Through
the Eyes of a Child: Reflection on myself as an elementary student and that influence on me as an elementary teacher |
Personal
Philosophy of Teaching Science: Essay upon my arrival at an appreciation for science and understanding why it has always challenged me |
Case
Study on Trevor: Observations, interviews and reflections (academic and personal) regarding the challenges facing urban students |
Curricular Cohesion
Presentation A Powerpoint presentation, created for a Literacy for Teachers course taken during my first year. |
Autonomy
VS. Isolation An editorial observation on the professional environment of elementary teaching as perceived by a career-changer following his first year teaching. |
The
Best Student An essay in response to a student's private inquiry. |
Professional Development Proposal A Powerpoint presentation documenting my synthesis of research on effective elementary PD (April 2009). |
Essay on Leadership A literature synthesis on the nature and role of leadership. (September 2009). |
History and Implications of the School Principal An abbreviated history and analysis of the evolving role of school principals (October 2009). | The Irony of Relationship Management Reflection on the importance of relationship among school leadership. (January 2010). |
Case Study on Daniel: Reflection and literary analysis of my differences from many students I seek to support (September 2010). | Social Justice: A Lit Review of Herbert Kohl A literary analysis of the work of Herbert Kohl and similar thinkers on social justice (December 2010). |
Evidence-Based Decision Making A Powerpoint presentation created to summarize the problem-solving model and strategies for teacher leaders to create a culture of evidence-based work. (August 2013). |
References
“Walt Sutterlin teaches and coaches quality from a “laymen’s
perspective”, allowing others to see the benefits rather than be overwhelmed by
the science of it. He has a genuine
interest in making things better, but without the maniacal drive that can turn
some folks off and cause them to not engage in the process.”
Eileen
McGill, Carlson Marketing Worldwide
Servant leadership, as defined by
Robert Greenleaf, responds to four critical questions:
Do those served grow as persons? Do they become
healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely to become servants? What is the effect on the least privileged in
society? Will they benefit or at least
not be further deprived? (Greenleaf,
1977)
Successful leadership can not be assured operating within
any one theory (Marshall, 1996), but I firmly believe that by predicating my
forays across leadership styles with the humble servitude of others I will
develop leadership skills by exhibiting them.
Three specific steps towards the servant leadership to which I subscribe
are to expand, to give of, and to replicate myself through others, with the
sole intent of making peers, staff, and students greater than me (Farber,
2009). Imagining that my own “least
privileged” constituents could be students on the low end of the achievement
gap, parents without a positive educational experience to support their
children’s success, parents, supervisors, or board members with sufficiently
rich educational experiences that they have effectively distanced themselves
from realities of school, or staff members who are enmeshed in the painful,
joyful struggle of educating our youth, everyone I encounter I must approach as
a servant leader, seeking to serve with quality and with the selfless objective
of raising the quality of education by helping them grow as persons. After all, quality education results in good
outcomes for all (Darling-Hammond, 2000).
Understanding
process as the transformation of inputs to outputs is a fundamental theory that
is under-utilized or little known in public education. The impulse to become better is natural, but
continuous improvement is a learned behavior that requires vision and attention
at every step. Through pedagogical
reasoning and action, the process of continuous improvement becomes practice
(Shulman, 1987). I must embrace
continuous improvement through research and reflection, then translate the
methodology to my staff in practical ways (Likert 1955, Louis 1995, Lambert
2002). Indeed there is a science to
continuous improvement, but the principle is simple: improve, no matter where
you are on any continuum, work to be better.
It is this “laymen’s perspective” (McGill, 2005) that I must keep in
focus to practically serve others where they are.
Where
they are must be deeply understood by a leader, embodied by
engagement. Where your constituents are
engaged is where they will function with the most efficiency and satisfaction
(Chase, 1955). An educational leader
must have vision that becomes a shared mission, because “principal certainty”
is the root of an effective school (Murphy 1984, Rosenholtz 1985). Thus, getting students, staff and other
stakeholders to the shared vision, means where they are is where you
are! A specific step towards this vital
virtue is to foster collaboration, collegiality, and collective responsibility
(Firestone & Bader 1991, Kruse 1995).
To further this area of leadership, I must always return to a model of
servitude, knowing that sharing expertise engages those around by valuing their
unique inputs to the process of continuous improvement (Elmore, 1999). At the same time, shared risk-taking melds
relationships, which furthers engagement and commitment to one another and the
shared cause (Likert 1955, Roberts 1985).
Leadership
is an age-old variety of skill sets, acquired a little at a time (Roberts,
1985). It involves certain innate
propensity, loads of intuition, but definitely a set of beliefs, constructed
over time, that guide the functions of the leader. For me, at this moment in time, continuous
improvement, engagement, and most significantly, servant leadership are those
beliefs.
Chase, F. S. & Guba,
E. G. (1955). Administrative roles and
behavior. Review of Educational Research 25(4), 281-298.
Darling-Hammond, L.
(2000). New standards and old inequalities: School reform and the education of
African American students. Journal of Negro Education, 69(4), 263-287.
Elmore, R., &
Burney, D. (1999). Investing in teacher learning: Staff development &
instructional improvement. In L. Darling-Hammond & G. Sykes (Eds.), Teaching as the learning profession:
Handbook of policy and practice (p. 263-291). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Farber, S. (2009). Greater Than Yourself: The Ultimate Lesson of
True Leadership. New York: Doubleday.
