FINAL DRAFT: Ignore 1st posting of McKinsey Report

Honestly, as a teacher I have become disheartened with the over-emphasis on standards, students' Machiavellian approach to learning, lack of substantive staff development time, and, at my school, primitive technology.

While the standards themselves are honorable, making them the crux of my coaching of new teachers as a mentor, has proved counter-intuitive and counter-productive. New teachers are trying to survive day to day and need help shaping lessons, reflecting on those lessons and moving to the next step. In my opinion, while teachers need to set goals, expecting new teachers to use compartmentalized standards as a starting place, is unnatural. As a BTSA mentor for several years, I have felt like a burden to my mentees, coaxing them to fill out copious paperwork. It would, as one guest on Forum noted, be helpful if mentors and mentees had more time to meet, and not mainly around meeting standards. Sadly, there may be no need for mentors next year as many of the newer teachers have been let go due to budget cuts.

Another over-application of standards involves administrators using them as the sole basis of teacher evaluations. Instead of the observant letters we used to receive with notes like "You motivated me to re-read Beloved", evaluators go through a perfunctory checklist. Two of the best teachers at my school received "Needs improvement" on numerous counts and overall, this year. When the two teachers compared their written evaluations, they discovered that 80% of the text was identical. They highlighted the duplications and brought them to the principal. That the administrator took this illegal shortcut is really disillusioning.

Speaking of shortcuts . . . I'm having a hard time with students' (and parents') emphasis on grades and extracurrilar activities and community service for the purpose of grooming one's resume for college admission. Kids know better than to haggle with me over grades, but some do it habitually with other teachers. Still, I'm not immune. When I asked a freshman to help me move a table during a class party, she asked (albeit sheepishly) for extra credit. Ditto when I asked a boy to erase the white board. Students don't seem to be genuinely connected with themselves or what they're doing; there's a "let's get this over with this" malaise. That's why interactive, dynamic projects like documentary making and the Web 2.0 projects are so important. Students need real-life projects that they can invest in. Also, more than ever, students need to be talking about their real feelings as they are bombarded with rubrics and hoops to jump through often without any joy in learning for its own sake. That's why cutting the Social Psychology class and eliminating the Wellness Center where kids get emotional counseling (not just academic), a real threat in this economic climate, would be devastating.

Another negative is that most staff development days are devoted to so-called motivational speakers not to training teachers in technology or teacher-led workshops highlighting what's working. Because our school only has two Macs and one computer lab, there's no ostensible reason to offer technology workshops. The only one I recall introduced the standardized grading program that students and parents can access any time (the emphasis, as always, on grades and averting lawsuits). I really like Japan's "lesson study" concept described by the Mills professor, on Forum. Teachers definitely need release time to observe other teachers. I've observed three teachers -- and many mentees -- all of whom taught me so much.


I agree with Carlos Garcia's advocacy of teacher individuality versus curricular standardization. Different texts inspire different teachers. Different teachers gravitate to different grading policies. That's life. But we're always bracing against the parent who says, "Well, if my daughter had so-and-so, she'd have gotten an A".

I naturally agree teachers shouldn't have to pay for staff development trainings. However, given the economic crisis, especially in California, the McKinsey recommendations, while sound, seem more pie-in-the-sky than they may have two years ago.

Finally, though I am at a high caliber school where almost every teacher is terrific, technology is remarkably antiquated, making innovation difficult. Still, we are privileged in that the community can afford to pass ballot initiatives that channel tax dollars to our school. Most communities don't have this luxury.