ArticleRichard D. Hartwell
1851 Words22455 Kinross Lane
Moreno Valley, CA 92557
(951) 242-7105
Do Educators Need To “Invent” Each New Wheel?
Why do classroom teachers find it necessary to “invent the wheel” which is already available? In effect, it is often an issue of not knowing the right questions to ask, or when to ask them, or of whom. Depending on the road you travel, you may need to repair that wheel several times and like any self-reliant wagoner on the Western Plains, you thus end up knowing your own work more intimately than that which was purchased from another.
When I started to create what became a Reading and Writing Literacy Class for under-performing middle school students, I did all the primary research myself. I reflected on what I was able to find in the professional literature regarding secondary students’ acquisition of reading comprehension skills and writing extension activities. I then put together unit and lesson plans using direct instruction of comprehension strategies, teacher modeling of reading and writing practices, the use of literature circles and reflection journals, daily writing journals as timed writing, discretely-taught speed-reading-skimming-and-scanning skills and activities, and the use of collaborative grouping and grading, rotating groups periodically. I independently created a very comprehensive program that was not aligned to any currently available packaged product.
I adjusted as I went along and I kept and reviewed a daily reflection journal of the class and my alterations and interventions. Over the course of the year I began to encounter several new professional books and articles addressing the specific nature and problems of secondary students learning, or relearning, reading comprehension strategies. Virtually everything I had refined over the course of the year - and through hard practice, reflection and revision I might add - was now being addressed in the professional literature. I began to feel superfluous. Was I just premature in starting this class? If I had waited just a year, the experiences of others would have been able to save me much trouble and time and effort. Or was it like many intuitive leaps throughout history, just a matter of an idea (in my case, meta-cognitively teaching reading and writing processes and then reinforcing the lessons through modeling and practice and application) whose time had come?
I feel that what I did, the approaches I used, was correct. For me, these lessons could have been learned only through actual classroom experience rather than through a review of professional theory, a meta-analysis, or by evaluating the experiences of others, regardless of how reaffirming such confirmation may be after the fact. Who wants to be second?
I value the experiences of the classroom, not as elements of breadth, but as elements of depth, depth in understanding the educational process. I have heard so many beginning teachers making disparaging comments about their theory and methods courses taken in college. In fact, what I think most of them are saying is that they were still unprepared for the actual experience of their first classroom assignment; understandably so. I know I was unprepared, and I came to teaching as a second or third career, depending on how you count. Perhaps this feeling of new-teacher displacement is as it has been always, and perhaps as it will be always. Yet, I wonder if it cannot be changed for the better.
It was recently brought to my attention by an astute university professor that it is only by our self-discovery of what works and what does not that we are really prepared to evaluate the professional literature available. Theory and practice are, obviously, distinctly different. In the final analysis I’m not certain that I can answer the question as to whether a review of theory and method should come before classroom experience or whether an in-depth orientation to actual practice should be required before a review and analysis of the published experts.
As I have thought more on this, I realize the obvious, both are necessary and, in isolation, both carry their own rewards and their own pitfalls. Armed only with theory and methods courses, the newer teacher is often unprepared for the vagaries of the actual classroom and much valuable academic content may be forgone for the sake of day-to-day management demands. However, tested only by experience, the pre-intern or emergency-credentialed practitioner may not be thoroughly addressing the academic needs of the students in a cohesive, hierarchical manner. I’m certain that examples at both extremes are available from the reader’s own experiences or observations.
In a best-of-all-worlds scenario there would be a merging of theory and practice on an ongoing basis, overseen by a consistently-available mentor, and reflected upon daily by the classroom teacher in concert with a knowledgeable, academic theoretician. However, such an educational utopia is rarely, if ever, to be found. Most teachers come to our profession immersed either in theory first, straight from school, and then exposed to classroom “combat.” Or they have survived exposure to the classroom in emergency “do-or-die” circumstances, emergency credentials or short-term substitutes or academic aides, and then must often struggle with theory and methods courses “after the fact.” In either event, these emerging teachers often find mentors available only sporadically or unavailable because they are too tightly aligned to a restrictive schedule. These emerging teachers must then research theory and methods in support of what they intuitively feel or have observational noted, has and has not worked in practice. It is to both these variants of new teachers that we owe changes in our mentoring and in-service programs.
