Busting out of the teacher cage 

 

Teacher leadership is in fashion these days, but exercising real leadership requires teachers to be disciplined in their approach and judicious in their requests. 

 

Teacher leadership is popular today for a simple reason — it’s a terrific thing. And lots of people, from Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to your corner grocer, have been telling teachers that they deserve to lead and to be heard. The harsh truth, though, is that no one deserves these things — whether one is a doctor, lawyer, cop, or teacher. While everyone can desire them, leadership and a seat at the table always must be earned. 

This matters — a lot. Frustrated by schools and systems that consume their time and passion, teachers can find it all too easy to retreat to their classrooms. But doing so leaves them trapped in a classroom cage, stuck with systems and policies that they find frustrating or incoherent. Cage-busting teachers reach out in ways that identify the problems and surface workable solutions. 

There are problems of policy and practice that befuddle teachers and need to be addressed. Consider the example of Alex Lopes, Florida Teacher of the Year in 2013. The state’s new teacher evaluation system mandated that 50% of a teacher’s evaluation be based on student achievement, with teachers in nontested grades scored using schoolwide achievement. As a preschool autism teacher, Lopes had no tested students; thus, he was judged using schoolwide results from his high-poverty, low-performing school. His score was predictably poor, with the result that he was deemed ineffective and rendered ineligible for teacher leadership roles. In the midst of this, Lopes mused to colleagues that if he taught at a more successful school, he’d be classified as an effective teacher and free to be a mentor, coach, or teacher leader. No one meant for this to happen. But no one prevented it either.   

Passion has its price 

When confronted with these kinds of troubling policies, it’s all too easy for teachers to speak up in destructive ways. Passionate people tend to be sure of their convictions and in a hurry to act on them. That can be good and admirable. But passion also can have real costs. It can leave us impatient, make us strident, and lead us to dismiss the views of others. It can make us better at talking than at listening. Passionate people aren’t always great at understanding why others might disagree, which can make it hard to win over people or assuage their concerns. Michelle Shearer, a high school chemistry teacher in Maryland and the 2011 National Teacher of the Year, said, “That passion can be good and bad. Teachers often feel that they have no voice, so when they do speak up, all of that emotion comes to the surface. And it can come across as complaining or whining.” 

Passion can lead people to say things that erode their credibility, making it harder to address their concerns. In early 2014, Michael Mulgrew, president of New York City’s United Federation of Teachers, told 3,400 union delegates, “We are at war with the reformers. . . . Their ideas will absolutely destroy — forget about public education — they will destroy education in our country.”  

 It can be all too easy for teachers to let their frustration get the better of them. “Everybody thinks they’re an educational expert because everybody went to school,” as the saying goes. Well, no. For one thing, most people don’t think they’re educational experts. For another, lawmakers have a job to do — write laws about how to spend money and provide services. More to the point, many advocates and policy makers do have some expertise when it comes to schooling. They’ve spent years talking to educators, studying schools and school systems, examining data, crafting education laws, and wrestling with implementation challenges. They frequently bring real knowledge to the table. If practitioners want outsiders to acknowledge their passion and expertise, they’d benefit from modeling that same respect. 

A sympathetic ear 

This should be easy advice to heed because teachers enjoy a sympathetic audience. People care what teachers think. The most recent PDK/Gallup Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools found that two-thirds of Americans say they have “trust and confidence” in public school teachers (Bushaw & Calderon, 2014). After all, the public knows that teachers are closer to the classroom than anyone else. The question is what teachers do with this influence. Greg Mullenholz, a 2011 Washington Teaching Ambassador Fellow, said, “What fascinated me was this perception that folks at [the U.S. Department of Education] would look at us and think, ‘They’re just teachers.’ But the high-level folks actually had a lot of respect for what we had to say. We would meet with them regularly to discuss the feedback we were getting from teachers in the field, and they’d use it to inform what they were doing.” 

There are lots of opportunities, even if you don’t feel ready for them. Jay Hoffman, a technology education teacher in Vermont who has served on the state standards board for professional educators, suggests that teachers “Call your local legislator cold and say, ‘Hey, I’d like to get together with you.’ Teachers have more credibility than they might think. Don’t worry about being blown off a few times. It’s the nature of what they [legislators] do — they’re pulled in a thousand different directions. Stick with it, and eventually you’ll get an audience. It’s just a matter of being a hound dog.”  

