A Truly Inspiring Teacher

DR. LAURA CROWELL

Richard W. Clark

I am a speech teacher. I know that every student who stands before me brings to the occasion a different knowledge of the subject of their speech than I have or than any member of his or her audience has. Each student speaker approaches each performance with a different degree of confidence; in fact, chances are each speaking occasion finds the student in a different emotional state. What the student ate for breakfast, what her best friend said about the way she had fixed her hair, what his girl friend said to him when they broke up yesterday, many such thoughts and feelings are swirling in the heads of the students as they rise to speak and as they are challenged to listen and comment.

I know there are language conventions and principles of argument that are the currently accepted state of the art in the discipline of speech communications. There are ways of using the voice and body that are consistent with both the art and science of effective speaking. There are teaching techniques that are appropriate for different students in different situations. Most importantly I am cognizant that the ultimate mission of the school and of my course is to prepare students to function effectively in a democratic society. Yet with all these certainties the environment in which I work and the processes with which students learn are often uncertain and unpredictable – some would say at times chaotic. I know that I have to adapt what I am doing to the situation or the students will not trust that I understand them well enough to help them. I cannot rely on some prescribed approach to teaching “effective speaking” contained in a textbook or published in a school system curriculum.

I am aided by my awareness of these learning conditions in my speech classes as I think more broadly about the role of the individual educator in relation to the school, the school in relation to the district, and the district as part of a state in this era of growing federal centralization of authority over education.

Where did such beliefs originate? Many people, family, teachers, and friends influenced me but one person in particular stands out as I reflect on my past: Laura Crowell -- professor, advisor, and just plain good human being. She came to be a source of inspiration from her own education and her experiences as a consummate professional.

Dr. Crowell began her professional work as a teacher in rural South Dakota prior to earning her Ph.D. in speech at the University of Iowa. After more high school teaching and a brief stint in the Navy during WWII, she began her college career at Northern Illinois then joined other recent Iowa graduates as part of an expanding faculty in speech at the University of Washington.

Her doctoral studies had been in rhetoric and her analysis of FDR’s “Four Freedoms” speech was widely recognized as exemplary. However, at Washington she was best known for her study of and teaching about small group communications and on assisting graduate students with their research skills. In 1955, while I was one of her students, the student body at the University recognized her as one of the outstanding teachers on the campus and in 1989 she was voted as one of the “Most Inspirational Teachers of Speech” in the country by the Speech Communications Association. As was the case with others of her gender she had to out produce most of her colleagues to gain promotion. One study identified that she was the only women nationally among the top ten most published writers in her discipline and another study identified her as the fourth most published author in Communication Studies between 1915 and 1985. Only this prodigious production and exemplary teaching allowed her to break the glass ceiling and become a full professor. Retiring from Washington after 24 years as a Professor Emeritus she continued to publish and serve as a resource to her former students.

I was one of many she inspired during this long and productive career. As an undergraduate I was privileged to enroll in two courses with her, have her as a campus supervisor during my student teaching, and be an assistant during several experimental studies in small group communications. In graduate school she provided a rigorous introduction to research methods and participated as a member of both my M.A. and Ph.D. committees.

As a student, if I turned in a page of written material, I always knew I could expect at least a page of comments back from her – sometimes rather pointed reminders that sloppy scholarship was not to be tolerated. As a student of small group communications who had entered the field as a debater, I found her constant reminders to listen as well as talk to be frustrating at times but in the long-run highly beneficial. But, more than anything, I now value her constant reminders to me (and others) of the need to focus on knowing the student and modeling the kinds of behavior that we wanted from the students.

There are many stories about Dr. Crowell’s personal commitment to her students. One, that I will always remember, is about a student in her early teaching who wasn’t performing well in class. She visited his home and learned that his family had been surviving for several months on nothing but turnips – a condition she was able to get corrected. As she told this story in its entirety, she drove home the importance of knowing well those who are in your care as a teacher. Such personal interventions in the life of students might be seen as signs of a teacher being a soft touch if they were not accompanied by the evidence provided by her body-of-work as a researcher and leader in her discipline.

“Whoever would kindle another, must himself glow,” she would tell us – and she did. Former colleague Tom Nilsen, said of her, “Once she commented, ‘I don’t like to spend time on anything I can’t get excited about.’ For all her…years of teaching…she never stopped being excited.” And, I would add, never stopped exciting others.

Although I have never been able to perform at her level, the knowledge, care, and skills she shared continue to be an inspiration.

