Dancing on the Periphery with Frederick

Last week’s show was about growing veteran teachers. I focused largely on the importance of relationships. At the end of the episode, I encouraged you to ask your veteran teachers three questions:o   What is your teaching super-power?o   What’s the biggest difference between who you are now as a teacher, and who you were when you began?o   If you could get students to do one thing differently, what would it be? I recognize that some of you have been in school for several weeks while others still may have a week or so of summer left, but hopefully you have at the very least been able to reflect on those questions, and if you have not asked them of someone else, maybe you have asked them of yourself. I also stated, “next Tuesday I’ll offer some additional steps to build on what you find out.“ My intention was to provide some explicit “tips and tricks” but instead I decided to ask some of my connections on LinkedIn about their tips for working with veteran teachers. This group included administrators at all levels as well as veteran teachers. I’ve taken their feedback and put it into a tidy visual framework because… that’s what I do!

Inset Show Intro

Celebrations: My new truck! Apologies if that sounds a bit vain and materialistic, but I ordered a Ford Maverick – a minuscule size pickup, in Sept, 2022 and finally got it last week. It’s the perfect vehicle for me, able to haul mulch, lumber, and trash around our rural mountain roads and get 30 mpg on my trips to Columbia, Greensboro, and elsewhere.

The Big Idea

Today’s episode takes place in two acts. In Act I I’m going to smash the stereotype of the veteran teacher being a curmudgeon or burned-out resistor. Remember that change begins within, and the first step in working with experienced teachers is reframing how you perceive them. In Act II I’ll present a simple 4-stage framework for working with veteran teachers.

Act I: You don’t know me

Change… trauma… change

Sure, it’s not all been bad, but if you have been in this profession very long you have experienced change, trauma, and more change. First the change…

I began teaching in 1988, so I would be beginning my 35th year had I remained in p-12 education. You may be working with a few teachers who began teaching in that same year, or perhaps in the early 90’s, and education has changed dramatically. Here is a non-exhaustive list of things that weren’t around when I began my teaching career. No:

·      Standardized tests

·      Computers in classrooms

·      Laptops

·      Cell phones

·      Social media

·      Canned or structured teaching programs

Principals were paid to manage things and instructional leadership was largely in the hands of teachers. There were far fewer grand initiatives, and teachers were largely expected to close their doors and teach. And although teachers were not above being questioned or criticized, it was nothing like what it is today. This might not be a universal experience, but it was my experience.

So, point 1, veteran teacher possess a sense of history and have experienced profound – profound – changes over the course of their careers. For many of them, in many ways, the profession they find themselves in now is not the profession they entered.

Now the trauma…

I believe that teaching is the greatest profession in the world. Not necessarily in its current condition, but the ability to transform live and enrich the future is unparalleled. That said, teaching can be a traumatic endeavor. Trauma can occur in conflicts between teachers and the students and families they serve, the form of trauma that is most pertinent to our discussion is trauma with administration. Especially around the teacher observation and evaluation process.

The average tenure of a middle school principal in the US is 3-5 years. As a 35-year veteran teacher, on average, I have had 7-12 principals, and countless assistant principals. Think about this… Seven times new “leaders” have come into my school, brought their vision, changed school culture, asked me to buy-in, and then they have left. More than likely, some of those principals have acted like this was their school, not my school. And in their quest to stamp their identity on the school, they may have erased part of my identity, even erased part of my school. 

In addition, with so many leaders cycling through, it is very likely that most experienced teachers have had at least one very negative – traumatizing – experience with an administrator. Imagine, having pride in your craft, having invested years in working with kids, receiving solid evaluations year after year, and then someone with half your experience comes in and tells you not only that you need to get better, but that they know better than you how your craft needs to improve! Seriously?

And maybe things are very different today, but two decades ago is was not that uncommon to have administrators who yelled at teachers. Not a lot of them, but they were out there – and many experienced teachers have experienced a humiliating dressing down at the hands of a petty tyrant.

Please, I’m not throwing you under the bus, but understand, not all administrators are like you. A few are great, most are good, but there are some bad administrators out there and when a teacher has had 7, 12, or more principals, and maybe another 7, 12, or more assistant principals, the chances are high that one of them – and that’s all it takes to create trauma – one of them, was bad. Maybe even very bad.

That brings us to the third part of Act I, change. The change in part 1 was about how education has changed (no cell phones, no social media, can you imagine?) The change in part 3 is about the change process, more specifically the fascination with the flavor of the month. In our quest for improvement, we can often get dazzled by the next best thing. I’m speaking from experience here. I’m one of those visionary leaders, and if I didn’t have people to keep me firmly tethered to the ground I would jump from one change to another at light speed.

Just think about the changes in reading instruction over the past three decades:

·      Phonics

·      Whole Language

·      Balanced Literacy

·      Reading recovery

·      Accelerated Reader

·      Guided reading

·      And now a plethora of computerized programs

I read a research study a while back that described how teachers’ attitudes towards change projects changed over time:

·      With the first change initiative, new teachers are gung-ho, leading the way

·      With the second change initiative, teachers willingly engage

·      With the third change, they are beginning to detect a pattern and may begin to hesitate

·      And with the fourth and subsequent change, many teachers will close their doors and ignore it

Obviously, I have made some generalizations here and individual experiences will vary widely, but the existence of change, trauma, and cha...