 Wendy Uptain, a former kindergarten teacher and now director of teacher engagement for the Hope Street Group, a national nonprofit that helps teachers advocate for policy change, said, “We talk about meeting legislators like a first date. Set up a meeting, and make it a short and sweet introduction. Introduce yourself, and ask for some suggestions and advice. Listen. Don’t race to offer recommendations on how to fix something or tell them you need more money. Ask if there’s anyone else you should talk with. Use email to keep in touch. They’re much more likely to take you seriously because you’re not just someone from out of the blue.” 

Tapping teacher authority 

Teachers are often unsure how they can effectively change schools, systems, and policy — and are skeptical that anyone will actually listen to them. After all, teachers don’t have a lot of formal authority in schools. This means it’s especially important that they be clear and strategic about tapping the authority they do have. After all, while teachers lack positional authority, they have two powerful sources of authority at their disposal: the authority of expertise and a potentially powerful moral authority. Teachers rarely employ these to their full extent. Many aren’t even aware of the power they possess.    

In all walks of life, there’s a deep-seated desire to trust the expertise of professionals — that includes teachers. 

The authority of expertise derives from teachers knowing more than anyone else about how policies and decisions actually affect students and classrooms. Teachers know what’s working, what’s not, and what’s really going on. They know how evaluation systems play out and how new technology gets used. They know where well-intended reforms are falling flat. If teachers share this knowledge clearly and constructively, they can profoundly influence policy and practice. In all walks of life, there’s a deep-seated desire to trust the expertise of professionals. People want to lean on the advice of their dentist, plumber, or mechanic. The same holds true for teachers.   

Moral authority is a different animal: It comes when professionals are seen as the guardians of the public interest. This can be confusing because there are lots of efforts to sloganeer one’s way to moral authority — by saying things like “we’re for the kids.” But true moral authority doesn’t come from saying anything. It comes with a track record of clear, consistent action to promote professional excellence. It derives from a record of doing things to help teachers get better, to get systems to stop wasting time or money, and to ensure that mediocre employees (whether they work in the central office or in classrooms) are dealt with appropriately. Moral authority is earned. It’s the product of teachers convincing parents, voters, and policy makers, “We’ve got this.” 

The authority of expertise is only effective when professionals are deemed trustworthy. If people grant the expertise of auto mechanics but believe that too many are ripping off their customers, then that undermines the moral authority of all mechanics. The result is a public that second-guesses mechanics and asks elected officials to do something to rein in the bad apples. The authority of expertise is bolstered by moral authority, and moral authority isn’t about what people think of this or that mechanic — it’s about what people think of mechanics in general. For teachers, moral authority is not what people think of you but what they think of the teachers at your school, in your district or state, or throughout the profession. Moral authority is a team sport. That’s why retreating to the classroom is so debilitating. 

Tell policy makers 

Even when teachers have done a good job marshaling both expertise and moral authority, they can stumble. In particular, when educators do get the chance to speak to system leaders or to policy makers, they can fall into self-defeating habits. On the other hand, if you understand where policy makers are coming from, it gets a lot easier to focus on what might influence them.  

This means doing three things, in particular: 

#1. Don’t demand more money. Everybody asks lawmakers for money. If policy makers had more money to give, they’d give it. But mostly what they hear from teachers is that schools need more. This is true even in places where districts are spending more than $20,000 per student each year.  

#2. Emphasize shared concerns. In other words, presume that they care about the same kids that you do — and explain the idea with a view to how they might see things.  

#3. Offer them workable solutions. Wendy Uptain, of Hope Street, offers some terrific advice: “Propose solutions that work beyond your classroom. If you show a policy maker that you have your eyes set beyond just the four walls of your classroom, they’ll listen accordingly.”  

I remember meeting a group of accomplished North Carolina teachers who’d been disheartened by the state’s decision to abolish tenure, eliminate hundreds of millions of dollars annually in pay for advanced degrees, and use only a small portion of the savings to create a tiny annual bonus for a quarter of the state’s teachers. The teachers were angry. I totally got that. But here’s the deal: Those legislators also had valid concerns. They were concerned that tenure too often protected the undeserving and that paying for advanced degrees was subsidizing course taking that didn’t improve instruction. Disagreement on these things was not a good reason to dismiss legislators as misinformed or hopeless.  

Those legislators may not want to pay for education degrees, but that doesn’t mean they’re wedded to cutting teacher pay. If you take the policy makers’ concerns seriously, agree that the current system doesn’t do enough to reward excellence or address mediocrity, and propose a viable alternative, you can alter the debate. Rather than arguing whether to pay for the old credentials or to cut pay, the question can be how those dollars might best attract, retain, and energize great teaching. Framed that way, it’s tougher for anyone to argue that the money should simply go away.  

Teachers can have enormous effect on policy without hanging around statehouses, if they stick to what they know and apply their expertise.  