Firestone, W.A.
& Bader, B.D. (1991). Professionalism or bureaucracy? Redesigning teaching. Educational Evaluation & Policy Analysis, 13, 67-86.
Greenleaf, R.
(1977). Servant Leadership: A Journey to the Center of Legitimate Power
& Greatness. New Jersey: Paulist Press.
Kruse, S.D.,
Louis, K.S., & Bryk, A.S. (1995). An emerging framework for analyzing
school-based professional community. In K.S. Louis, S.D. Kruse, &
Associates, Professionalism &
community: Perspectives on reforming urban schools, p. 23-44. Thousand
Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Lambert, L. (2002). A framework for shared leadership. Educational Leadership, 37-40.
Likert,
R. (1980). Patterns in Management. In J. Hall (Ed.), Models for Management: The
Structure of Competence (pp. 395-412). The Woodlands, TX: Woodstead Press.
[Original pub date: 1955]
Marshall, C.
(1996). Caring As Career: An Alternative Perspective for Educational
Administration. Educational
Administration Quarterly, 32(2) 271-94.
McGill,
E. (2005). Annual Performance Review form for Walt Sutterlin. Troy, MI: Carlson Marketing Worldwide.
Murphy, J., Hallinger, P., Weil, M., & Mitman, A.
(1984). Instructional leadership: A conceptual framework. The Education Digest, 28-31.
Roberts, W. (1985) Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun. New York: Warner Books.
Rosenholtz, S. J.
(1985). Effective schools: Interpreting the evidence. American Educational Research Journal, 93(3), 352-388.
Shulman, L.S.
(1987). Knowledge and teaching: Foundations of the new reform. Harvard Educational Review, 57, 1-22.
"The services are needed of a great leader whose
talents and whose weight of character are peculiarly necessary to get the
government so under way as that it may afterwards be carried on by subordinate
characters."
-- Thomas
Jefferson, 1789
The words of one of our most iconic, and
ironic, founding fathers are an apropos job description answering the
call-to-action of the muddled and defunct, painfully-slowly evolving role of
the public education school leader. From its perfunctory genesis in late
nineteenth-century
Given such history, it is no
surprise that the role of school leaders, specifically principals, was created
around a social expectation, rather than an educational one. In a patriarchal
society facing much international turmoil through the lenses of an industrial
economy, the principal’s role required the modeling of Democracy, while valuing
the functions of following district edicts and maintaining a solid image of the
school as a public institution (Newsome, 1949). This activity in itself
solidified the principal as an institution of managerial control, while heeding
little mind to the rest of the organization beneath.
Much of the focus was on the
singular role of school leader as the end, not the means for students. Around
the 1950’s, research on the role of school leader explored dimensions of
administrative hierarchy, focusing on authority and roles (Chase, 1955). Many
issues regarded staff and public relations, in respect to the leader’s
relationships with these entities (Chase, 1955). At the same time, research of
managerial practices in other industries began to uncover the unique and
significant relationships of empowerment, teamwork and continuous improvement
through research and reflection (Likert, 1955). While all of these findings served
the development of principals as leaders, the social and professional focus of
the principal was still far from students.
The present-day role of the school
leader has expanded beyond the role of principal. There are many leaders in
today’s school from teacher-leaders to district liaisons to the principal and
school improvement team members. This is a fundamental change in the perception
of school leadership brought about by multiple calls for, what is again commonly
considered reform, instantly and continually following the release of a
commissioned report named A Nation At Risk (USDOE Commission, 1983). This
political statement “in response to widespread public opinion” (USDOE Commission,
1983) investigated several areas of concern in public education and provided as
many recommendations for improvement, all in hopes of returning America to a
“learning society” (USDOE Commission, 1983). The view of a school leader is
still a reflection of America’s social and economic self-view, as it has always
been, but has expanded and changed in light of the different economy and
international climate from 1983 to date.
In response to this report, several
areas of research sprung up over the following years, all of which had
relatively common themes. An early indication of how this role would change was
the realization that there was not currently a connection between good
leadership and student success, but a relative connection of principal behavior
to school climate and instructional organization, was found to affect student
learning (Bossert, 1982). Similarly, the actions of a principal that would
affect students were bound within three areas of leadership: instructional,
academic and social (Murphy, 1984). Yet a third comparable triumvirate towards
effective student outcomes was the principal’s leadership, common goals and
instructional quality (Rosenholtz, 1985). The relationship and similarity of
each set-of-three findings implied a missing link in the role of principal as
being the instructional leader of a school. Combined with a national workforce
quickly advancing from doers to thinkers, this set up the role to significantly
expand with the realization that more thinkers meant the capacity for leadership
at more levels.
Without an established knowledge
base on the many intricacies of teaching itself (Shulman, 1987), much less that
of school leadership, the field for both was developing on a less-than-firm
foundation. It would seem that the context of school leadership and education
found themselves existing within convincing structures and expectations of
society, but without a comprehensive system through which their rapid
trajectory moved. To nominate changes as educational reform misrepresents
the reality that new form cannot be given to a network of disconnected
structures, hardly to be called a system.
