This week I was facilitating a professional development session focused on how teachers can cultivate their skills to support "new century students." The session included questions on professional development and a teacher's evolution over time and teacher engaged in amazing conversation about their work, career and how they have changed since their first days in the classroom. One teacher, who I respect deeply and who is widely respected in our school and community communicated that he has often been chided for not having "career aspirations that would lead him out of the classroom and into something bigger, like administration." This educator will likely spend his career in the classroom and in front of kids - an accomplishment that is superhuman to me and remarkably difficult in today's system. As a school administrator (admin light I consider myself) who left the classroom three years ago, I was both sympathetic to this comment and had a visceral reaction to his words. As soon as he made this statement I wanted to stop and remind him of one simple truth: the greatest impact any teacher can have is by staying exactly where they are - in the classroom and with kids each day.
In his piece, Educational Reform and the Ecology of Schooling, Eliot Eisner discusses the incorrect assumption widely regarded as law in education that moving up in the work means moving out of the classroom. He explains
"If a teacher wants to secure more professional life-space, he or she must leave teaching and become a school administrator. Once such a decision is made, for all practical purposes, there is no return to the classroom - as the caterpillar, once it becomes a butterfly, remains a butterfly until it dies. Working as an educator in school need not be limited to two roles, nor must these roles be conceived as 'permanent.' Schools can be structured so that teachers who are interested can devote some years or parts of some years to curriculum development, to the design of better evaluation methods for their school or serving as mentors to beginning teachers.... American schools, with few exceptions, are structured to inhibit these roles rather than to encourage their formation" (p. 146).
"If a teacher wants to secure more professional life-space, he or she must leave teaching and become a school administrator. Once such a decision is made, for all practical purposes, there is no return to the classroom - as the caterpillar, once it becomes a butterfly, remains a butterfly until it dies. Working as an educator in school need not be limited to two roles, nor must these roles be conceived as 'permanent.' Schools can be structured so that teachers who are interested can devote some years or parts of some years to curriculum development, to the design of better evaluation methods for their school or serving as mentors to beginning teachers.... American schools, with few exceptions, are structured to inhibit these roles rather than to encourage their formation" (p. 146).
What Eisner explains so well is this illogical paradigm in education that administration and moving out of the classroom is a reward for the time spent with kids and a reprieve from the work happening "in the trenches". Now, I will not say that my job as an administrator is easy. There are certainly more substantial stressors due to accountability, the impact my decisions have on the people in the building and the overall performance and successes of the school. However, there is certainly a misconception that administrators have a greater impact. We can change policy and shift culture. We can make decisions and determine goals but there is not an administrator in a building that has the time and capacity to impact the lives of kids like teachers do each and every class period, each and every day.
My experience with the teacher in my own building and the work by Eisner made me think of two essential questions that administrators must ask when supporting teachers whose ultimate desire is to stay in the classroom but who fight against the tide that asks them to step away - even if that is against their professional goals. First, what conditions (professional or personal) feel like the biggest obstacles to staying in the classroom? Second, what support do you need (again personal or professional) to stay in the classroom and continue your direct impact on students?
These questions are simple and straightforward but they provide two acknowledgements. First, they acknowledge that staying in the classroom not just good enough but may represent the most selfless work in education and second, that there are personal and professional obstacles to keeping great teachers in the classroom that can be overcome through collaboration and creativity.
At the end of the same day that the teacher mentioned above expressed his concern and frustration with the paradigm of having to leave the classroom in order to "progress" I went to his room to encourage him that his role was the most impactful in the school. I opened his door ready to remind him of this truth and he was surrounded by a dozen students who were preparing for the school's spring musical. Not wanting to interrupt I walked out and headed home. I thought about the essential role of teachers, the impact they have on kids and the purity of the job. I was admittedly a little envious that his classroom was filled with kids after school, which was something I loved in my days as a teacher. And I determined that not only would I help him stay in the classroom as long as possible but I will always remind teachers that their work in the classroom is more important than any other work that occurs within a school.
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