August 24, 1998
The times for teaching are now better than ever
By Ronald Thorpe
Providence Journal
Ronald Thorpe, a former teacher and school administrator, is vice president
for program at
the Rhode Island Foundation.
WITH ALL all the conversation about the problems in our schools, the great
irony is that the
best of our teachers today are superior to almost any teachers throughout
American history.
When "teaching" is defined as something connected to "learning,"
and when "learning" is
defined as grappling with new ways of thinking about one's tasks, one's
world and one's
self, and then acting according to that thinking, then it is fair to say
that in certain
classrooms, in the hands of certain teachers, students today are learning
in ways that would
be the envy of any generation.
Through most of this century, when universal schooling has become the law
of the land,
"teaching" has not been linked to this kind of "learning."
Teachers primarily told students
what they know (or what textbooks say), and the students tossed it back,
usually in the form
of a paper or test, and in some instances a project, typically something
that has no connection
to anything. The best students made their return pitches with the greatest
attention to repeated
detail. The best projects got saved, but only if a student's attic was large
enough to hold it
and if the parents were sufficiently sentimental.
Students did learn to read, to make their letters and recite their times-tables,
to write book
reports (each ending with the same sentence: I highly recommend this book
to anyone who .
. .), to do simple forms of math, to say "Bonjour, Jean" and then
to ask with rapt
expectation: "Ou est le bibliotheque? " There was a smattering
of other things, too, mostly to
do with organization, memorization, and standardization. On this latter
point, I have a
crystalline memory of my fourth-grade teacher (whom I loved dearly) telling
us in 1961 that
"no matter what the people in Washington do, I'm going to make sure
you all get to say the
Lord's Prayer every day."
But for most Americans, schools have never been a successful learning experience.
Formal
education as far back as we can remember has been a rite of passage, something
that people
must go through, tolerate. Real life starts after school, and success in
school has had little
connection to one's ability to make a contribution to family, workplace,
community or even
our democratic form of society.
Think back -- those of you who are 35 or older and educated during the much
touted
``golden age" of public schools -- to what really happened most of
the time. The majority of
happy and fulfilling images are tied to the social aspects of school, the
friends we made, the
jostling in the hallways, time in the cafeteria or before, between and after
class. If we're
lucky, we also have fond memories of being on the newspaper or yearbook
staff, the pep
club or the Key Club, student council or the debate team. Athletes have
a set of pretty good
memories, even if they were on losing teams, as do members of the marching
band.
But exhilarating, liberating memories of the day we titrated our first chemical
solution,
solved our first quadratic equation, memorized the capitals of all 50 (or
fewer) states and
their most important agricultural products, or stood with sweaty palms reciting
"Because I
could not stop for death, it kindly stopped for me"? Hardly. Yet that
was the story in class
after class.
Well, that's not exactly true. Art classes felt different, and so did drama
if we were lucky
enough to lean in that direction. Even shop class conjures up for me specific
things I learned
and did and still benefit from even though mechanically I remain severely
challenged. But in
those classes, just as in the clubs and activities, we actually got to do
something, to test how
well we had connected our learning to our evolving ability to think and
to do. We got to put
our personalities into these experiences, and typically the work we did,
whatever it was, was
intended for a larger audience than just our teacher or our parents.
I need to add, however, that even these "good" experiences were
not open to all students.
There were plenty of barriers put up for any number of different types of
young people.
Today, in our "best classes," there are teachers who understand
about these connections.
They are preparing students to be problem-solvers, to work collaboratively.
They value the
many intelligences that students bring to a situation and encourage the
application of those
intelligences in ways that are the singular gifts of the students, rather
than the preconceived
notion of the teachers (or a textbook). They put a premium on learning as
a path to new
discoveries and not into some tired and utterly predictable cul de sac.
And they know about the value of different voices, the many ways there are
to understand
the world and our place in it.
At the Rhode Island Foundation, we are getting to know some teachers who
fit this
description, especially through a four-year initiative that eventually will
involve more than
2,500 teachers. These teachers -- 920 this summer -- have been spending
two weeks
exploring ways to use technology to improve the teaching-learning process.
The results from
last summer's pilot program show that during the 1997-98 school year, participants
spent an
average of 14 hours a week outside of school using technology to research
and create new
curricula, to communicate with colleagues and parents about teaching and
learning, and to
enhance their own productivity. They are more reflective about their work,
more likely to be
coaches to students and to encourage them to work collaboratively.
These teachers, with the inspired leadership of URI Prof. Ted Kellogg and
a team of
teacher-trainers, are working to set a new standard of student achievement
in schools across
the state.
We are getting to know still others who participated in a week-long "academy"
at the Rhode
Island School of Design this summer, where arts and non-arts teachers alike
immersed
themselves in new ways of thinking about learning. Working with master teacher
Prof. Paul
Sproll and his talented associates, some 70 teachers had whole new worlds
opened to them.
And then there are the 30 middle and high school teachers who received Theodore
R. Sizer
Fellowships this year to support their groundbreaking work. They are among
the only
teachers in the country actively exploring ways to make stronger connections
between homes
and schools, an area that has been largely ignored in the education of adolescents.
I would trade my entire K-12 education (1957-70) for a single year with
one of these
teachers, to be a student in a classroom where there is such energy for
understanding the true
nature of learning.
These teachers give us an advantage today that our predecessors did not
have -- models of
exemplary teaching -- and their classrooms are truly, in Ted Sizer's great
phrase, "places for
learning, places for joy." They are more than gifted lecturers and
scholars and
disciplinarians: They are learners, and their passion is to help students
be the same.
To recognize that there are such teachers -- however few in number -- in
our schools, is not a
reason to stop demanding more from education or to let our public schools
off the hook.
Indeed, in many ways, it is a reason to turn up the heat, for if there are
even a few
outstanding examples, then we have every right to expect our schools to
make these people
the rule and not the exception. Our society and everyone involved in the
education system
must build the future of schools on the foundation of these extraordinary
teachers. That we
support them, that we listen to them and learn from them, that we value
them and encourage
others to be like them may be our best hope.