Please consider this analogy. A person needs CPR. However, a hidden power restricts you to only one breath every 30 seconds.
Assume the person regains consciousness with your limited breaths. The hidden power now restricts you to only three attempts at resuscitation. How does that make you feel? More importantly, do you think the hidden power wants the person to live?
Do the powerful people want the Little Rock School District to survive?
Concerning the district, doing the same or similar thing the same or similar way will produce the same or similar results. Good teaching in a good environment brings about positive change. Good teaching in a bad environment does not work. Bad teaching in a good environment does not work. Moreover, small changes to the environment amount to no change.
Likewise, if you have great teaching in a great environment, a significant positive change can happen. So let us talk about these two change factors: good teaching and a good environment. I spent 42 years working to be a good teacher. Providing a measurable definition of good teaching is difficult, perhaps impossible. The professors on the University of Arkansas hill have all kinds of instruments to measure teaching. Those tools are valid. They measure something well, but not good teaching. One knows good teaching when one sees it. All other attempts to define good teaching are educational balderdash.
Good teachers break down the material so that everyone in the classroom understands. Some teachers teach to the middle and hope the lower-level students figure it out, and the upper-level folks embellish the material. An excellent way to help the average teacher, the one who teaches to the middle, is to have a teacher's aide. I enjoyed that advantage for five years of my career.
Besides continuous efforts at self-improvement, help from other teachers significantly upgraded my practice. Unfortunately, interaction with other teachers is not easy during a packed school day. In-service is supposed to improve teaching skills. Most often, in-service involved an administrator showing a boring slide show. Teachers were asked to help with a canned presentation to lend it some validity. Teachers politely endure all of this. Unfortunately, politeness wrongly gives administrators the impression that they do a good job, and boring slide shows continue.
In-service presenters enjoy list-making. They split teachers into small groups with the required assignment of creating a list written on a large sheet of paper. Teachers call this wallpapering because the results are taped to the wall. The final step requires each group to stand by their piece of wallpaper, and discuss the list. I wallpapered at least five or six times every year. Good teachers can help other teachers, but canned administration programs are a waste of time.
I taught with many good teachers. Weak teachers either worked very hard to improve or left the profession. There is a myth about weeding out bad teachers. Some folks say that because only a few teachers are fired each year, the administrators are not doing their job. Nobody states how many teachers voluntarily leave the profession. Teaching is extremely difficult. Those not equipped for the task voluntarily leave.
Now consider a good environment. In Little Rock, the powerful people promote private and charter schools. Many citizens seem indifferent about confining our most needy children to a failed system. How does that make those needy children feel?
As concerns that failed system, the strategy now is to build a school in the east or south and balance it with a school in the west. The law no longer requires integration. Eventually, the powerful people will have white public schools at every level in western Pulaski County. The integration challenge will be for the nonwhite people to move west or white people east. Various educational gimmicks will be applied to underperforming schools; none will work, and the schools will stagnate. This approach is unethical, ruinous to society, and will eventually kill Little Rock.
A good educational environment must have a professional counseling center that intervenes early and continues serving children during their 13 years in school. We can maximize time in an enriched environment by creating pre-K-12 campuses or at least pre-K-8 schools.
A good school environment needs autonomy with much teacher input and only minimal administrative assistance. Because the home life of many children is not the best, a good educational environment has multiple after-school activities and summer programs. Relationships started in a good environment last a lifetime and help form a strong community.
If the powerful people open their minds to the idea of creating unique learning environments with good teaching, perhaps that spark of attention will start an educational fire. Directing love and attention toward our most needy children will result in positive change.
Like most people changes, they happen in small steps. However, in a good educational environment, those steps are in the right direction, and lead to the top. Once at the top, we will wonder why we spent so much time struggling at the bottom.
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Richard Emmel of Little Rock is a retired teacher.
Editorial on 01/31/2015