Let’s Do What’s Needed Rather than Do What We’ve Been Doing

Imagine if you will the following scenario:

A doctor enters one of her patient rooms and sitting in the chair is a middle-aged man who is clearly having difficulty breathing. Her first reaction is the man is having an asthma attack. But, being a good practitioner and being trained in evidence-based decisions, she quickly and efficiently carries out a few additional tests to confirm her suspicions. Within minutes she knows that in fact this male is having a serious asthma attack that appears to be increasing in severity. Luckily she has the answer, a cure that alleviates the symptoms, and restores this man’s breathing to normal.

Now, all she has to do is find that plant that contains the active ingredient, grind it up, extract and purify the compound. It shouldn’t take more than 1 hour given the advances in technology around plant purification techniques. Luckily, she also took a one-day workshop in the process about three weeks ago. While there was no oversight to ensure she could do the procedure, she was a professional and felt she could perform the purification process with no further support. And, if all else failed she could download the PowerPoint presentation and figure it out. After all, that how she had always done it.

Meanwhile, the patient continues to gasp for air.

Now most people would agree the first paragraph of our scenario is a plausible and quite likely a common occurrence in a Doctor’s office or an Emergency Ward of a hospital. The second paragraph verges on being ridiculous in terms of the existing practices now used in medicine. But, for many readers who find themselves in the field of Education, a simple switch of the context to a school makes this story reflect the current reality in schools.

We expect the teacher to do it all.

From planning the lesson, accommodating individual differences, addressing inappropriate behavior, keep current on learning and assessment, actively integrate technology and perform the roles of counselor, keeper of the common values held by our society and beyond …. well, the job is somewhat overwhelming at the best of times. With the advent of the Internet, curator of information, publisher of resources customized to their students and at the same time save the system money by not buying resources has been added to the list.

While being a curator, publisher and right-wing budget slashing economist is not impossible. And to be honest, many teachers have migrated to doing this with websites, photocopied pages from various books (which is now legal in Canada) and a mixture of other resources. This is a safe place to hide from the much larger, and I would argue more important, task of teaching. Just because it’s there doesn’t mean you have to do it. Take our Doctor in the above scenario. Just because she can make the drug to save the patient, doesn’t mean she does. Her time is used in a much more efficient manner by administering and prescribing the medication. She is doing what she has been trained to do.

Teachers are not trained to make educational resources. There is not one course in an Education program on making high quality, pedagogically appropriate resources. You are trained on how people learn, how to create engaging lessons from existing material and how to assessment student achievement against a given curriculum. There are skills that develop from a base of knowledge that over a career create master teachers.

Now, because everyone can make a webpage and access just about anything on the InterWeb, it’s assumed teachers can just put together their own resources. The Doctor isn’t expected to make the medication, why should teachers be expected to create their own resources. That’s why we have textbooks. That’s why the information in these books is aligned to the curriculum to support the teacher and provide a range of learning opportunities for students.

I know some of you are right now thinking that I’m a publisher and have a vested interest in selling books. That is true, but right now I think a far more important issue is getting our focus back on what should take the teacher’s time. Staying up late to copy, combine and create resources that already exist makes no sense to the long term survival of our teachers. Just as asking doctors to make their own medicine makes no sense for them to do their job. While it may be fun to cruise the InterWeb looking for cool ideas, teachers are tired and succumbing to stress leave in alarming numbers. We need to free up time for them. Let’s focus on teaching and learning, not searching and compiling. Let’s give them the tools they need to get the job done in the class during class time and not continually add more to their workload under the disguise of individualized learning or differentiated instruction.

After all, the patient recovers because the doctor does what she’s trained to do, not do something that is already done.

Sure you can, but why?

A case for reducing choice by customizing

There are many things in life where we the options. We can buy cheaper food at a large supermarket or we can take the freeway over the more scenic route home. But just because we have choices, doesn’t mean what we choose is a good choice. Taking the slower, more relaxing route home that makes us 30 minutes late for family dinner may create more stress than before. And so, in the calculus of life we make these daily decisions most of the times after weighing only several factors. More concerned with the short term consequences than any long terms effects. And it’s the long term effects that create the tension most commonly is expressed as “I don’t have enough time.” 

As the author, Barry Schwartz, summarizes in the book “Paradox of Choice”, we have too many choices and it paradoxically clouds our judgment from making a satisfying correct choice. Take for example shopping for hair shampoo. At last count there were 50 different brands at my local drugstore. I think my hair is pretty normal, so I just need some shampoo. But, start looking at all the colourful bottles. There is a blue bottle for dry and damaged hair, a red one for oily hair, a green one for shampoo and conditioner mixed together and another for itchy, dry scalp. Which one do I need? There must be something wrong with me if I don’t fall into one of these bottle categories. How can I decide? Do I buy one of each or none at all? In the end I just buy what I used before – decision-making-by paralysis.

