Professional Development

I've been thinking a lot about the state of American Education. I have a lot to say about it. It really needs to be reformed, but not the way our President, his secretary of education, Arne Duncan, or our legislators think it needs to be reformed. I will go into greater detail in a later post. For now, what follows is one, minuscule but important piece of how education needs to be reformed.

I came to these ideas when I read the November 2009 issue of the Harvard Business Review and first learned about Peter Drucker. Back in the 1950s, Peter Drucker coined the term, "knowledge worker." As I read about Drucker and did some extra investigation about knowledge workers, I realized that teachers are knowledge workers and that teachers manage knowledge workers -- students. Really, this shouldn't have been a revelation. But what made it so shocking to me is that I am not managed the way Drucker thought knowledge workers should be managed. Nor am I encouraged to manage my students as knowledge workers.

Knowledge work can ultimately be judged on whether or not three things occur:

1) When something successful that never existed previously, is now up and running;
2) When something successful that existed previously has been improved or expanded; or
3) When something unsuccessful that existed previously has been stopped.

The productivity for achieving one of these things can be judged based on the speed with which it is accomplished, and the cost required to finish the job.

The following lists illustrate the difference between manual work and knowledge work.

Frederick Taylor on Manual Work
Define the task
Command and Control
Strict standards
Focus on quantity
Measure performance to a strict standard
Minimize cost of workers for a task

Peter Drucker on Knowledge Work
Understand the task
Give Autonomy
Continuous innovation
Focus on quality
Continuously learn and teach
Treat workers as an asset not a cost

Source: Reinvent Your Enterprise

Teachers are routinely allowed to understand the task, have autonomy, and are encouraged to innovate continuously. However, we manage 150 students a day which minimizes the cost of us as workers, and emphasizes the quantity of students that we teach over the quality of teaching. We are evaluated on a checklist.

We relate to our students by defining the task for them, giving them little latitude for autonomy, encourage them to think inside the box. We evaluate them by using a rubric -- a checklist.

Here are two more relevant lists.

Manual Work Productivity
Work is visible
Work is specialized
Work is stable
Emphasizes running things
More structure with fewer decisions
Focus on the right answers

Knowledge Work Productivity
Work is invisible
Work is holistic
Work is changing
Emphasizes changing things
Less structure with more decisions
Focus on the right questions

Source: Reinvent Your Enterprise

Teachers' work is invisible, holistic, and changing. However, school boards, superintendents, and legislators tend to focus on running things, build more structures so that the classroom teacher cannot make autonomous decisions, and ask us to focus on the right answers.

Students' work is also invisible, holistic, and changing. Nevertheless, teachers must evaluate them as if what they have learned is always visible, specialized, and correct.

This post was long and was written in a lot of passive voice. However, future posts will attempt to provide concrete examples and to identify all of those currently passive actors.

Joe Biden's Sympathetic Nodding

I only got to see thirty minutes of the debate last night as I had school. But DU had the debates on in the Moot Court classroom, so I stopped in there between classes. Honestly, I was hoping for good entertainment. Poor Governor Palin, so hopelessly average, can't put two sentences together. And then there's Our Guy, Senator Biden and his plagiaristic past (embarrassing) and his plainly stupid present. He recently said that when the stock market crashed in 1929, President Roosevelt got on T.V. and calmed the nation. (More embarrassing).

What I saw were two very rehearsed, professional-looking people doing their best not to screw it all up. The Senator was keeping his foot out of his mouth and the Governor was doing her best to remember what she'd memorized earlier this week.

So I watched the interaction between them. I was particularly interested in seeing what Senator Biden was going to do in light of the fact that his opponent is a woman. Ordinarily, I don't see why it would matter that she is a woman. The Speaker of the House is a woman, for goodness sakes. But there has been this weird use of the word "sexist" lately. I am perplexed as to why it has been suggested that Senator Biden had to be careful not to look sexist when debating Governor Palin. It was suggested that he might be too aggressive. I don't get that. Isn't it sexist to suggest that Governor Palin is too delicate to be debating a man? Should she worry that he is going to be mean? Is he going to reach over and tug on her hair?

Now, don't get me wrong. I think there has been some misogyny in the campaign, but particularly in reference to Senator Clinton being like a school marm or a shrew. Governor Palin has been lucky that her serious lack of substance makes her a mockery, so no one has had to make ad hominim attacks on her womanhood.

Governor Palin is many things, but she certainly isn't delicate. And when she's scripted she's a pretty good public speaker. Add to that that as a high school debate coach, I see boys and girls in deathmatches against each other all the time. The girls expect no favors for being female, and the boys certainly don't hold back on their attacks. Debate is about winning.

So it interested me that Senator Biden, in his effort to show respect to Governor Palin, listened intently as she spoke and even added nods. You know those nods -- the ones that men are supposed to use when listening to women, to show that they have sympathy, that they "understand," and that they are "there for" them? Clearly, he had been coached. Some one on his campaign has read Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus.

The nodding was artificial. Why do the American people expect sympathy and "understanding" in a presidential debate? Nodding in deference to your opponent's gender in a debate is demeaning to your opponent, not respectful. If one of my boy debaters did that in a round against a girl, I'd bench him.

Esquire

So. About a year ago, Calderoj and I were driving down I-76 toward Brighton. I don't know what we were talking about, but it might have been a recent Supreme Court decision, or even it could have been me sharing about one of my greatest regrets in life (we were a new couple then) -- not having bought the Supreme Court paper dolls I saw at Waldenbooks back in 1993.* Anyway, I just remember saying, "Being a Supreme Court justice would be the best job in the world." After all, what could be better than thinking and arguing about ideas all day long and then writing about them? What could be better than having a direct affect on people by turning theory into praxis?

Calderoj said, "You like reading huge amounts of really dry, complex material?" He didn't know me then.

I responded, "I went to grad school for English because I like literary theory."

This was enough for Calderoj. "Why not go to law school, then?"

Dear Reader, it was as if the Angel Gabriel had possessed Calderoj; for Calderoj's suggestion sounded to me like a message from the Almighty. In fact, it was at that very moment that the idea of being a lawyer began to grow in me.

Indeed, why not? The LSAT? The expense? The time? My non-traditional age? My current career? All of that is bosh -- excuses not to shift into another shape -- excuses not to see another true incarnation of myself.

Dear Reader, this moment was momentous. I do not remember what I wore that day.

With Calderoj's help I did nicely on the LSAT, found the money, remembered that when Mozart was my age he was dead for two years so I'm living on borrowed time anyway, and figured out a way to teach high school and study law concurrently.

All of this means that in addition to all of the things that I already am -- teacher, doggie mommy, girlfriend, daughter, sister, friend, fashionista, aristocrat of taste, Pilates enthusiast -- I am also going to be a lawyer.


*Another of my great life regrets is not having bought Vivienne Tam's Mao skirt when it was in the Neiman Marcus catalogue back in the mid-90s. I am sure I could get these items on eBay, but then how could I savor the regret the way regret is meant to be savored?