Won't Someone Collaborate with Me?

I play well with others.  At least, that's what I've been told.  Maybe that's why Linda Darling-Hammond's assertion that in order to effectively train and evaluate teachers they should be allowed and encouraged to collaborate makes perfect sense to me.  Darling-Hammond (who has yet to write anything I don't find absolutely interesting, by the way) and other educators briefed politicians in Washington, D.C. last month about the most effective ways to evaluate teachers.  She, and her team, found flaws in the value-added methods (VAM) that are increasingly being touted as the right way to evaluate teachers.  Among their alternative measures to helping creating effective teachers was the focus on collaboration.  First, however, a brief digression into the VAM.  VAM seem a positive alternative to continuing to turn our backs on the trainwreck that is NCLB.  But they, like other evaluation measures, need to be taken with a grain of salt...apparently in somewhat frequent doses throughout the school year.  Perhaps the most interesting piece of the VAM puzzle is the way that students' scores are seemingly effected by (get this) students.  This is interesting because most legislators, it seems, think students live in a bubble, effected only by the quality of the teacher (lots of parents feel this way as well).  However Darling-Hammond's research suggests that the actual students - that is their backgrounds, home-life, peer culture, health, and attendance - amazingly impact there own education.

Okay, enough sarcasm.  You know this already.  I know this, and I think that when we actually question legislators, they might admit it as well.  So what to do?  Evaluate, train, monitor, and collaborate.  Rinse and repeat. This means thinking about evaluation in a different way.  This does not mean that adding values to students shouldn't be a portion of the measure to teacher evaluation.  Nor is it saying that in order to be a good teacher you need to play well with others and collaborate all time.  Instead, I'm asserting that both of these methods share value when it comes to evaluating teachers.  So too is proper training, and continued monitoring of both novice and experienced teachers.  All four pieces carry significant importance when it comes to gauging the effectiveness of teachers and wht it is that students are taking from their experiences with their teachers.

As far as collaboration though, I tend to agree with Darling-Hammond, et. al., that playing nice with others carries with it extreme value in the context of educating students.  The idea of a teacher working (and teaching) in a vaccum is no longer feasible in an era of technological innovation, high stakes testing, accountability, and nationwide standards.  Closed doors are closed minds.  My first teaching experience, I was lucky enough to have the same sophomore English prep as another first year teacher, and a second year teacher who had taught at the district the year before.  The three of us worked together to align curriculum, develop lessons, and, if need be, let off steam, at least once a week.  This period of collaboration helped to save my already-taxed first-year teacher mind from overload.  It was a necessary element of my survival.  So too was my role in a mentoring program that required an experienced mentor teacher to sit in on my classroom once a week.  We would then meet about what went on during the observed lesson later on in the week. I enjoyed the opportunity to pick specific areas to improve upon every week, and my mentor's feedback was invaluable to my improvement as a teacher.  Both instances of collaboration benefitted me greatly, and both would still benefit me, even as a more experienced educator.

Collaboration is benefitting other experienced teachers as well.  I read recently that other educationally progressive countries actually build collaborative time into their teachers' weekly schedules, sometimes up to five hours a week.  The increased collaboration leads to teacher's evaluating other teachers in their classes, reflection on lesson planning and outcomes, and perhaps most importantly, students showing growth in the classroom.  I would love to do something similar on a weekly basis with teachers in my department - whether it was aligning curriculum, planning, sharing resources, or doing more reflective practice by observing one another for both evaluative (formative) and learning (novice teacher views experienced teacher) purposes.  This sort of colloborative effort could end up being another measure of a teacher's worth in an educational landscape of accountability.

The Irony of Charlotte Danielson's Framework

Charlotte Danielson's Framework for Teaching is aptly named.  It's easy to see that in retrospect.  If you missed the title, re-read it.  You didn't blink and omit it.  The en vouge framework for teacher evaulation, soon to be used in districts across the country (including my own), didn't start and wasn't conceived out of spite for bad teachers.  Instead, Danielson began the framework as a rubric for what makes up the practice of teaching - mostly what constitutes "the standards of practice for regular teachers".  I find it extremely ironic then that this assessment for teaching is now going to be used to assess teaching.

This is no rant on what teachers do and do not deserve.  Instead it is a reaction to a conversation Danielson had with Education Week blogger Rick Hess in June, an ironic conversation that shed new light on many other conversations I've been involved in, and surrounded by over the course of the last school year.

I was introduced to Danielson's Framework, and told the implications of her model during a district wide articulation session last September.  Teachers from my high school district, as well the grade school district in our community watched in terror as representatives from our state teacher's association rambled through the new form of assessment soon to be used to evaluate a teacher's performance.  Blood was in the water that fall day - in the form of percieved big shots, from a big association, giving big edicts.  But in reality, the writing had been on the wall for awhile.  The idea of teacher evaluation being (somewhat) tied to student performance and systematic observation is as un-suprising as the recent e-mail I recieved that told of how No Child Left Behind has been found to fundamental errors.  This is like telling audience members not to watch, that in fact Charlie Brown will not get to kick the football.  This is not new information.  Yet, teachers from mine and the other districts figuratively stormed the stage with questions and accusations, refusing to believe that an organization that was supposed to have their best (bargaining) interests at heart would turn their back on them in their time of need. 

But, ironically, what Charlotte Danielson had in mind when she created her framework was the needs of teachers.  More specifically, it seems as if she thought teachers needed to see that although there may not be one correct way to teach a student, there certainly is a "continuum of performance" on which all teaching falls.  Why not reveal these insights through a framework to benefit the profession, instead of letting the practice of "what works for me is mine, and I might share it if I see fit" continue?  Why not try to lead those teachers whose practices, for whatever reason, fall low on the continuum?  This seems like what we want for our students who struggle, why not ask the same of our "struggling" teachers?

This idea of a "continuum of performance" really strikes a chord with me.  I started out as a television reporter, and after failing to secure the ever-illusive second job, I began to rethink my life and career goals.  Moving home to consider alternatives, I discovered that what I missed the most from the profession was something that I could do everyday (to a different, perhaps more exciting extent) in the classroom.  I loved to read.  I reveled in writing and wordplay.  But my real passion was in the performance.  The rush of a red button above a camera pointed squarely at my head sent the shivers of excitement down my back.  Just they way every bell does now that I'm a secondary English teacher.  The performance was the thing.  And while it might not be the thing for all teachers, it is certainly one of my favorite aspects of my job.  My comfort in saying this reveals how I feel about being judged by the Danielson Framework...I'm really not.  Part of that is my confidence in my abilities of managing a classroom, keeping my students engaged and involved, and feeling comfortable in front of that audience.  But part of it stems from knowing that there is always improvement to make and being on a continuum grounds me in that knowledge.

I also know that I will have to be evaluated by a trained professional - who has been specifically, and intensively trained in the Danielson model.  This training assures me that no grudges or feuds will ultimately lead to my ouster, if that does indeed happen as a result of a poor set of evaluations.  To my understanding, the model is intensive, which theoretically would lead to a more involved evaluation, which theoretically would lead to more pertinent and useful commentary on the performance continuum.  I know that others will not welcome this scrutinity, but if we look at it as Danielson originally intended it to be used, then the model should help much more than it hurts, right?