If you are in education, then you have heard the phrase before. At least once. In every single staff meeting. And every single in-service. And every single evaluation meeting. If you are in education, you are bombarded by the phrase. You hear it almost as much as the other dreaded, teeth-clinching eduspeak word- "DATA". Ugh! So, the question becomes, just what are "Best Practices"? The phrase is bandied about by Educrats so much you would think they are paid by the number of times they use the phrase. I, unfortunately, have found that very often those who claim to know what are "Best Practices" are usually people who have either never taught in a K-12 public classroom or have not been in the classroom for years. I have found through my almost two decades in the classroom two inescapable truths about "Best Practices"; 1) Whatever it is believed to be "Best Practices" changes every couple of years and what ever is new becomes old and whatever is old becomes new again, 2) classroom teachers are much better at knowing what are "Best Practices" than educrats and "experts" who haven't been in the classroom since VCR's and overhead projectors were the technological God sends.Past Best Practices
Open Classrooms
I remember very well as a student in elementary school during the 1970's and experts in education came to the realization that Open Classrooms were the classrooms of the future. Instead of teachers having their own individual classrooms with walls separating the classes, it would be so much better to have one large communal area in which several different classes would learn sometimes from individual teachers in a smaller class setting, or learn collectively as a large class. Teachers were assured this was a "Best Practice" and students learning would be enhanced through this dynamic new style of learning. Teachers who protested were told they were still stuck in the 1950's, that style of learning had come and gone, it was relic of the past. Today's students, they were told, needed this type of learning to stimulate their minds and enhance their productivity in the workplace.
As JeffCo Public Schools are seemingly programmed to do, they immediately seized upon this latest and greatest "Best Practice". After all, this theory was coming from experts in education, people whose lives are spent figuring out how best to educate students without having to actually step into a classroom and put these ideas into practice. Emboldened by this new teaching theory and reacting to the learning styles and needs of the student of the 1970's, my elementary school was gutted. Walls were taken down, large open classrooms were created. Indeed, the entire 4th, 5th, 6th grade area of the school was one very large open room. I'm sure there were educrats saying 'YES! Finally we will unlock the minds of these students and their IOWA (remember those standardized tests????) test scores will rocket to new heights. THIS. WAS. SOOOOOOOOO. EXCITING!!!!!!!!!
What happened? Well, students loved it! They really did! Because now if your best friend was not in your class, you could still see him! He was just across the room with another teacher! This made so much easier to wave at them, make funny faces at them, pass notes to them, or if you had a really important conversation that had to be discussed immediately with them, like if you wanted to make any trades with each other during lunch so you could get rid of the stuff your mom had put in your lunch that you hated, you could just get up and walk across the large room into their class so the high stakes negotiations could commence. If you were the class clown, you now got to put on a show for 7-9 different classes all at once instead of having your performance limited to just one measly class. The educrats were right! This open classroom concept was amazing for students! Learning? Oh well, any 5th grader worth their salt will tell you that's way down the list when it comes to school.
The teachers? Well they were right (again!), this was a disaster. It was very loud, it was very distracting, learning was compromised, and they took it upon themselves to remedy the problem. They created artificial barriers using the cubbyholes, large plants, movable chalkboards and bulletin boards to begin creating separate spaces for each class. Noise was still a problem but the distractions had been dramatically been reduced. Open classrooms were a bust, just as many teachers had predicted, but then again those were the teachers who were admonished as being too old fashioned and wanting to teach like the 1950's during the 1970's.
STAR Reading Program
When I first became a teacher, education was trying desperately to figure out how best to address reading deficiencies in students. My feeling was there had always been students who really never had any interest in reading and therefore struggled in reading. I also thought that probably no matter what we do, there will always be students who have very little interest in reading and/or struggle with reading. Now as a teacher, I certainly understood the importance of reading and truly believed that we should address the reading problem, but I felt for those readers, the focus should be more on technical reading rather than fictional. After all, I've never known of a job where your boss hands you an Ernest Hemingway novel and asks you discuss the plot development and symbolism in the book. But, I was a new teacher so what did I know? It was decided that we would implement the STAR Reading program. The concept was fairly simple. Each student would be assigned to a "reading/access class" and in order to get out of the class the student would have to read a book, pass a comprehension test on the book and in doing so amass a certain number of points. Once a student met the number of points needed, they were able to get out of the class. Books were assigned a point value, hard, complex books were worth a lot of points whereas simple, easy books were worth very few points. The tests were computer based and when a student had read a book they were to take a test. Depending on how well they did on the test, the student was awarded points. We were sure this would improve student reading and comprehension. A lot of money was spent to buy the program, lots of new books were bought, teachers were trained in the STAR Reading program, this was going to be awesome. I remember, many teachers were very skeptical of the program, but they were told that they were wrong, this was going to work magic.