Teachers Are Not The Enemy

Pedro Noguera and Michelle Fine are two of today's best thinkers about education.  Read what they have to say in the April 21 online report (May 9 issue) from The Nation.

They challenge the opt-repeated charge that bad teachers are the primary cause of problems with our schools.  And, they provide some positive examples that demonstrate that teachers and their unions are concerned about improving education. 

Are there other examples you can share?

What Parents Want

In her latest Blog posting Valerie Strauss shares a document prepared by Parents Across America. In this statement the organization spells out what it thinks should be included in a rewrite of No Child Left Behind.

I encourage you to read their recommendations and I am interested in what you think should be included in a rewrite.  This group is clear about what it wants less of -- standardized tests -- and equally clear about what it wants kept in (or added to) the law.

What do you think?

Students Also Inspire

Greg Berhardt of Wright State University remembers students who inspired him early in his career.

TWO STUDENTS WHO INSPIRED

Greg Bernhardt,  WSU

I graduated from high school in 1966 with no educational goals in mind other than avoiding the draft. An Air Force “brat”, I had never attended a school for more than two years until college. While education was recognized as important by my parents, there wasn’t a push for excellence, and I bumbled along with slightly above average grades.

I graduated from a Virginia high school, attended Colorado State University, primarily as it was close to some family relatives and good skiing. I was drawn to a major in English largely because I enjoyed reading and writing. As graduation neared in 1970, I considered a master’s degree in English, to be financed by a graduate assistantship, teaching freshman composition. Composition analysis was an application prereq, and a component of this course was to teach middle school students composition, under the assumption that they were incapable of being damaged, by a clueless neophyte instructor.

Surprisingly, adolescents and I got along well, and I enjoyed the experience and my professor thought I should consider 7-12 teaching upon graduation. Without any other preparation for public school teaching, she recommended that I talk to a colleague from Kansas State Teacher’s College, who was in town the following week and recruiting for the federally funded Teacher Corps Program in rural eastern Kansas.

I interviewed, was offered a slot, and after 4 weeks of orientation in August, I started teaching English in a rural high school in the fall of 1971. The program was competency based and used a “just in time” approach to sharing with us what we needed to survive and thrive in a “sink or swim” environment. I loved the kids, working with other teachers and two years later earned a MS in Curriculum and Instruction and certification as a 7-12 teacher.

In the summer of 1973, a couple of weeks before school started, two of my high school students (siblings) experienced the homicide/suicide of their parents. Unbelievably, in retrospect, they came to me for support and guidance with the emotional turmoil they were experiencing in the aftermath of this trauma. While I was a good listener and supportive, I had serious reservations about my ability to be helpful, and suspected that I might do affective harm.

I suggested that they seek professional help, but geography, poverty, and fear of strangers outside of their rural town, prevented them from doing so. I thought I should consult with knowledgeable others in how best to help. A colleague recommended that I consider taking a counseling course at Kansas University. I enrolled in “counseling theories” and “techniques of counseling” courses at KU in the fall of 1973 and my professional life’s work began.

Two courageous high school students, trusting me enough to listen, offer support and advice, inspired me to earn a doctorate in counseling psychology and to work with distressed youth – in community and academic settings. As I studied psychology, guidance and counseling I realized that my diverse exposure to various educational environments, interpersonal skills, and love of literature, had prepared me to be open to communicating with young people and to empathize with their situation and issues. Without their courage, resilience, trust and inspiration I might never have discovered how to be a good steward of the abilities that I had the privilege of having inherited and developed.

So thirty-eight years later I think back to two adolescents who gave me hope, that I might make a difference, giving me a vision of what my future might be.

Greg has recently been selected as the first Emeritus Dean at Wright State University in recognition of his "academic leadership and administrative excellence, as well as his effective regional, state, and national outreach."

What experiences have inspired ou in your views on education?

 

US News Ranking or Rank: New Soder Post

Roger Soder comments on institution's responses to US News rankings of colleges.  Are the rankings a new form of March madness?

Read his remarks on his page then return here to share your comments.

Also -- scroll down a few entries to Alan Wood's comments about Don Treadgold and note under the comments on that item Soder's observations about Jon Bridgman, a skilled history scholar and teacher.

Eco-friendly schools

Parents want their children to be safe in school.  Responsible community members also want those responsible for constructing and maintaining our schools to be concerned with the environment.  Reader Krista Peterson shares the following.  Let me know what your reaction is to her comments.

