HA! Not really sure how to take that. If you are referring to my chronological age, I will be 65 this May 6th (always falls near Ky. Derby weekend—yet another reason to bend the elbow). OTH, if you somehow mean to compliment this wizened head as having demonstrated mature, thoughtful and intelligent judgment beyond my years, i.e., an “old head” on my shoulders—my true inner 19 year old self has to seriously question your powers of analysis. Or more probable still, you are simply taking pity
on what you regard as a doddering, misguided geezer who should nonetheless be tolerated—perhaps even humored—if for no other reason than in the belief that when I’m tied up on the keyboard here I can’t do truly serious real damage flailing about elsewhere in society at large…. Come to think of it, perhaps it’s time for this geezer to adopt a new moniker upon reaching age 65. That’s it, a new, transmorgified me : “The Fighting Fossil!”

I recommend getting a copy of 2 curricula from Rod and Staff Publishers (the books I used in school, and among the best I taught out of.)

Thanks for the suggestion; I’ll hunt for a cheap used copy of the teacher’s manuals and take a look. I’m not terribly optimistic, though: these look like home-schooling materials, and crossing over from lessons for a small group of home-school students to lessons for a classroom-full usually requires inordinate full-scale overhaul (this isn’t a denigration; there exist some truly fantastic home-school resources; it’s just a very different teaching experience). But maybe I’m misinterpreting the publisher’s description.

Also, there’s something fun about ordering a math lesson-book from this Rod & Staff’s distribution outlet (the Anabaptist Bookstore) and receiving this message: “Sub Total $13.65 Your order is less than $5, so a $3 processing fee will be added later.” Well, then.

and the one’s who don’t really need to be here always show up.

Indeed, LOL —I’m certainly not taking you up on that bet. I also find it hilarious how many of these teachers can’t think up a productive use for talking with parents of successful students who are also taking the time to meet you in person instead of just emailing a brusque grades-update request. “Look, _ is doing just fine in my class, but while you’re here…” I think one semester I almost accidentally set up a volunteer teacher’s aide network just by hypothesizing about it in all my PT conferences. Got me thinking…

you are much older than I thought. Take that as a compliment.

We are, after all, talking about education on an industrial scale here, and while the world is replete with self-taught, creative idiosyncratic geniuses (including pilots—the Red Baron crashed six times, after-all—and walked away—while teaching himself to fly) such individual’s capabilities (student or instructor) are not what one designs a core curriculum and syllabus of instruction around.

Salient and harryb make some very sensible points with which I am in general agreement, yet at the same time I can commiserate with zebra—because whether as a teacher, athlete, or pilot (which I was) I always hated the thought of my individual creativity being straight-jacketed—which is the other side of the education instruction paradigm’s double-edged sword.

And when salient talks about parental involvment@37 I feel compelled to relate a personal story: Much of my entire family on both sides were educators to include two School Superintendents, one HS Principal, one HS Librarian, One college professor (My Father) and two second-grade teachers (one of whom was my Mother.)
Growing up in the fifties I naturally heard my Mother talk often (usually after returning home from the meetings in question) of the relatively usefulness/futility of formal parent-teacher conference nights. Years later in 1974, while as a security guard for xtra money in grad school, I was assigned to shepherd the teachers around the halls at a parent-teacher conference night at a middle school next door to one of the two worst crime-infested housing projects in New Orleans (the Fischer Project). As I escorted a group of teachers down the halls I overheard one remark casually to another using THE EXACT SAME WORDS I had heard my Mother use over twenty years prior: “Well, it’s the same old story, the parents who really need to be here because of their child’s poor performance never are—and the one’s who don’t really need to be here always show up.” LOL. And thirty-five years later I’m sure (so sure I’d bet BIG MONEY on it) those exact same words still echo down school hall-ways from the mouths of teachers on parent-teacher nights all over America today……..Some things about human nature NEVER change……..

Can’t continue, but just to say that the glimpse into your own school life is much closer to what salient/I agree would be good than to what we have witnessed in american middle and high schools.

Get their 1st-grade reading and phonics.

Get their 5-th grade math.

Note that in both, they point out clearly where students may get stuck; explain EXACTLY what to say in explanation; and give suggested exercises.

Those books explain why schools with teachers with 8th-grade educations consistently turn out 8th-graders who can pass a high-school leaving exam, in a second language.

Because it’s a colossal amount of work to prepare ‘em. Most teachers’ lesson plan books, what they write out or document, is 2% of what the plan consists of. Why: a detailed and comprehensive description of the lesson would take hours to prepare, so it’s time (and energy) prohibitive. Describing the how-to in one’s lesson plan each day would take forever and be draining.