Much to the contrary, our educational system was still very much being
formed. The pragmatics of the entire picture of state policy control, federal
political pressure, local social elements and the daily job requirements could
not be ignored, each of which morph and affect the next, making the now-defined
role of instructional leader one who manages both above and below.
The challenges of this role are
formidable, but the basic philosophy seems relatively straightforward: focus on
children’s learning. Professionalizing teaching has consistently made the list
of school leadership functions throughout this evolution (Newsome 1949, USDOE
1983, Firestone 1991), which would appear to be a challenge, but natural
outcome of good leadership. By gaining commitment to common values, a leader
will bring the staff closer together (Selznick, 1957). If goals are
child-centered at the appropriate level, children’s learning will improve. To
be an instructional leader, knowledge of curriculum and pedagogy is
critical for a school (Murphy, 1984). Without it, one cannot establish
appropriate goals to make common. While school leaders must know how to
redesign teaching in response to state or federal mandates (Firestone, 1991), a
simultaneous commitment to advocate for children up the ladder where
achievement standards are created is another challenge. Improving relationships
is key to any management role, but particularly vital in the role of leading
teachers who are generally a very wise, self-managing breed. Engaging those
personalities through empathy, clear expectations and empowerment (Chase &
Guba, 1955) does not come easily or naturally, but must be accomplished for
successful students.
All the while, ones
purpose must be forefront. In public
education, that purpose cannot be developed in isolation and often mirrors the
expectation of greater society. It may be easy for a leader to have refined
management skills as has been shown through history, but quite another for that
manager to be an effective instructional leader between micro- and macro-
levels. The current expectation, which seems timelessly appropriate, is to
focus on student success, thus making children’s needs the focus. In a recent
movie review, unrelated to public education, James Rocchi states,
We spend childhood at the mercy of
large, distant adults who define a world we don't understand, unable to speak
to the feelings that swell in us and come and go with the intensity of summer
storms.
With such an understanding of
the position of them…our goal, our purpose, our children…we must realize the
immense responsibility of being an instructional leader, but at the same time
our own fragile existence working within structures of an incomplete system,
defined by those we don’t completely understand. However, true instructional
leaders must speak to these feelings and notions, have the patience and
fortitude to accept the slow pace of our educational history, to recognize the
“talents” and “weight of character” (Jefferson, 1789) required for the task and
embrace that Jefferson’s “subordinate others” who carry it on, are us.
References
A Nation at Risk (1983) United Stated
Department of Education Commission.
Bossert, S.T.,
Chase, F.S. &
Guba, E.G. (1955). Administrative roles and behavior. Review of Educational
Research 25(4), 281-298.
Firestone, W.A. & Bader, B.D. (1991).
Professionalism or bureaucracy?
Redesigning teaching. Educational
Evaluation & Policy Analysis, 13, 67-86.
Jefferson, T. (1789). Retrieved from
http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1770.htm. October 14, 2009.
Likert, R.
(1980). Patterns in Management, In J. Hall (Ed.), Models for Management: The
Structure of Competence (pp.395-412). The Woodlands, TX: Woodstead Press.
[Original pub date: 1955]
Murphy, J., Hallinger, P., Weil,
M., & Mitman, A. (1984). Instructional leadership: A conceptual framework. The Education Digest, 28-31.
Newsome, N.W.
& Mickelson, P.P. (1949). The role of the principal in the modern
elementary school. The Elementary School
Journal, 50(1), 20-27.
Powell, A.G.,
Farrar, E., & Cohen, D.K. (1985). Origins. The Shopping
Rocchi, J.
(2009). ‘Wild’ Beauty. Retrieved from: http://movies.msn.com/movies/movie-critic-reviews/where-the-wild-things-are.1/#Review_0. October 16, 2009.
Rosenholtz, S. J.
(1985). Effective schools: Interpreting the evidence. American Educational Research Journal, 93(3), 352-388.
Selznick, P.
(1957). Leadership in administration: A sociological interpretation.
So have I
found in my own professional journey, there are many concepts conceived that
seem applied completely out of place, but can be used elsewhere for fantastic
results. Case in point: There I sat with
my new and very intimidating boss at the marketing firm, watching a Webinar
from the company headquarters, announcing the second “restructuring” of the
company in my four years. As the CEO
described everyone’s new role as “change agents” and the metamorphosis of our
salespeople who would hereunto be known as “relationship managers”, I whispered
the irony of this to my boss. She got
it, but didn’t appreciate my observation of how phony it sounds to manage a relationship that, by its
nature, was created for one party to benefit from the other, in this case in
the form of financial gain.
Relationships, I explained my understanding, are the intentional interaction of two separate
parties. A relationship is something to
be managed only if the intended outcome is for both parties to benefit from the
management. The pricing and concessions models that followed this new
nomenclature were distinctly in favor of our company’s profits, not the
relationship with, or benefit of, our clients.
My boss was
impressed with my objective analysis, but wished I had not shared the common
sense of it. I may not have been a
company man, but I felt my translation was a skilled and objective analysis of
one concept and, perhaps, its fallacies.
Translation is a skill needed in, and between, many groups that share
common goals, and even common dialects.