Schooling is so complex that how education policies play out tends to be more a matter of practice than words on a page. This means that you can still shape policies long after they’ve been formally adopted. Laws are brought to life by hundreds of decisions made by federal, state, and local officials.  Those decisions are made out of the spotlight, can be readily influenced, and often have more practical effect on classrooms than the formal law itself. This means teachers can have enormous effect on policy without hanging around statehouses if they stick to what they know and apply their expertise.  

Taking sides 

In recent years, the education debate has featured two warring camps: “reformers” and “antiprivatizers.” On one side are those who embrace test-based accountability, merit pay, school choice, and a commitment to closing “achievement gaps.” On the other are those who broadly reject such measures while demanding more support for teachers and kids, more professional autonomy, and more emphasis on peer assistance and portfolios.   

Teachers can feel pressed to pick a camp. They attend conferences where state and district officials invite them to play leadership roles by championing this or that reform. They get emails from colleagues or union officials urging them to support or oppose particular initiatives. Through it all, there’s a sense they’re supposed to pick sides — to be for or against school accountability or charter schooling. Teachers should resist that pressure. If the goal is to create schools and systems where they can do their best work, teachers should judge each proposal accordingly, with an eye to its potential and its practical frailties.  

Teachers should take inspiration from an unlikely source: Treebeard, the wizened, ancient Ent who befriends a couple of lost young hobbits in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Upon meeting Treebeard in the midst of a savage war, the wide-eyed young hobbit Pippin asks him, “And whose side are you on?” Treebeard ponders the question and then laconically replies, “Side? I am not altogether on anybody’s side because nobody is altogether on my side.” 

Professionals should be accountable. It’s also the case that many reforms intended to promote accountability may be half-baked or dependent on unreliable metrics. It’s easy for teachers to look at today’s scorched-earth education reform debate and, in good conscience, conclude that no one is altogether on their side. The funny thing is, by saying that clearly, firmly, and respectfully, teachers can make it more likely that they’ll get a serious hearing from serious people on both sides.  

Takeaways 

So, what does this all mean for teachers who want to speak up? There are at least three things that are especially useful to keep in mind. 

Teachers and policy makers have an asymmetrical relationship. Teachers who want a major role in shaping education policy need to earn the trust of lawmakers. In response, teachers will say, “Fine, I hear you. But we’re the ones in the classrooms with the kids every day. Don’t they need to earn our trust?” The short answer: Yep, they do. The longer answer, though, is that educators are in an asymmetrical relationship with the lawmakers who control budgets, write policy, and legislate accountability systems. Think of a teacher dealing with students. Both teacher and student ought to try to earn the other’s trust. But the teacher gets to set the rules, which means students stand to gain more by winning the teacher’s trust than vice versa. Such is life. 

Pay close attention to where the power lies in your school and system. Jacob Pactor, a high school English teacher in Indianapolis, said, “When I went into a big school, my first priority was to know who the players are. Usually, that’s going to be your department chair, the special ed chair, and the guidance counselor. If you build good relationships with them, when you go to your principal it’s a whole new game. Rather than just me coming up with an idea, I can now tell my principal, ‘I’ve been talking this over with A, B, and C, and we are all thinking . . . ’ and it’s like you have the full force of the faculty behind you because you’ve secured the key players.” Cage busting is a team sport, and that requires knowing your teammates, their individual strengths, and how to put those strengths to work.  

Make it easy for policy makers or administrators to say “yes.” In doing this, four steps are paramount. First, give leaders something they can say yes to. You need to give them a concrete, precise problem and solution. Second, give them something they’ll want to say yes to. You need to explain why your idea is going to help solve a problem that they care about. Third, help them understand how they’ll justify their yes to parents, school board members, or their supervisors. Let them know what they can say to those who might be skeptical of the decision. Fourth, reassure them that they won’t regret saying yes. Explain how they can be sure that your request won’t become a headache for them. It’s the job of school and system leaders to help you solve problems, but it’s your job to make it easy for them to do so. 

A lot of advice presumes that if teachers are positive, passionate, and committed to their craft, things will work out. Yet teachers can do remarkable work only to wear themselves out as they slam again and again into the bars of their classroom cage. Teachers have it in their hands to change all of that. But it requires more than leadership; it will require that teachers apply outside their classroom the same savvy and patience that they value within it.  

Reference 

Bushaw, W.J. & Calderon, V.J. (2014). 46th annual PDK/Gallup poll of the public’s attitudes toward the public schools. Phi Delta Kappan, 96 (2), 48-59. 

 

Citation: Hess, F.M. (2015). Busting out of the teacher cage. Phi Delta Kappan, 96 (7), 58-63.