TEACHER, YOU LIVE IN TWO WORLDS
FEBRUARY 15, 2015 BRETT DICKERSON
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| Teachers, parents, and administrators make an unusual foray into the world of the contest March, 2014 with this huge rally at the Oklahoma State Capitol. |
We teachers live in two worlds: One is of collaboration and democracy. The other is of contest and domination.
We’ve done well with that first world, the one of collaboration. It’s that second one of the contest and mental brutality of eliminating the competition that we have a hard time swallowing.
But, if the profession is going to survive the next ten years and beyond, we have to learn to successfully operate in both worlds. We will have to become comfortable transiting between the two. Our lives will be lived in that intersection.
Collaboration
When I first started teaching I believed that teaching was telling and that any interruption to that had to be conquered. It’s the same approach that corporate charters take now with their hyper-strict behavior rules and students walking lines in the hallway that is not very much different from prisons.
But I changed over time. I learned what those experienced teachers tried to tell me at first: Teaching is collaboration — not just with other teachers, but with your own students.
What experience teaches any teacher that lasts longer than five years is that the more input that students have, the better they do.The more say that they have in how the classroom works the better. It’s an environment that they must inhabit, but may not choose to inhabit if they had the choice.
Teachers who have been teaching for over one year understand thatall students in the building are affected by all of the teachers. The notion of having one or two teachers paid more that the others for some “performance” measure seems ridiculous.
What experienced teachers know is that parents can be great allies and collaborators. But not only that, they are collaborators if their children are successful.
The case of one forlorn student with a horrible home life being rescued by a heroic teacher is very often smoke on the part of Teacher, You Live in Two Worlds:
