be nice if you lived on a teacher’s beginning salary.
If you want supplies or resources you can compete with every other teacher in the country on Donors Choose or the new Think it Up!
And the teaching must be in a real public school—not a charter school where students have been brainwashed to march and not step off the line, and where parents and students fear expulsion if they break the rules. Those aren’t what I would call real public schools.
Nor can you teach at a new school building or work in a private school where you might have a corner classroom overlooking Central Park. No. Your school will be a regular old school where you might need to adapt like other teachers and bring in a bucket or several buckets to catch the drips from the ceiling when it rains. A few rat traps (humane please) might help too.
You must also take the largest class sizes found in the school, especially if you have rallied against lowering class sizes.
You can use technology, but your test scores will be shown on the nightly news and in all the local newspapers and online. And technology use will be monitored very carefully in case you say students are all learning better this way when they aren’t.
My guess is you will be a celebrity for about a week with the parents, less so with the students. And after a week they will start to see you as Ho Hum and treat you like a real person.
Mr. Gates and Mr. Coleman, Common Core awaits! Keep those close reading lesson plans coming.
Also, if you have trouble, I bet a lot of teachers will lend you their earbuds. I would be more than happy to step out of my blogging role to come give you directions from the back of the room.
And one last caveat: We will video record you teaching. If you do well we will make a MOOC out of it, but you will not be paid. If you have problems…well we will make a MOOC out of that too—a MOOC of what not to do.
But, either way, I think you will learn something valuable about teaching and earn the respect of the teachers you seem determined to influence.
The CEO and Policy Maker Public School Challenge—how many will take the challenge?
References
“Bob Graham’s Workdays” Florida Memory: State Library & Archives of Florida.
Excellent suggestion! I think anyone who has a government position should have to teach in a public school for a mandatory period of time in both an urban and suburban school. This would also help to alleviate teacher shortages in many states. Here in Nashville there is a group of people who want to improve public education. Would you extend your challenge to them? http://nashvillepef.org/
Hi Susan, If business leaders and politicians are going to try to connect Nashville’s economy with their public schools, it seems to me it is a beautiful, thriving city. So why don’t politicians and the business community praise the students there instead of speaking like they aren’t measuring up?
I posted this blog on Project Reset’s Facebook page. Bet there are no takers!
Thank you, and thank you for your comments, Susan. I did see the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation listed. It is sad they focus on negativity when it comes to public schools.
Good Evening Ms Bailey,
I would love to post the first couple of paragraphs of this excellent piece, ending with a link to the entire article on your site! It is great! I’ll be sure to credit you entirely in an intro of your choosing. Will you consider?
Sure! You have a nice blog! I look forward to reading it.
Thank you!
http://thewitheringapple.com/2015/09/23/take-the-ceo-and-policymaker-challenge-teach-a-year-in-a-poor-public-school/
It should be mandatory that ANY politician or lawmaker having anything to do with education should either BE a Teacher, or HAVE BEEN a Teacher. Otherwise, the level of ignorance can do great harm to our children in this country. How dare anyone come in with evaluative models from other areas/industries/businesses and try to impose them on the sacred and immeasurable skill/gift/art of Teaching? Judging teachers’ performance by students’ test scores only scratches the surface of what it means to be an effective teacher. Even Science has great difficulty (read ‘impossibility”) with trying to measure the intangible.
The human mind is complex and multi-layered. Children are not robots; each one learns in their own way and at their own speed. Teaching effectively is connecting with a mind and the particular way of learning/thinking of that mind. It is delicate, fine-tuned, highly challenging work. It is an intricate dance that constantly keeps you on your toes (pun intended!) The anticipation and excitement of trying to minute-by-minute connect with so many different minds, (all the while having so many assorted interruptions) makes this living laboratory an enjoyable, never ending puzzle.
Yet ONLY by being in the classroom, and responsible for each child and all that goes on, can anyone know how difficult and valuable this blessed career is. So……..
CEOs/business-folks/politicians: LET THE CHALLENGE BEGIN!
I couldn’t have said that better, Liz! Thank you!
Thank you so much for this idea, Nancy. It struck a real cord with me. Just don’t expect too much by way of up-take for this excellent proposal.
I was especially drawn in by your comment about he specifics of this idea:
“And the teaching must be in a real public school—not a charter school where students have been brainwashed to march and not step off the line, and where parents and students fear expulsion if they break the rules. Those aren’t what I would call real public schools..”
With the dangerous tinkering that politicians and many in the business community engage in over the purpose and direction of publicly funded education, this is such an important caveat. We need to make sure that the destiny of coming generations of young people do not have their life opportunities shaped by people who think they know best but in doing so, with such overwhelming conviction and confidence, prove that overcoming ignorance in our supremely confident local and national leaders over what is needed to make an education service that is fit for all, is our greatest challenge.
Correction to my final paragraph, please!!
With the dangerous tinkering that politicians and many in the business community engage in over the purpose and direction of publicly funded education, this is such an important caveat. We need to make sure that coming generations of young people do not have their life opportunities determined by people who think they know best and in so doing, with overwhelming conviction and confidence, prove that overcoming ignorance in our supremely confident local and national leaders over what is needed to make an education service that is fit for all, is our greatest challenge.
Thank you, John. Excellent points! Teachers here have been shut out of the conversation despite these arrogant decisions affecting what they do. I hope it turns around.
Why subject kids to people who have no education and no experience teaching just to prove that these people will fail? Another experiment on poorer families?
Hi Margaret,
I received a few messages and comments about this. I wrote this post without believing any CEO or policymaker would really do it. Although if they did, they would need PLENTY of help! And you are right that it should not be another experiment on the poor.
But isn’t it strange that while many don’t want their children taught by non-educators, those same individuals have been the driving force to tell us how teachers should teach and be evaluated?
My point is that educators who learn about education should be driving the conversation about schools. Outsiders should have input certainly, but they do not understand how children learn and what works for them. They are not the experts.
Thanks for giving me the chance to rant. Best.
Before I became a teacher, I was in my country’s Air Force. Once a year, all the generals and colonels in charge of everything had to pilot a plane. I believe anybody making decisions in the field of education should not only have some experience teaching, but that experience should be recent. Administrators should keep teaching a class or two, or substitute for sick teachers from time to time. People at the DOE should do the same.
Oh, Bill & Melinda, maybe you should do that as well, and not at Lakeside, your children’s posh private school. Public school kids don’t have access to hydrotherapy spas on campus.