And, that kind of writing-everything-out work doesn’t help a master teacher: they know in their head what to do, how to execute; they know what leading questions they’re prepared to ask and what pitfalls they’re likely to encounter.

I question the analogy to military tactics

Well, I was hypothesizing about principal-teacher relations having similarities with military command structure / organization. How does the military maintain rigorous consistency across a broad spectrum, and can principals apply those kinds of ideas to departmental meetings? Students didn’t come in to that metaphor. Maybe it’s a dangerous or pointless metaphor and I should abandon it; it seemed to me that one of the relatively strong successes of a strong military is its ability to organize a consistent and reliable hierarchical authority structure, and maybe we can learn from that success. Or maybe there’s no useful parallels, I don’t know.

Are parental involvement and Parent-teacher councils and all that stuff completely out of fashion?

I think it’s a selection issue. It seems “Beating the Odds” somehow implies “Odds” being a significant lack of community involvement, especially among parents. Many behavioral and extrinsic-motivational issues fade in significance when there’s substantial community/parent involvement—issues of classroom management and student participation are there, but are exponentially easier to solve—and it’s probably no longer fair to call such schools odds-beaters.

“But on your model, numerous beginning teachers waste a lot of time reinventing the wheel, the weaker teachers (who have a lower rate of attrition than the stronger teachers) never manage to invent it, there is no basis for the observation and discussion of teaching and learning which is the key to improvement, and common assessments (that enable us to identify the level of student achievement as well as the most successful teachers) are impossible. And there’s a lot of scope for creativity even within a framework of common curriculums and published lesson plans, if, of course, the common curriculums and published plans are good.”

Point one: good management includes provision of consistent, high quality mentoring for new and weak teachers – a decent mentor helps out with the tendency to reinvent the wheel. There are loads of resources sites out there already where teachers can share lesson plans, observations and discussion. But these ought to be adapted not adopted wholesale.

Point two: while I do think my current workplace could do with more observation/discussion and general CPD, how far does this need to be formalised? I’ve worked now in six different schools (very different types of school) and even in the most demoralised and uncertain of departments, found that the one thing teachers do well is discuss what they are doing. But this doesn’t need to be wholly formalised – it’s like going to conferences, where the best discussions are usually the unstructured ones in breaks. One of the gifts of good management is providing staff with unstructured time. In other words, ensuring that non-contact time is across a department, for example, limiting cover and administration/paperwork.

Point three: I work in a system where there is very limited common assessment – but our qualification (the European Baccalaureate) has been found (by a series of external surveys) to be one of the most reliable of indicators of student success at tertiary level – in other words, whichever of the 27 EU nations a student comes from with a EuroBac, the dropouts are significantly lower than for other qualifications e.g. A levels, and the final Bac score is a fairly sure indicator of likely levels of achievement at university – 90%+ at Bac is likely to get a first, 75-80% is likely to get a 2.1, 65-75% a 2.2 and 60-65% a 3rd. This is across language barriers – every student who takes the EuroBac does so in their mother tongue and a second language, some kids are taking nearly all their subjects in a second language, and the assessment bases across languages are not necessarily harmonised – a kid doing Dutch mother tongue has a different exam to a kid doing Swedish or English. Given the pig’s ear that the UK has made in designing SATS at KS1,2 and 3, I am extremely wary of common assessment, especially having served as an examiner in my subject for KS3 and GCSE. It is too easily manipulated by exam boards for their own or political purposes. On the other hand, our system allows for a good deal of shared assessment on a smaller scale between teachers. We co-write exams, we moderate, we we develop shared marking schemes. No one tells us to do this, but we cooperate across classes and across schools.

Point four – ‘if common curriculums and published plans are good’ – there’s the rub. Look at the drubbing of the UK primary curriculum in the latest instalment of the Alexander review.

The best teachers are inspirational, because they are invested in their subject matter, they are constantly challenging themselves and ideally, inspiring colleagues as well as students to do the same. Reducing teachers to facilitation and delivery of pre-prepared materials is short-changing teachers and students from achieving real excellence in the classroom.

Agree entirely with lisa and tracy. There’s a lot more to be said about principals, and principal training, and I’ll say some of it soon(!). Thanks for the link Tracy.

kids to school time, so no time for more.

You know what is missing from that first list? Parents. Are parental involvement and Parent-teacher councils and all that stuff completely out of fashion?

Agreed. What do you think of the comparison of education administration to military command structure? I wouldn’t want to think of students like soldiers (!!), but among faculty and administration I think there might be some useful structural/organizational comparisons. I don’t know for sure.

Auftragstaktik? Which is pretty much the antithesis of Daviesism. I suppose it depends if you consider education an essentially defensive/conservative or essentially offensive/subversive task.