Of course
the need and architecture of relationships and translation are completely
dependent on the environment in which interactions take place and the parties
that are interacting. Context is the
critical differentiator on how well a prophylactic works, where a flashy new
term makes sense, or when translating into a common language means the
difference in success or failure. As it turned
out, the company went through a number of restructurings before being sold,
perhaps for attempting to manage relationships,
but I moved on to see the remarkable connection of these earlier life
experiences in leadership to be completely applicable as functions and focus
areas of tomorrow’s educational leaders: relationship management, translation,
and context.
In the
world of education there are multiple interactions and relationships at work at
any given time. Some are valid, such as
teacher-student discourse, district-school engagement, and state-district
mandates while others, like federal-state expectations are simply
unconstitutional, but relationships no less.
With the conceptual clarity that relationships are the intentional interactions
of two parties with the goal of mutual
benefit, I believe that education is a ripe organization for an idea such as relationship
management. If we genuinely share a
goal of student success and achievement, when students win, all relating
parties experience mutual benefit of their efforts. Educational leaders are in a unique
situation, be they teacher or principal, to manage relationships across school
and district staff, for the sake of children.
Central to
relationship management is collaboration, the sort observed in Type Z
organizations where consensual power is manifested through, rather than over
a team (Leithwood, 1992). While it is
virtually impossible to incite motivation in another, collaborative leadership
provides a natural incentive by fostering individual desires to change outcomes
(Leithwood, 1992). Indeed, Leithwood
includes collaboration in two of three “Fundamental Goals” for a
transformational leader. This
“prosocial” behavior focuses on the school’s mission over individual needs,
which, if we share the same goal of student success and work together towards
that end, we typify mutual benefit through managing our actions and managing
our relationships to accomplish this objective (Kruse, 1995).
To be
completely honest, my whole motivation to leave business for education is this
idea that one must transcend his own self-interest for a greater good (Bass
& Alvolio, 1993; Leithwood, 1996). A
lesson from that past life that rings true was the role I once held of project
manager, where I worked in a matrix organization managing highly-intelligent
subject matter experts across various practices: IT, training, graphics,
communications, travel, sales, and the clients we served. Collaboration was the norm as we regularly
experienced shared expertise driving change, ironically, even in that “project
mentality” (Elmore, 1999). Working as a
team, with a common goal, we were able to accomplish great things, but the
greatest gains were when the team met in a room and combined the variety of experiences
and knowledge to forge ahead, creating new solutions. Dewey applied this concept of collaboration
to schools long before I, but I’m not sure why it is just now taking flight:
“…to support the
educative nature of life experience, the school should be a community in all
that this entails.” (Dewey, 1915)
Being a
jack of all trades, master of none, my unique position at that point in life
required a lot of interpreting and translating ideas between these
professionals, who then were able to increase their buy-in to the team’s goal
once each understood in his or her own vernacular. Out of this collaborative activity, I was
able to develop a common language leading to richer discussion, which is
essentially the “deprivatization” of practice (Kruse, 1995). With the regular advent of buzzwords,
clichés, academic prowess and constant “reform” efforts, a school leader must
constantly translate ideas and efforts back to terms that a busy staff already
shares. This may also mean coining or
introducing important new terminology to the shared language. Articulating rationale and setting
expectations are part of this agenda-setting function (Young, 2006). Without confusing this as a need to dumb-down
information, effective school organizations must have leadership who translate
the layered complexities of public education and continuous improvement into
palatable portions for busy teachers to act on expediently and effectively. In this metaphor of business, consider this
translation akin to the type of summary writing necessary for busy CEO’s, where
one must communicate practical, pertinent information, quickly and without
question. Large-scale school improvement
is a process by which external demands are translated into concrete structures,
processes, norms and instructional practice, which altogether implies the
molding of a school culture (Elmore, 2002).
This is a non-negotiable function for effective school leaders.
Love, war,
and school improvement are not conceived in isolation and require multiple
inputs, alignments and personalities.
The element of context is a huge and fundamental driver of the need, and
degree to which, a school leader must translate. While context may affect the style of collaboration,
the two must coexist. Simply understanding
the nature of human activity being distributed across interactions of people,
processes and outputs, situation is the most appropriate and unique factor in
the decisions a school leader will make (Spillane, 2004). It has been proposed that the model of instructional leadership encourages
leaders to fashion leadership based on what they want to see in classrooms
(Shulman, 1987; Young, 2006). This makes
sense as classroom management and content-area instruction are both derived
from the contextual relationships of material, teacher and student. Dare I suggest this as an apropos use of relationship
management where all parties benefit? In
good instruction, or leadership, “the message is the medium” (Postman, 1969),
which underscores the significance of understanding and working within the unique
context of each situation and using it to achieve your goals, which, hopefully,
are mutually beneficial if the relationships are being managed!
Agenda-setting,
collaboration, translation and organizational capacity are individually
insufficient (Young, 2006). School
leadership must be pragmatic, building a rational system of quality instruction
by organizing non-rational aspects (Young, 2006), by way of translation and
collaboration. School leadership is constantly,
contextually evolving, which is why there is place at the leadership table for
more than just principals these days.