I believe we are in a similar spot in our classrooms across the country. At each level so many choices of where to place limited resources. Board staff debating breakfast programs or literacy workshops. Parent councils deciding which curricular activities to support with their fundraising dollars. Schools debating over such small budgets (after you take out salaries) that it’s almost comical. Parents and taxpayers wonder where their money is going. And through these debates the ever present push to do better, to use technology to make a difference while doing more with less. My loyal readers (all six of you!) will know that I believe technology isn’t the answer without a sustainable infrastructure, that change is difficult in a system where 95% of budgets are to pay salaries and the only teaching tool teachers can regularly access is the photocopier. 

So how does this all relate to reducing time and making teachers lives more manageable and at the same time create a customized learning environment for our students so that their needs are met? 

To do this we need to start by reducing choice. Not student choice, but teacher choice. By reducing choice we don’t limit what our teachers do, rather we empower them to do more of what they’re good at. Let me provide an example. 

There is a myth evolving in our society that because information is available on the Internet we don’t need to worry about learning content. All we need is the skills to access the information. Once we can get to the information we can create what ever we need. This myth is so seductive. Many educational speakers have based their careers on exactly this belief. The stories of creating digital natives and innovative kids freed from the bonds of the brick and mortar school are spread around like mana from the educational reformer gods. Walk into any school and you’ll see that the reality is a pile on the teacher’s desk just below the marking, two student referral forms and a partially completed lesson on the War of 1812. More debris of choice. Every time we don’t know what to do with an idea or initiative, it gets piled onto the teacher’s desk and everyone else walks away thinking the job is done. 

So, let’s start with something really simple that reduces choice. A core resource that covers the curriculum and in return we ask for only the curriculum to be taught. But in having the resource, provide the teacher with the opportunity to customize the content to meet the needs of their students. Go as deep as you want, but have a starting point that works for kids and teachers.

Based on a trust between content developer and educators I propose the following four covenants:

• Content providers provide current, curriculum specific material in a print format on a yearly basis and digital content on a weekly basis.

• School Board purchase subscriptions to curriculum content created by content developers and provide teachers with the tools to deliver this content in print format and digital format.

• Parents are responsible for ensuring their students from the age of 13 to 18 have a electronic tool to access the information delivered by the teacher.

• Teachers will remain current on best practices of teaching and learning, including the use of technology for learning, and demonstrate this expertise by the use of the tools provided on a consistent and regular basis. 

For the purposes of example, I offer the following illustrative example.

At a recent public meeting, the school board trustees unanimously voted to accept the five year strategic plan based on the focus of delivering only the curriculum offered by the provincial government. All other programs are suspended until external funding can be found. The savings realized from this difficult decision will be directed to providing each teacher with a laptop, projector and wireless broadband access along with relevant software. An agreement was also signed with the local university to provide professional development and pedagogical support with the goal of developing a sustaining model of professional development in the Board. The union representative, Ministry of Education representative and Parent Council Rep agreed to the plan and provided their support.

Content providers worked with educators to create cost effective resource for the schools that would be available in both print and digital formats. The result was a black and white work-text combining the features of both a textbook and workbook. Now teacher and student have access to the core content found in a textbook, but can write directly into the resource like a workbook. Photocopying is reduced and these savings are applied to other areas of need within each school. Content providers have a business model that ensures they can continue to support educators delivering the curriculum

Perhaps the toughest challenge is for a small portion of families to find the appropriate technology. About 10% of families needed support from government agencies and private organizations to ensure their child had a laptop or smartphone to access the digital information. But, one thing that education system is really good at is solving problems once the problem has been identified. And this situation was no different. By the start of the school year, every student was prepared in terms of hardware. As the year would progress, it would be realized that not everyone was prepared to adjust their learning in such an easy manner. But, these were challenges educators more than willing to take on.

Over the summer teachers worked with the passion of getting ready for their first year of teaching by attending workshops offered by the University and using their newly created, customized resources. While most acknowledged this was a different approach to teaching and not using the photocopier would be a challenge, it was refreshing to have the tools and support to focus on teaching kids rather than scrambling to just find enough stuff to make it work for the class. 

As the school year progressed many challenges were encountered, but with the leadership and vision from Board staff and school administration the operations side of the new directions stayed the course. Teachers meet often and continually adapted and changed lessons as they moved into a continuous learning cycle both with their lessons and their students. Surprising for many teachers was the realization that not having to go home and search the internet for ideas and teaching support has freed up significant amounts of time. Many agreed that things didn’t seem so rushed and chaotic and that in fact they did have more time. Less choice about what to do actually made them more effective at their job.

Well into the school year schools began to face a new challenge. The new model of teaching was placing more responsibility on the student. Many of the older students, our digital natives, were beginning to rebel. They were use to the older, safer model of sitting quietly and doing what is required. They are not use to be held accountable for work that is based on what they need. A meeting of stakeholders is scheduled for the following week. 

Education never stands still ……