Schools going green, improving health and academic performance

Throughout recent times, there has been a large swing in making everything “green” it seems. Schools are no exception, as organic and green construction practices with new schools are certainly becoming more and more popular. With teachers and faculty always looking for what benefit their students the most, many are finding that the benefits of making a school eco-friendly can be large. Both the sustainability and limit in health risks have proved to further the growth in eco-friendly practices and building efforts in schools.

Energy efficiency and sustainability are in large part responsible for the movement by many schools to go eco-friendly. Even though green building costs are usually a little more expensive than normal expenses, the money that will be saved from efficiency will end up being way more than these extra costs. The power bills will reflect the smart decision to make a school eco-friendly.

The low health problems and risks associated with “green-ing” a school are some of the most important benefits in the process.

Justifiable anger

Two of the nation's leading educators recently had the following exchange:

Ken Jones:


I think many people who are advancing policies destructive to teachers and schools believe they are simply trying to improve the system. Likewise, I imagine that Paul Ryan doesn't see the effect of his budget proposals on real people either. And war makers and capital investors discount casualties and poverty as inevitable or "collateral damage" in the game of global competition. All in the interest of a remote-controlled "systems" mindset that has more to do with "results," "solvency," and "victory" than it does on-the-ground realities or caring for fellow human beings (and animals and plants, and the earth itself). We live in a techno-world of data, ideology, drones, investments, and media imagery that have separated us from each other and allowed the wealthy and powerful to believe that their own self-interest is for the common good. They are insulated from the realities that most of us live with every day. God help us.


Nick Michelli:

Right on. We live with it every day in New York with a billionaire mayor appointing his cronies to top positions in education at the expense of children and our future and to advance his own politics. The swap among four media moguls--Bloomberg, Black, Murdoch, and Klein (who was CEO of Bertlesman before chancellor) was disgusting. Black goes to Klein's job, Klein is a VMP for Murdoch who buys a company with a huge contract with the NYDOE Klein placed a few weeks before, and Bloomberg gets egg on his face.


Readers -- What do you think?  Is this how you see it?

Legislative Constipation

(for a well written story about the problem at higher ed level see Joel Connelly's column in today's PI (yes Virginia there is still a PI).


In Washington State legislators are in a bind. A Superior Court has ruled that the state is not living up to its constitutional obligation to support public education. Voters have passed referenda that require two-thirds majority in the legislature to raise taxes in any way and to eliminate nuisance taxes on items such as soda pop that were passed in a previous effort to balance the budget. Oh yes, and unlike Congress this legislature has to balance its budget – a budget that at this point has a 5 billion dollar plus hole in it.

Another inspirational professor

Here is another in our series of stories about inspirational figures.

RAPHAEL EZEKIEL

David Lee Keiser (Montclair State University)

I have no creative use for guilt, yours or my own. Guilt is only another way of avoiding informed action, of buying time out of the pressing need to make clear choices, out of the approaching storm that can feed the earth as well as bend the trees. (130)

(Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider, pp. 124, 130)

One inspiring teacher I had was Raphael Ezekiel, in a Social Psychology course at the University of Michigan. Professor Ezekiel, or Rafe as we called him, researched neo-Nazis and skinheads in Detroit and elsewhere; as a Southern Jewish man, he had put himself in dangerous situations during his fieldwork and lived to tell about it. He seemed an ethical and critical gentleman, an activist scholar with a penchant for understanding the underachievement and desperation of the mostly young men with whom he visited and interviewed.

One particular story sticks out to me, even now. He played a tape of an interview with Tom Metzger, of the White Aryan Resistance movement in California in which Metzger said, in the context of describing and defending his certainty that Jewish Americans should “go back to Israel.”

Who has worst job?

Besides being concerned about our communities and the education of the young in them I am a baseball fan -- at least as much of a fan as one can be and root for the Seattle Mariners. I mention this because of a recent conversation I had as my grandson and I were leaving early from a game in which the Mariners lost their seventh straight early season contest.


As we left the stadium I ran into a couple who were long-time acquaintances. After we exchanged our views on the game and considered whether the new manager would last long, I asked them how they were doing in their work. He is a policy advisor to our governor who is in the midst of a tough legislative session. She is president of the state teacher’s union. They admitted that in the evening they occasionally argue over who has the worst job.

What do you think? Right now, is it worst to be the manager of an obviously bad baseball team, a policy-wonk on labor relations to a governor faced with about a five billion dollar deficit, or the president of a union that everyone is vilifying?