If the
output desired is improved school administration, one must develop this
pragmatism and sense of inclusion towards a greater good. In one world, the buzzwords may be
“restructuring”, “change agents”, and “relationship managers”, while in another
it may be called “reform”, “teachers”, and “principals”. I have little use for a rifle, nor plans to
visit a desert, but I do have the hindsight to recognize innovation in
unexpected places and the foresight to put it together. The lessons are so similar and
transferable. The benefits of learning
these lessons and transferring them to new and different environments are our
childrens’.
Bass,
B. M.,& Avolio, B. J. (1993). Transformational leadership: A response to
critiques. In M.
M. Chemers & R. Ayman (Eds.), Leadership theory and
research: Perspectives and directions (pp. 49-80).
Elmore, R., &
Burney, D. (1999). Investing in teacher learning: Staff development &
instructional improvement. In L. Darling-Hammond & G. Sykes (Eds.), Teaching as the learning profession:
Handbook of policy and practice (p. 263-291).
Elmore, R. F.
(2002). Bridging the gap between standards and achievement: The imperative for
professional development in education. Albert Shanker Institute.
Leithwood, K., Tomlinson, D.,& Genge, M. (1996).
Transformational school leadership. In K. Leithwood et al. (Eds.), International
handbook of educational administration (pp. 785-840).
Leithwood, K.
(2002). The move to transformational leadership. Educational Leadership, 49 (5), 8-12.
Postman, N. & Weingarten, C. (1969).
Teaching as a Subversive Activity. Dell Publishing,
Shulman, L.S. (1987). Knowledge and teaching:
Foundations of the new reform. Harvard
Educational Review, 57, 1-22.
Spillane, J.P. Halverson, R., and Diamond, J.B.
(2004). Towards a theory of leadership
practice: A distributed perspective.
Journal of Curriculum Studies, 36 (1), 3-34.
Young, Viki M. (2006). Teachers’ use of data: Loose coupling, agenda setting, and team norms. American Journal of Education, 112, 521-548.
The Issue
The connection of school, family, and community is
imperative and unavoidably influential on each student’s life. This connection is also influential on every
educator’s efficacy, though many do not realize how salient the interactions of
these environments are. We are products
of our belief systems and environments.
When a student from one environment is placed into a different one, the
connection is made and the success or challenge it presents is undeniable. Unfortunately, lacking understanding of the alternate
environments and sensibilities creates a friction that all but stops progress
if not lubricated with genuine effort to understand.
The Reality
Daniel[*]
entered my classroom this year. Daniel
is an 8-year old black boy. He reads at
a Kindergarten level and struggles to count, in order, to ten. Daniel sleeps many days at school and asks
for snacks regularly. In our Kindergarten
through fourth-grade building, he has a brother in grades 1-4 and a toddler
brother at home. These five boys live in
public housing with a single mother, transplanted last year from
I have been middle-class all of my life. I am a white male whose parents are both
educated through graduate level and are still married. I have never been hungry and for that matter
have never gone with any personal needs unmet in my life.
Having read Ruby Payne’s seminal piece A Framework for
Understanding Poverty (1996), I entered teaching feeling that I knew some
differences between Daniel and myself. In
retrospect, I am reminded of Bertrand Russell’s statement:
In America everybody is of opinion that he
has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he
has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine
that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards (1950).
I found equality in a sense
that neither of us was elite, thus we were closer than we might expect. I had friends across races growing up. My parents encouraged me to play with
children from all financial backgrounds.
Payne’s “hidden rules” (1996) were not so surprising and the vocabulary
she provided armed me with interview language for teaching jobs. In hindsight, it provided me an awareness and
buzzwords, but not truly perspective on the vast differences and the connection
to Daniel’s world that I needed to make and possibly never would.
The Thinking
Before the year started, I went to Daniel’s house in my
late-model minivan with my two blonde-headed, blue-eyed children to give Daniel
a ride for a pre-school year event with the rest of the class. His mother does not own a car. When we arrived, following my daughter’s
cheerleading practice and my son’s pre-arranged play date with a neighbor,
Daniel was in a parking lot with his siblings, precariously climbing and
jumping off of a jagged metal snow roof.
His mother, whom I had not yet met, was in the apartment that had no
windows facing the parking lot. Adult
males were drinking soda pop and beer, sitting on the backs of cars and talking
loudly. I was insecure about leaving my
children to go find Daniel’s mother and get permission for him to go with us. My children were full of questions and
observations that they wanted to discuss.
The connection between my concerted cultivation and Daniel’s
accomplishment of natural growth merged uncomfortably (Lareau, 2003).
Lareau’s research speaks of this “cultural logic of
child-rearing” where a child’s upbringing informs him of certain expectations
and goals (2003.). In Daniel’s case, the
expectation was to stay away from the adults and the goal was to keep himself
busy until further directed. The expectation
of my children was to be busy in activities they had selected and I had planned
my day around, then to discuss our experiences in dialogue. Why do my children spend their days in such
different activities than Daniel? They
do it because of the family and community in which they live and strive to
succeed. The expectations are not
completely intrinsic, but an interaction with external expectations of our
communities. Daniel was succeeding in
his environment as it is defined. The
potential for success in common institutions, such as schools, is derived from
which cultural logic a child is inculcated which, depending on your perspective
or position in society, makes my children fortunate in that their family and
community interactions prepare and support them in alignment with broader
institutions (Lareau, 2003).
