Target Practice

I think we would all agree that our country is confronting a series of challenges in key areas such as the economy, health care, education, the environment, and national security.  How we handle these challenges will determine whether the United States continues its global leadership role or whether we are eclipsed by other great powers on this globe.  Regardless of your priorities, as we look to secure our future, education has to be a key part of any solution.  But at this moment in time, education and especially schools of education are under attack.

The basis for the attack is that often in K-12 education, our students are not performing up to their potential and no one would argue with that assessment.  The blame for this lack of performance or lack of progress is placed on the shoulders of our teachers and further blamed on the education they have received.  The solutions suggest that a stint with Teach for America or an experience with a museum could provide the same or a greater level of expertise than pursuing a graduate degree in education. The threat is clear— if schools of education don’t change, students will be encouraged to go elsewhere to pursue their graduate education. 

I happen to think that Teach for America is a terrific program and I love visiting museums and always find them to be a valuable learning experience.  There is no question that such programs can enhance teaching techniques and content knowledge.  But what about pedagogy?  What about the learning process? What about a more in depth understanding of the students we are educating? What about the need for a strong liberal arts and sciences background?  No one argues about the need for significant hands on experience for teachers but hands on cannot substitute for the proper educational foundation. Where is there any concrete evidence that teacher education has caused a lack of student performance? 

Clearly student performance is impacted by teaching quality and I’m not sure that that the prevalent K-12 structure sufficiently recognizes merit and the quality of teaching.  Yearly increases, step increases, and lane changes are almost totally tied to quantity of teaching and quantity of credits taken rather than the impact of the teacher. We have an obligation on the K-12 level and in higher education to give merit a more prominent place in the educational equation.  But we also all have an obligation, and that includes our public officials, to recognize that school funding, the student’s family,  the economic status of that family, the educational attainment of the family members, and discrimination all have significantly impacted student learning.  And does anyone think that alternative paths to certification will remedy these issues?

I wholeheartedly support outcomes assessment and efforts to measure the learning that has taken place.  I wholeheartedly support a continuous review of teacher education programs to also assess their effectiveness.  We can do a better job in providing K-12 education and in providing teacher education.  Change is necessary but so is an understanding of all the issues.  Looking for a target, looking for a simple solution to complex issues, won’t solve our problems.  You need to see the issues clearly and completely before significant progress can be made.  As educators we have an obligation to help make that happen.

Change

I was fortunate enough to get an opportunity to teach after just one year of graduate school.  At that time, I was appointed as an adjunct to teach a basic macroeconomics course at the same institution that I had just graduated from a year earlier.  My name appeared in the course schedule but thanks to the efforts of a friend of mine, no one knew that I was teaching this course.  All my friend did was start a rumor that the Berliner who was teaching the economics course, was a “famous economist” by the name of Berliner who had taught at Leipzig before the war.  I was, of course, unaware of this but noticed when I came into class the first day, that there was a great deal of conversation taking place between the students as soon as I moved to the front of the room.  I could clearly hear one student near the front saying to another with almost a sense of disappointment “it’s only Herman.”  What a way to start your teaching career.

I was especially fortunate that at the time that I started teaching, there was a program being run where a small number of new instructors were invited to a seminar on teaching and were even paid to attend the seminar.  I was selected and was pleased to have the opportunity.  The seminar consisted of weekly meetings and also consisted of the person teaching the seminar (a senior History faculty member) coming to your class to observe your teaching.  The new faculty in the seminar were recent PhDs and graduate students, who were also teaching while completing their education.  The conversations were great and allowed us to work through the issues that inevitably arise during the first semesters that a person is teaching.  I was somewhat nervous when it was my turn to be observed; the lesson went well, however, and I felt very positive when I entered the meeting with the seminar teacher.

At the start of the meeting, I was told that I did an excellent job explaining economic concepts, getting the class to participate, and integrating current economic events into the discussion.  I was next asked a question that I wouldn’t be asked today—how old was I?  I didn’t have any sense as to why I was being asked an age question but it wasn’t a secret and I quickly answered 22.  I was next asked what I thought the age range was of the students in my class.  And though I didn’t understand the basis for this question either, I once again answered very quickly—somewhere between 18 and 24 years old.  What was going on and how did this relate to an observation of my teaching?

The mystery was solved in the next minute.  The seminar teacher summarized his observation by saying that he thought I did a terrific job and that the students were interested and involved in the class.  He next said, and I have held onto this advice for decades, “please remember that as your teaching career continues and you get older, you will need to change how you relate and how you communicate with students.”  What works when a 22 year old is talking with 20 year olds doesn’t work when a 40 or 50 or 60 year old is talking with and helping to educate 20 years olds.  We continuously get older, and clearly our “traditional” students don’t.  We also need to be cognizant of the fact that student demographics also change as we age.

It isn’t enough for us as educators to just remain current in our subject matter.  We need to continuously reflect on how we are communicating and relating to our students.  And we need to recognize that it becomes harder as the age gap widens and as there are various shifts in the age of the students we are teaching.  However, without the communication working well, being an up-to-date subject matter specialist is not enough.

The Undecided

The recent death of Paul Samuelson at age 94 has prompted me to reflect on my own educational journey.  Paul Samuelson as we know, was a Nobel Prize winning economist and was also the author of a long term best selling textbook that influenced me greatly at a critical time.  As a high school student and even in my first and second year in college, I was uncertain as to what field to pursue.  And there were even moments when I was unsure as to why I was pursuing higher education.  Then economics came into the picture.  I can’t even tell you why I registered for this course—I wasn’t even sure at the time exactly what economics was and I knew of no one in my circle of family, friends and acquaintances who were in the field.  As far as I was concerned, this was just another course, taken most likely to meet a requirement.