There is a sense of unpredictability in blogging that I suspect other bloggers have discovered — that it is nearly impossible to predict which blogs will tickle responses from readers and which ones will not. I didn’t expect such a response to the piece on Best Practices yesterday. There are others I’ve written lately whose responses disappointed me. But I suspect that’s part of the nature of the blog beast.
| Important note: Those who know me are accustomed to surprising and sometimes outrageous statements from me. Some call it, “playing the devil’s advocate.” I want to stir conversation and watch ideas mix. It’s where I go to learn, conversations. So be mindful of this as you read this and other things I write in my blog. |
I would like to continue this discussion of best practice to another level. But It’s only fair that I acknowledge my unique perspective. As I am no longer a practicing classroom teacher, my notions may not be entirely practical. But this, in a sense, is my point. Do any of us practice teaching — in the same way that lawyers practice law, or doctors practice medicine? Law, and, to nearly the same degree, medicine involve rules and environments that are mesurably predictable. An attorney can, with a certain amount of confidence, predict how a judge is going to rule on an argument, because they all operate on the same rules. Doctors operate on a machine, where, again, a certain amount of predictability is possible and reliable.
Even baseball and football practices, of my much younger days, were reliable, because we operated inside of a set of rules and on a field with drawn and protected boundaries. Best practices on the field resulted in predictable outcomes.
Can a teacher, starting out in a new school year, be said to practice teaching, when the field in which he works has such widely varying and unpredictable factors as a classroom of students? I guess this is what I’m asking.
“Is our reliance on the concept of best practices one symptom of a profession that is losing confidence in itself?”
“Do I see teaching as more of a practice than a calling?”
I have more to say, but let’s see where this goes 😉
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David,
i’ve been lurking for many months but am moved now to respond. You’re questions (and others from yesterday) are provocative and call for deeper thinking. I’d ask the question: “What are the best practices of an artist, a writer, or an actor? I don’t know that they cast about looking for “best practices”. They simply do the best they can given their abilities, understandings, contexts and other things they are given.
Further, I see the search for bp as typically insecure and weak-hearted educators trying to siddle up to politicians, pols, and organizations that would like to reduce life to easy formulas, eliminating the messiness of it all. As far as I’m concerned, it is a red herring and I don’t feel like we have to justify squat.
Where are the clear voices telling the nosey, inexperienced charlatans to get the hell out of our collective face and let us do our jobs. And further, give us the tools and circumstances that will make education for kids and staff fun, glorious, exciting and humane instead of the prisons that schools are becoming.
Write on, David! I enjoy your thinking and look forward to see what you’ve written every day.
Skip Olsen
David,
You ask
Can a teacher, starting out in a new school year, be said to practice teaching, when the field in which he works has such widely varying and unpredictable factors as a classroom of students?
Best teaching practices start from that reality. The best teachers understand that they have a classroom full of students with all types of abilities, strengths and skills. That’s why differentiated instruction and universal design for learning practices are so essential in our 21st century classrooms. It is vital to engage our students using a variety of tools and methods and give them the opportunities to demonstrate what they know using a variety of tools and methods as well.
(I personally also think that the best teachers have children of their own, and even better if they have kids who have graduated from high school. They appreciate the different learning styles from personal exerience. Sometimes I think it would be better to require that teachers be parents first! Just throwing that in to stir things up as well!)
Good morning, David —
I like how you stir up our thoughts. Thank you for allowing us to not grow stagnant.
I must say that I am having a hard time with “Best Practices” because that puts my students (and my teaching) into a certain “static” mode and I tend to be quite flexible and open to new things pretty much all the time.
Your illustration of the baseball field was a good visual for me — because I could easily see it as having goals that expanded on each other (as with running the bases) to achieve a final goal. But also offered the possiblity of sometimes just hitting it out of the field — grand slam — Great Lesson!!
