Educational Code of Silence??

I think that the code of silence in education is far worse than in any other profession. We very rarely discuss pedagogy with our fellow educators, but rather spend most of our time in the faculty lounge bitching about either parents, students, or the administration. The sad thing is that our culture in education has gotten to the point now where we will talk about how poor practices of our peers to others but seldomly have teh guts to talk about it to our co-workers. I has created a lack of confidence across the country in our schools.  We all suffer due to the ineffectiveness of some of our peers yet I would contend that this is rightfully so considering we have failed in policing our own.  This code of silence can be broken but it is difficult to do. We are seldom given the opportunity to discuss our successes and failures. We are not given adequate opportunities to observe each other and supervision responsibilities are difficult as best for administrators to attend to with all of the other responsibilities they are responsible for. Walkthroughs have aided a great deal in this respect but then there are contractual issues which often prohibit the use of what is observed in the walkthroughs in teacher evaluations.Collective bargaining may at one time been necessary for our profession, but in the long run, it has made a position which requires a professional to be often occupied by those who focus more on the contract than on the students, who early in their career, they would have done anything to help.

(My comments are generalized knowing there are always examples to contradict what I say) Education by it's very nature breeds a conspiracy of silence, primarily because the architectures and atmospheres that exits in and drive our schools are borne of another time, different attitudes, and a societal structure far different from the one that exists today. I had the benefit of taking a class from Gary Stager a few years ago and he loved to say that if students are not sharing what they know and what they learn with their classmates - they were cheating. Learning is a social experience, yet schools do everything they can eliminate this reality.

The need to eliminate the social aspect of learning is due to the idea that everyone must know everything, in exactly the same way. If they don't then they can't answer the standardized test questions correctly, for which there is only one "correct" answer . . . and if they don't this of course leads to all the negative repercussions for teacher, administrator, and school that are meted out by educational policies such as NCLB. Silence is necessary because school is not social or collaborative it is individual and competitive. This silence transfers to the teaching experience as well. Our profession is not allowed the luxury of being a "practice" while many others are: Doctors set up a "practice," lawyers "practice" law, nurses "practice" nursing, and so on. Teachers on the other hand do not feel a fertile space around them which allows them to grow and develop. The rigid requirements of prescribed curriculum and the heavy handed nature of state and federal standardized testing keeps them from doing what they love - creating learning architectures where curiosity can flourish and students can learn, internalize, and create something new with the knowledge they acquire.

Societal change happens. The only place it doesn't seem to affect, is our classrooms. It is too dangerous to be a maverick teacher and far too easy to just fall in line for fear you will lose your position in today's tight budgetary realities. I left my last teaching position because I was told that the only way to really know if a student, any student, had learned what they were "suppose" to was to have them write a successful essay. I battled for a year against that mentality presenting research, both my own and others, that evidenced the power of spectrum assessment (assessment that allows students the opportunity to perceive, internalize, and generate examples of their understanding using comfortable methods and tools). There was no moving the entrenched philosophy and it was even more difficult to get others on the staff to join me - even though a number agreed 100% with my position. They remained silent, followed the prescription, and spent a lot of time complaining about being unhappy in a profession they were sure they were going to love.

I have a button I picked up while in college, "Silence is the voice of complicity" . . .

Nicely done and well written! The question that pops up in my mind, following the premise of the book, how do we change this? Clearly, your presenting research and discovering the almost universal but hidden feelings of the staff was to no avail. As I write this, I am thinking that this may be one of the problems noted in the book that is so big that it takes a larger conversation to change the situation. So maybe that becomes the way to influence what happens.

Love the picture and the quote . . . Tom Peters says you should go to work every day willing to be fired. Of course he means for being a maverick and willing to live on the innovative edge. I always find it so disheartening that schools, the place where curiosity and innovation should be the norm, is the last place you find it.

@ Scrap the System Gang

I remember getting all worked up when one of my University professors suggested that the only way to fix high school was to "blow it up and start over".

My proximity to the system made me a little touchy, kind of like reading the comments in this thread that suggest that this kind of reform is only possible with a fresh start outside of public education's current straight jacket.

It reminds me of a quote by GK Chesterton about Christianity. "Christianity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried".

Being a hopeless optimist, I feel like there is great opportunity to make substantial reform in education within the current systems. Reeves and DuFour talks much of the Knowing/Doing gap and I find this to be our biggest barrier. How many of the leadership skills and strategies that we know to be effective are pervasive in our schools? Those of us who are in leadership positions can make these things happen by example, by persuasion (not using words, thank you Patterson et. al), by perseverance, and by actually putting into practice the vital behaviors that can produce changes for our students. Think of Dr. Wiwat and his effect on AIDS in Thailand. That too, could be the story of our schools in the months and years to come. Anyway, here's a vote for optimism.

Cheers

I had to smile at your first paragraph as in a recent blog I asked the question, "What if your school blew up?"

http://tinyurl.com/63dwzg

- Greg

@Skip -- I love your questions in this thread!  I wish I knew if my answers would really work or not, but I'll offer my two cents anyway.

how do we change this?  . . . Is it possible to change the current institution and its practices and protocols or is it much easier to abandon it and create new learning environments?

 I tend to agree with you about abandoning the current system.  I would prefer to start from scratch and create new learning environments based on what we know about learning rather than tradition.  At the same time, politically, I don't know "easy" such dramatic change is on a large scale, but I think a lot of positive change can occur at a school level.  I thought that having two planning periods, one individual and one team planning, was the best small change that I experienced when I was teaching.  It gave me and my teammates the time to create new learning environments in our classrooms.

I think you're right—there can be healthy changes at individual schools for the time that the creative and interested individuals are there. And 2 prep periods—one for the individual and one for the team—seems like a terrific improvement. How long will the new practice last? Is the new practice sustainable?