A intimidating professor provides inspiration

Returning to the series of stories about people that inspired the various individuals who are Agenda for Education in a Democracy Scholars:

DON TREADGOLD

Alan Wood (History professor, University of Washington Bothell)

I am tempted to identify my father as my greatest inspiration, as I ended up in the same line of work that he was in, and as his wisdom and human understanding have always been a kind of beacon for me in life’s foggy weather. But for this exercise I think that Don Treadgold would be a better choice.

I should perhaps say first that I never had a teacher I deeply respected in high school or college. I had many good teachers, but their expertise seemed pretty much confined to the technical knowledge they had been asked to convey. But no one really set my mind on fire. In retrospect I was a pretty snotty student. Then, right after I got out of the Army, I was killing time before I took the LSAT test, and decided to audit a course on Twentieth Century Russia taught by Don Treadgold at the University of Washington. God only knows why I did that. I had never heard of Don, and hadn’t really had a burning interest in Russian history.

Don was pretty intimidating. In fact, he had the reputation of being the most feared professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington. He had been a young lieutenant in the waning years of the Second World War, and after the war he studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar under Isaiah Berlin—one of the great minds of the twentieth century. As luck would have it, Isaiah Berlin came to Seattle during the quarter Don was teaching that course, and came to our class.

At the time, I didn’t know Isaiah Berlin from Adam, and this very British-looking fellow came in the classroom and took a chair at the front of the room and asked if anyone had any questions. Someone—it might even have been me—volunteered a question, and Berlin then proceeded to talk in a conversational way for the next 50 minutes. It was the most brilliant survey of the twentieth century I had ever heard. Little did I know that Isaiah Berlin was not only a great public philosopher, but a famous conversationalist and raconteur of the highest order. I was mesmerized.

At the end of the course, Don gave his own summary of the main issues of Russia and the world in the twentieth century, and I was once more entranced. I had never imagined that a college professor could have such wisdom and such breathtaking insight into the most fundamental issues of modern civilization. This was something I had never experienced before, and rarely since—that is, a willingness to relate the subject at hand to the most fundamental questions of the human condition. (It is, I think, why I originally became so intrigued by John Goodlad’s all-encompassing worldview.) After that course, I jettisoned any plans for law school, and decided to become a history professor.

Although I ended up studying Chinese and not Russian history, I did have a chance to T.A. a course in the history of Christianity that Don taught, which was utterly fascinating. Don himself was Anglican, but he was extremely well-read in Orthodox theology, and even learned Chinese in mid-career, writing a seminal two-volume work on the West in Russia and China. In all the years since I first met Don, his integrity, his probing and inquisitive mind, and above all his holistic, global approach to the most fundamental issues of our age have inspired me at every moment of my career.

When he died suddenly in the mid-1990s at age 70, only three days after he learned he had terminal leukemia, I felt I had lost my own father. I still miss him deeply.  

Why should anyone want to be a teacher?

In Pennsylvania a group of teachers share experiences in writing as a means of supporting each other.  As one of them (Jennifer Rand) noted in a recent piece in the centredaily.com published by the Centre Daily Times " In the face of all that is wrong with the state of education today, I know I am not alone in finding myself questioning my choice to become a teacher. "

The teachers who share their thoughts are engaging in a valuable activity and deserve praise for it. 

Ms Rand's questioning of the choice to be a teacher is being echoed by many in the profession and many who had been considering entering it.  Why, indeed, would anyone want to open themselves up to mediocre pay, little agency in their actions, and abuse from all directions?  The rewards shared in the brief op ed piece are what continues to motivate teachers but the continued blaming of teachers for the failure of society to support schools or attack the social and economic problems children are facing has got to be discouraging to many who have dedicated their lives to teaching.

Unions and Education Part 6 of 6

Don’t Eliminate Teacher Unions—Improve the Process

PART 6 OF 6

Politicians and education reformers are blasting teacher unions suggesting that they are preventing necessary educational improvements.

Based on more than forty years of study and first-hand experience with the issue, I offer this six part series on the problems and benefits of union engagement in education concluding with suggested actions to improve traditional approaches to bargaining and a politically more problematic approach for engaging all concerned.


In previous parts of this series I noted some examples of problems and benefits associated with collective bargaining and education and at some steps that should be taken to improve traditional approaches. In this final part I offer a more major proposal as a means by which management, unions and others can improve education and the life of those involved in the profession.