I believe that “good” teaching is a calling — and yet I believe that good teachers do practice and finetune certain skills they need to provide learning opportunities to their students.
Grins — but I am going to sidestep, if I could — from your blog to a post which was made to your blog.
Personally, I have to disagree with the post about “the best teachers have children of their own”. As a single – never married — never had kids — but a “called” teacher, I have to disagree. Grins, I think my students are blessed because I haven’t had kids — so I have no parental preconceived expectations or thoughts about them, their behavior, their abilities, etc.
This has been an interesting blog post — and again, I thank you for stirring the pot.
Jennifer
Karen,
I find your final, parenthetical comment very intriguing. Will have to give that some thought.
As for the bulk of your comment, I agree with you 100%. I guess I wonder if there is a file cabinet somewhere that has all of the best practices (or those practical to that teacher), and that from this file cabinet will come solutions to all of the different learning styles and prior knowledge bases? To me, the emphasis on “best practices’ over the past few years, seems to emply that practicing teaching is a very prescribed, scripted, scientifically tested, government certified set of procedures. Certainly that element is and should be a part of education. However, are we losing the intuitive connection between teacher, student, and curriculum in the process, the electricity that happens in eye contact.
I guess it’s back to what I talked about the other day wiith teacher-technicians and teacher-philosophers.
Thanks for the continuing conversation!
There is a group of teachers that I work with who have, for years, been developing their “best practice” in the area of early literacy development. By reading the professional literature, talking with each other about what works and doesn’t, and then reading some more and sharing their ideas, they all came to develop very effective “best practices” for their literacy instruction. So the process I see is that we begin with a base of knowledge and experience then we add new information to that, practice it for a while and adapt as we go, add some more new information and continue to work with that. In the end, because we’ve acquired a great deal of information and applied some thinking skills to that content and then we can be much more innovative in our approaches to instruction because we have all that information. As I read your posting for today (9/13/06) I was laughing to myself thinking about all the information and experiences you have about technology use, your higher level thinking about what you know and then, along comes this new device. Instantly, you’re coming up with innovative uses and instructional ideas. Best practices are based on experience, information, practice and continued study and application of what we learn.
Dave,
Terry’s comments on your original “Best Practices” post got me thinking. Is it really fair to call them best practices when they may not work in your given situation?
Similarly, are there professions that are just not suited to “Best Practices”? If artists followed a set of best practices, would we just get the same painting but with different colors?
But there are best practices in painting. For example, don’t leave your paints out or they will dry up. (Excuse the lame example but I am not a painter.) Similarly, there are so best practices that we can use in teaching. For example, it is best to get papers back to students as soon as possible for the feedback to be most effective.
Terry’s point is well taken. I have always has a problem with those educational web sites that have downloadable lesson plans. I would rather just read what others have found to work (activities, teaching styles, approaches to topics) in their classrooms and take that which fits with me and my class. To return to the artist analogy, it is the same as incorporating a brush stroke into your work that you have seen from another painter.
Finally, my biggest concern over “Best Practices” is the implication that if you are not doing the best practice, you are not doing your job as best as you can. The quickest way to kill a discussions is to say “but that is not a Best Practice”. The term should not imply Best AND ONLY Practice.
So, for me, the Best Practices for teaching include:
1) Be Passionate (about subject and to whom you teach)
2) Be Patient (kids are kids)
3) Be a Learner (never stop improving your craft)
and most importantly
4) Always Laugh
Rob-
After ten years in the middle school I am with you… on numbers 1-4… the problem that I see is that there is no prescriptive fix when a teacher does not exhibit these things… it’s as if the people that tout best practice believe that it’s a matter of putting the right lessons in the hands of the teachers and then they will be part of the best practices winners circle. I get it that there is a balance between the enthusiasm/passion for teaching and using practice that is meaningful and relevant, but I don’t think you can have the latter without the former. Hence, from my limited vantage point, the bind that education finds itself in.