That brings us to one of the major issues with which we are currently faced. Do we need to change our in-servicing of both veteran and newer teachers? Unequivocally, the answer is a resounding Yes! Educators need a forum in which to discuss day-to-day events with their peers. They need a forum in which they can reflect aloud on their classroom practices, both successes and failures. They need a forum in which to share, to teach one another, and to continue the learning of their profession. They need a forum in which to openly reflect on the art and craft of teaching.
We are each of us influenced by our environment. It is one of the elements that make each of us unique. Regardless of shared culture, shared values, shared education, or even shared genes, each of us evolves as a uniquely identifiable being. As professional educators, we are taught to value this in our students. We should value it no less in one another.
We are each of us a composite of all that has influenced us. As human beings, we are all malleable. We have been shaped and carved by those actions, ideas, and influences we have encountered, and taken so much for granted, on our journey through life. And we have been polished and textured by the order in which we have encountered these influences. No two individuals, regardless of how otherwise similarly matched, will have developed the same nuances and characteristics as each other. No two individuals could have encountered the same life-forming experiences, and in the same order, as each other. What has influenced us, and the order in which these influences have occurred, are major determining factors as to how we process, evaluate, synthesize, and formulate all subsequent ideas and actions.
In view of this, does each of us need constantly to review, to renew, to reestablish, and to reconstruct our ongoing views of education and classroom practice? Absolutely! Only by the overt sharing of information and resources, only by the ongoing re-validation or re-placement of strategies and skills and practices, only by a re-vision of our current concepts of teaching in-servicing, will it be possible for us to embrace the value of periodic re-invention of ourselves and our profession.
I suggest that the concept of credential renewal be expanded to include a fixed number of hours of peer sharing and critique. A percentage of in-service time should be devoted to a requirement that teachers, veterans as well as neophytes, and representing all curricular areas and drawn from across all grade levels, meet periodically: to share their practices, best and worst; to present lessons; to discuss professional literature; to praise the good in the profession; and, yes, to grieve for what has been lost. Should a part of this be a time for venting? Certainly, for without the freedom of structured complaint only an atmosphere of apathy can exist. Should teachers be required to present lessons in front of their peers? Absolutely, for only by being tasked to perform before an audience of similarly prepared and focused individuals can critical assessment be provided. Should attendees be critiqued and rated on their performance? Critiqued? Yes. Rated? Perhaps. Faulted? No! This would be a time of gathering for shared experience, a time for personal as well as group reflection, and a time for valuing and borrowing what we can from one another.
There is absolutely nothing new in these suggestions, anymore than there is anything “new” in education. I have taken certain concepts from the successful approach used by the National Writing Project: teachers teaching teachers. I have tempered my reflection through several years’ association with a local affiliate of the National Writing Project, the Inland Area Writing Project located at the University of California, Riverside. I have added a perspective formed by my experiences as the author of and coordinator for a Middle Schools Demonstration Program grant in literacy development which provided time and payment for a group of teachers to come together on a periodic, scheduled basis to share and renew their commitment to literacy development. I am indebted to both of these projects for providing a framework to which I have attached my reinvented wheel.
A change of focus to in-servicing as I have suggested needs to be a coordinated effort provided by both county offices of education and university schools of education. Veteran teachers should be required to participate in such a program as part of their five-year plan for professional growth. New teachers should be required to participate in such a program as part of their clear-credential program and then as part of their probationary assessment objectives. Under-performing teachers should be required to participate in such a program as a condition of their continued employment while undergoing mentored assessment. And all professional educators should be extended the opportunity to participate in such a program even during periods when it is not required. Success will breed success.
Must professional educators continue to reinvent the “wheel”? Yes! However; we would be foolish not to recognize and reflect on our previous failures and false starts; we would be selfish not to share with other professionals what we have learned from experience; and, we would be self-centered not to recognize that there is never an end to our own education. I value highly my own personal and professional reflection. However, my perspective is singular by definition. I need the review, reflection, and response of others in order to provide balance and perspective to my own teaching practice. I need an extro-spective view. Perhaps you do too?