Collaboration: A Major Change

Ultimately, the largest change that needs to be made is to replace the abrasive, win-lose approach of traditional management-labor relations with a collaborative process that engages educational employees, the community they serve, and the policy makers elected to oversee public school systems in ways that ensure fairness and quality in decision making.

For years, with leadership from forward thinking management and union negotiators, school systems have been experimenting with such approaches; perhaps the time has come to implement such approaches more broadly..

In February 2011, with funding from the Ford Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education convened teams from 150 school districts in Denver at a meeting it called: “Advancing Student Achievement through Labor-Management Collaboration.” Co-sponsors and facilitators included the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, and management and labor groups: AASA, AFT, CGCS, NEA, and NSBA.

In a proposed “compact” shared at the meeting, conveners suggested:

“Successful labor-management relations in public education should enable school boards, district administrators, principals, and teachers – each in their own roles – to design and enact policies that optimize the academic success of their students. To do this, districts and teachers' unions must forge new compacts – compacts in which school boards, district and building administrators, and teachers' union leaders acknowledge their shared responsibility to establish a strong and stable school environment, and give educators resources and tools to transform all schools so that all students receive a genuine opportunity to obtain a high-quality education.

The fundamental strength of a constructive labor-management relationship is its reciprocal nature. Through the new compact, boards, administrators, and teachers can build on this strength and use it as a vehicle to uphold rigorous academic standards, elevate the teaching profession by advancing teacher quality, drive school and instructional improvement, and make student achievement the heart of their relationship.” ( http://www.ed.gov/labor-management-collaboration/conference/compact )

This statement and the stories shared during the meeting fall short of the ideal that should be enacted into revised legislation by the states only in that they continue to view the collaboration in the conventional “management-labor” duality. The critical voice of community interest groups including parents was missing. In that regard, for example, Helena, Montana described to conference attendees its progress in collaboration between its teachers union and those representing the school board.

Perhaps the greatest strength of the approach as outlined is the clear linking of the union-management relationship with the function of the school system.

While such collaborative efforts are promising, other districts, such as Casper, Wyoming have developed broader collaborative processes that engage community members, school board and administration representatives, and union officials in problem solving conversations that, while problematic at times, successfully involve a broader range of voices in resolving problems . As former Casper Superintendent, Jim Lowham explains,”several concerned and informed community members, a few superintendents, some teachers, a few other district staff members and a few staff members from the NEA formed the Collaborative Leadership Trust. The group now involves schools and individuals from Colorado, Wyoming, Wisconsin and Maryland. They have an annual meeting to learn and assist others who are interested in collaboration.”

During the 1980’s the TURN initiative mentioned previously and others like it used traditional bargaining processes to create school-based decision making arrangements that provided another vehicle for collaboration by community, teachers, and management. Perhaps because of their roots in traditional union-management contract language, community participants in these councils sometimes complained that they were treated as second-class citizens.

In some states, legislatures codified such decision=making councils but these councils fell short for a variety of reasons including a failure to take into account the relationship between the school-based processes and the centralized union-management processes.

The time has come to review these school-based initiatives and consider whether some combination of them with the central processes developed by the Collaborative Leadership Trust would provide better for the adults and students in a school district.

The Compact from the February 2011 conference mentioned above included the following tenets that could serve as a starting point for development of new state provisions for collaboration:

Tenets of the Compact – Conditions for Student Success

• Shared responsibility for, and clear focus on, student success

• A culture of high academic expectations

• Rigorous curriculum that meets or exceeds state standards and international benchmarks

• A belief in education as a valued profession

• A culture of respect for education professionals

• An effective leader in every school

• An effective teacher in every classroom

• Professional development aimed at continuous improvement

• A collaborative culture of innovation

• Resources appropriate to local school needs

• Empowered local leadership with respect to those resources

• A safe, secure, and supportive professional environment

• Students taking responsibility for their own learning

• Parents engaged in their child's education

• Accessible, timely, and relevant information on school and student performance

(http://www.ed.gov/labor-management-collaboration/conference/compact )

Conclusion

Grandstanding power trips by Governors seeking to punish employees for failures caused by others cannot be tolerated. Instead, resolution of differences between labor and management should be preserved and enhanced by adding a stronger voice for the consuming public.

Improvements such as those suggested in this series should be made to ensure a balance of power that is more likely to lead to wise decisions in the interests of students and adults in school systems and of the public that pays for and benefits from our schools.