Each time I call Daniel’s mom to notify her of behavior
issues or information the school needs, she is notably agreeable, always
calling me “sir” and complying within a day or so to my requests. There is always noise in the background, loud
talking, simultaneous voices and televisions blaring. I am reminded of Lareau’s observations of
families in poverty who defer to institutional demands, such as the school
(Lareau, 2003), in part because it is an institution, but also because they do
not have a sense of entitlement to question authority, nor the time or skill to
analyze what is being requested.
Compliance is so much easier, though I would not be surprised if
Daniel’s mom hangs up each phone call with resentment.
I contend that the working- or poor-class may be built on
a culture of survival that begets and allows identity to develop. The separation Daniel has from adults in his
immediate sphere allows him to develop an interdependence that my children may
not fully know as they develop an entitlement to independence. It could be said that the middle-class is
built upon a culture of insecurity where we are informed by, and conform to,
more external forces such as institutional expectations. Through this conformity, we may lose some
sense of identity on our road to mainstream success. It is quite a paradox to consider that our
independence may lead to lost identity or individuality that manifests
throughout society.
The Questions
I have come to a realization that the difference between
middle-class and working- or poor-class is a product and problem of societal
proportions. A “collection of
individuals” has created social structures that shape the daily lives of others
(Lareau, 2003). It would be simple to
say that society has created this difference through economic inequity and
social segregation by a culture of power (Deplit, 1988), if blame were of any
use in creating change. Blame does not
effect change, but identifying the causes of an issue is critical to
change. Spiritualities across the world,
prosthelytize dignity and equality for humanity, from the Qur’an: “respect and
honor all human beings irrespective of
their religion, color, race, sex,
language, status, property, birth, profession/job
and so on (IRFII, 2010), to the Bible:
"…to the extent that you did it to one of
these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to Me (NASB, 1995),
to countless other orthodoxies and edicts that promote social justice. So why does the difference remain?
Dr. Ronald Ferguson identified that,
“Policy won’t or can’t change it all if we don’t change our social identity”
when discussing achievement gaps in subgroups of minority and economically
disadvantaged students (
I propose that the connection
between school, family, and community creates symptoms, while the illness is a
social problem that the vast differences in communities and families has
created and perpetuated. Secretary of
Education, Arne Duncan, offered the following gem:
The only way to
achieve equity in society is to achieve equity in the classroom…The fight for a
quality education is about so much more than education. This is a daily fight for social justice. No
other issue offers the same promise of equality as education. No other issue can end the cycle of poverty,
teen-age pregnancy, the prison pipeline, and the social sickness plaguing
broken communities (
Good
medical practitioners know that you do not treat the symptom, you treat the
illness, but educators are the first-round treatment for those symptoms of
behavior and lacking skills to succeed in middle-class institutions. We are charged to treat these symptoms in the
battle to cure the illness, but we must recognize that educational institutions
alone are only dealing with symptoms. Our
prescription could possibly create a society where class differences share more
similar goals and value.
Several questions arise from
The number of children in poverty is on the rise
(ChildTrends, 2009), showing educators that the class differences will be
increasingly representative of students entering the middle-class institution
of schooling. An increasingly complex
issue in this difference of social classes is the root of poverty and
associated values. The effects of
poverty on child well-being are consistent regardless of how long the poverty
exists, though it may be essential to consider how middle-class values that are
recently thrust into working-class conditions affect the decisions and actions
of parents and children in those situations.
This forces us to consider a dynamic that goes even beyond the current
literature on class differences, but to consider students and their families to
be further conflicted. It requires us to
approach each student without a preconceived notion of who they are, based on
where they are from, rather to consider what value-systems they have, which
rules they currently live by, and how their particular interaction with the
middle-class institution of schooling is affected by their current conditions
juxtaposed to their beliefs. At the
heart of this individualized analysis, is the social change that we will need
to see if we expect to alter class structures or coalesce their interactions.
The data that we review is critical to our
direction. Through social research,
Stephanie Coontz reveals quite a different picture of the American 1950’s as
portrayed in popular culture and memory to the one as reflected privately by
individuals living at the time (Coontz, 1997).
This qualitative data goes against what many people might believe from
the media of that era, as far as the actual unhappiness, fear, and longing to
fit-in while remaining isolated, within many American families. Not much is spoken of disadvantaged Americans
when the focus is on the perks of the middle-class. Again we see the middle-class upholding a
public relations identity crisis.
The Options
There is good data showing that parents from both middle-
and working-class have similar goals for their children’s educational success
(Epstein, 1986). This alone is
foundational information of how similar humanity ends up being despite our
social structures that moderate everything from our values to our daily lives
(Lareau, 2003). Irrespective of which
class we feel a part of, there are methods for helping other people
succeed. Many times that requires
teaching someone a different set of rules.
Every time, it requires
understanding another individual’s experiences and values. That is the social change we must pursue.
Using the “overlapping spheres of influence” perspective
(Epstein, 1987), it was determined that effective families and schools had
shared goals and missions and worked collaboratively towards those ends. In Daniel’s case, as harried as his mother’s
life appears, it is essential that our school continue to have conversations
that show our compassionate interest in her children’s success even when that
means directly telling her what the boys need to do to be successful in school
(Delpit, 1988). Involving her in
decision-making about their IEPs and providing transportation are other methods
of inclusion that let Daniel’s mother know middle-class success is the option
we are all working toward together.
