Could Teaching Become A Team Sport?
By rights teaching ought to have become a team sport years ago, because the majority of school superintendents have been drawn from the ranks of coaches for as long as I can remember. Who better than to inculcate team values than ex-jocks turned coaches turned school leaders? But it didn’t happen under their leadership.
Shouldn’t it be a team sport now? After all, our current Secretary of Education knows about the importance of teamwork. Arne Duncan was co-captain of Harvard’s basketball team and later a pro player in Australia. He’s still pretty darn good at the game, as he showed during NBA All Star Weekend. Hasn’t happened–we’re even more focused on judging individual teachers according to their students’ test scores, the antithesis of team competition.
Lots of people are now talking–often with passion and intensity–about teaching as a “team sport,” but wishing won’t make it so. As the old English saying goes, “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.” Those who would like teaching to be recognized as a team effort have some work to do.
Teaching has been a solo job from its earliest days. Most of our first public schools were one-room schoolhouses, with, of course, just one teacher. When systems developed, they were what Deborah Ball of