Students hated it. Especially the low level readers. They wanted to know why they were being forced to read books that held very little value to them. Students began to question what would happen if they didn't read at all? Would they fail? What would that do to their GPA? Would they still be able to graduate? Students are much smarter and perceptive that we sometimes give them credit for. The answer to all of the questions was nothing would really happen if they didn't read, they would just have an extra class to which they were required to come. So many began to just show up an do nothing, this caused a whole new issue for teachers- classroom control. During the second year of the program something very curious began to happen. Stephen King's book "The Stand" began a VERY popular book. Students were taking the test in record numbers and passing the test with flying colors!!!!! This was truly great news! Suddenly students were interested in reading and they were really understanding the book! Even low level readers suddenly had their reading levels jump many grade levels and they were passing the book! This was working! It was a miracle! Then the miracle was found out. A very good, competent student, who had read the book and taken the test had begun to sell the answers to other students. If you had a few bucks, you could pay your way out of the STAR program. Soon after that the STAR program was discontinued. The only benefit to the whole program was that it demonstrated that entrepreneurship was alive and well.
Current Best Practices
If you are in education, you are very well aware that there is a seemingly endless stream of "Best Practices". Cooperative education, Student directed learning, E-Learning, Project Based Learning the list is non-ending and exhausting. Furthermore, it seems that every 7-9 years what was once considered out of date becomes the next latest and greatest in education, it is a revolving door in educational ideas (except for the Open Classrooms Concept, hopefully that one is forever dead and buried). I've tried, from time to time, these "Best Practices" sometimes they work, other times they don't. When they don't I just go back to what I know how to do and what I'm good at. For me, that is the key to teaching: Do What You Do Best. I've had several student teachers during my career and I tell them the best piece of advice I can ever hope to give them is this; "Figure out what you are good at. Try several different methods, see what works for you and more importantly, find out what doesn't work for you. When you figure out what you are best at, what your teaching style is make that you main method of teaching."
I truly believe that if you as a teacher try to teach in manner that you are not very good at or just doesn't suit your skill set then you are doing the students a real disservice. They just won't learn much from you. I know I am not very good at group work, or in eduspeak "Cooperative Learning". I've tried to get better at doing group work, but it just never works out very well. It's just not in my skill set. Plus I've had students tell me that they really don't get anything out of it except frustration. I do know what I am good at: Telling stories. I'm really good at that. So, that becomes my main method of teaching. I lecture, at least a few times a week. Students take notes. GASP! What????? This is wrong, the educrats will say. Students just sit there, they are passive. Learning is minimal. However, in my classroom, lectures are not passive. I ask students to make predictions about which way the story will go, think about why some event is taking place, I ask them to recall previous topics and connect them to our current learning. They are hardly passive students. Furthermore, I am not teaching dates and dead guys, I'm telling a story. With a beginning, a middle and an end. There are characters, there is conflict, sometimes there is a resolution, sometimes there is not a resolution.
I came to this method early in my teaching career. I tried teaching using the current "Best Practices" in education, often with limited success. I did notice that students could tell me, almost scene by scene and line by line, about a movie they had recently seen but struggled to tell me what we had done yesterday in class. The light went off in my head- These students remember these scenes and lines because it is a story and everyone loves stories. So, I began look for ways to teach using the stories of history instead of just imparting facts. Student retention began to increase as did student interest in the class. I believe the true test of student learning is not a test score or classwork but the 'kitchen table test'. If what we did in class that day makes home to the kitchen table discussion that night then I was successful in class. History lends itself well to this method, history is a bunch of stories. Literature does as well. Math, not so much. Science, maybe, sometimes.
If I tried to teach using "Best Practices" my ability as a teacher would be greatly diminished. My effectiveness would suffer. However, by employing story telling or lecture as my main method of teaching I am far more effective and students enjoy my class and that is 3/4 of the battle in learning- if the students enjoy the class they will learn. So, does that mean that other styles of teaching/learning are wrong. That other "Best Practices" are not "best"? I don't think so. I believe teaching is a very specialized process, so teachers need to find out what works for them as teaching methods and what does not work. Whatever you are good at, that becomes your main method of teaching. What you are not very good at, that should be a method that you use sparingly if at all.
If we are serious about improving student learning and comprehension as well as improving teacher satisfaction then we need to allow teachers to determine what are the "Best Practices" for themselves rather than allowing others to determine that. Classroom teachers know what is best for their classroom and their students. To put it succinctly; Best Practices are whatever you do well as a teacher. Classroom teachers are the arbitrators of best practices, not researchers and theorists who have never been in your classroom, or A classroom.
So go forth teacher friends and do that voodoo that you do so well!