Inclusion of parents is an important piece across all
socio-economic classes. Recently, my
wife asked me why the teachers used “such teacher language” at conferences
which shed light on the reality that even within the middle-class, the language
and expectations educators sometimes present are daunting and unfamiliar to
others from outside of the institution, leaving them less prepared with how to
help their children succeed (Epstein, 1986).
I can only image how Daniel’s mom must feel each time we talk, which
drives me to consider my explicit word choices to communicate important
concepts, not only with Daniel in instruction, but with his mother (Delpit,
1988).
Asking Daniel’s mother for her own goals is another
option to engage her in her children’s progress at school (Epstein, 1987). Parents want to help their children through
motivation and success, not teaching them.
Much of this can be established through providing an opportunity for
parents to give feedback on teaching strategies, homework, or their child’s
success (Epstein, 1997). Parent
involvement through feedback can make anyone an expert on their child, and
feeling like an expert empowers and gives a sense of success, which is what all
parents desire. Formal response to this
feedback models middle-class values and rules of success, while acknowledging
the parents as a partner (Epstein, 1997).
In my personal experience, grade level changes seem to
have created more division between schools and families. Not much research has been done on how this
affects the home-school connection, but learning the new rules of a new teacher
within and already intimidating institution must create additional stress on
both students and parents (Epstein, 1987).
To reduce this confusion, looping teachers through multiple grades may
be a practical option for extending those relationships and allowing the
expectations of a new teacher to become routine for families just learning the
rules of middle-class success. Summer
break between loops or between teachers is a Procrustean system anymore, during
which much learning of content and social expectations can be lost when
students are immersed in alternate cultures.
Year-round school calendars could extend the spheres of influence
between school and family (Epstein, 1987), if that is a goal.
I have attempted parent workshops where I teach new math
and literacy skills to parents to help them feel more connected and effective
in their children’s learning. It is
usually the middle-class families who show up, as the working-class families
tend to avoid the school (Lareau, 2003).
I could change this by communicating directly to the families who need
such instruction the most, but it may be more important to commit myself to a
family curriculum of encouragement and praise as a first step.
The Conclusion
The conversation is easily led to options of how…how to
get “them” to succeed by “our” rules, but those options initially insult my
sensibility of why…why do “our” rules define “success”. I suppose the bottom line is that
middle-class values and the culture of power is what defines institutions and
institutions define success in our society.
While I hold fast to an idyllic view that society should change towards
social justice starting at the individual level, the world I live in leads me
to lead others toward middle-class values.
I suppose if I were in a different environment, such as poverty, it
would be me making the choice and change to another value system dictated by
circumstance. Understanding where someone else comes from is essential to
changing anything. I may never truly
connect with Daniel’s world and his values, but I can learn to understand them
not as a process of changing Daniel, but to understand him should he choose my middle-class institutionalized ways, right
or wrong. Who am I to change someone?
References
Coontz, S.
(1997). The Way We Really Are. BasicBooks:
Delpit, L. (1988)
The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy
in Educating Other People’s Children. Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 58,
No. 3, August 1988
Epstein, J.
(1986) Parents’ reactions to teacher practices of parent involvement. The
Elementary School Journal 86: 277-294 (Reading 3.4).
Epstein, J.
(1987) Social intervention: Potential and constraints. de Gruyter: New York/Berlin
Epstein, J.
(1997) Practical Application: Linking Family and Community Involvment to
Student Learning.
Hoop Dreams (1994).
Islamic Research Foundation International,
Inc. (2010). Words of Wisdom from the Qur’an.
Revtrieved on November 18, 2010: http://www.irfi.org/articles/articles_201_250/words_of_wisdom_from_the_quran.htm
Kohl, H. (1994). “I
won’t learn from you”. The New Press.
New American Standard Bible. (1995)
Matthew 25:40.
Payne, R.
(1996). A Framework for Understanding
Poverty. 4th Edition. aha!
Process,
Russell, B.
(1950). Unpopular Essays. George
Allen & Unwin.
Social Justice: A lit review of Herbert Kohl
“There are moments
when…the only thing you care about in someone else is what makes them strong,
times when you see what someone could become if the world were a kinder and
more welcoming place."
-- Herbert Kohl
Alas! I have found a mantra juxtaposing my
personal hopes and intentions of a world that seldom exists with a solution for
creating such a world, one person at a time.
There is so much contradiction, blindness, and double-standardized mores
which humanity shares that I often feel ashamed of my race and gender, knowing
I could never know the depths of shame or immortal pride that others have
experienced; shame that is unknowingly from my own, ignorantly-forked tongue
and privileged experience. Perhaps such
a summary is as out of place in this analysis as these articles have made me
feel in the world. Perhaps that was the
intention. Then again, perhaps I am a
“kinder and more welcoming” soul longing for kindred spirits, strong for their
individual make-up of person, culture and experience, more so than for their
difference from me. Perhaps we are
closer than we allow ourselves, or than we truly want to be.
Kohl’s perspective on
public schools and the beings herded through them is close to my own. Kohl observes the souls of children being
lost in schools that attempt to fill molds rather than rough out diamonds. Through his identification of “creative
maladjustment” (Kohl, 1994) a certain worth is given to the experiences and
choices of the individual and his or her unique situation, by placing value on
the conscious choice of not learning that which offends, discriminates, or
further separates an individual. Not
learning as a defense mechanism against blindness by the culture of power at
best, inhumanity at worst, is a different concept for why certain students may
or may not thrive in any given situation.
I was forced to consider stories of slaves who, in the Middle Passage,
often willed themselves to die. This
connection between the resolve of the human mind and soul to forgo a situation
so repulsive to its being is extreme, but are the consequences no worse;
perhaps they are better, than to learn something that disparages oneself.
Similar to Kohl’s
conceptualization of creative maladjustment, Delpit shares multiple examples of
peoples not of the culture of power, who have become so revolted by agonizing
years of empty patronage that they have chosen to not learn and have even gone
so far as to generalize the antagonizing group as being unable to listen at
best, unable to know when they are lying at worst (Delpit, 1988). While I believe the analogy of listening
versus hearing is semantically incorrect, the accusation that white people or
academia are unable to truly understand the depths of their own misunderstanding
of other races, could either be an affirmation of whites own “not learning”
something threatening to their culture of power, or it could be a racist
generalization cast back upon the culture of power. Merely those words escaping my mind feel like
an indictment of me, my race and gender, as someone who just does not get
it. To be sure, this creative
maladjustment is a not a rejection of public education, but an affirmation of
its possibilities (Kohl, 1994). This
comforts me that I am not personally bad, wrong, or even responsible, for being
born into a culture of power, or non-listeners, but an individual with a
“romantic sensibility” (Kohl, 1994) who also believes in the possibility and
capacity for change, for expansion, for “identifying and giving voice to
alternative world views” (Delpit, 1988).
Kohl speaks of norming
of excellence, which makes me reflect on how standardized tests have
infiltrated and guided schooling, where the standards are those created by the
establishment, not cultures with less power.
There is a complete disconnect between the values of the culture of
power and the values of those not in power.
Padrón (2002) describes the “funds of knowledge…gained through
participation in household and community activity” of Hispanic students, which
aligns well to the individual person on which Kohl’s writing is so focused,
identifying that a student is so much more than a body in a chair, but a person
from a culture, with unique talents and values.
When these are not recognized as components of excellence, they are in
fact de-valued by those who perform the norming.
Ironically, educators
who attempt to de-emphasize their own power by not recognizing, valuing, and
leveraging information about individuals and other cultures, actually
perpetuate that power at an unconscious level (Delpit, 1988). This brings a dilemma because schools, by
virtue of their mission, must indoctrinate students who did not previously
receive the codes of power. At the same
time, a value of the power culture is not to offend others and to empower
through self-learning. The educator is
left to determine how to communicate
this cultural difference and why he
is attempting to teach these new norms, without offending his students or
implying their differences are inferiorities.
Likewise, if “not learning” is a value of some cultures, the educator is
further stymied by honoring that sensibility.
To either the educator struggling to fill the mold or the student
struggling to maintain a cultural identity, it seems liberating to simply say,
“You don’t know what you don’t know and that’s okay.” But is that right?
Delpit (1988) emphasizes
explicit communication patterns as being useful for people of color while
Padrón (2002) laments direct instruction for similar populations. This contrast can be overlooked because both
writers conclude that a method of bridging cultural gaps is to recognize that
academic learning has “roots in both out-of-school and in-school processes”
(Padrón, 2002), which reflects Kohl’s concern for the student as an
individual. Delpit agrees that students
must understand the value of their own culture and of the mainstream culture that seemingly defines success in our
society.
These realizations do
not quench my suspicions that my whiteness and maleness will forever make my
genuine intent questionable to some. My
personal belief aligns with these authors that a better way is out there and we
cannot “act as if power does not exist” or it will remain (Delpit, 1988). However, if we focus too much on the power,
and not the person, we miss what I believe is a more salient question, one that
I feel any of these three authors would delight in entertaining, Kohl probably
more than the others whom a sad reality has jaded a bit more. That question is:
Is it more important to teach people to play the game, which perpetuates a
culture of power, or do we want to value individuals and begin changing what we
have come to know as mainstream culture?
Though I am a shameless idealist and readily accept guilt that is not
due, I concur that there is a subconscious level of our actions following our
belief and as much as it allows me to come across as ignorant to others’
experiences, it allows others to come across as unwilling to see me as an
individual who wants more than my experiences have provided. Again, perhaps we are more alike than we
allow ourselves, or than we truly want to be, and if so, that is scary…and sad. Still, I stand by Kohl’s romantic sensibility
that “wonderful things can happen in the world, no matter how terrible and
hopeless things seem” (1994). I’d love
to be given that chance to see, and be seen for, that which makes us strong.
References
Delpit, Lisa
(1988) The Silenced Dialogue: Power and
Pedagogy in Educating Other People’s Children. Harvard Educational Review,
Vol. 58, No. 3, August 1988
Kohl, Herbert
(1994). “I won’t learn from you”. The New Press.
Padron, Yolanda
N. et al. (2002). Educating Hispanic Students: Obstacles and
avenues to improved academic achievement.
Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence.
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