January 6, 2012
It's The Teacher!
By Harrison Blackmond, DFER Michigan State Director
My views about education are, like many others, informed by my own experiences. Born the son of a black sharecropper in rural Alabama near the end of WWII, I attended segregated schools for most of my early years of education, including the first three. And, my teachers in Alabama were all black, all female. The remainder of my primary and secondary schooling was in low income, mostly black communities in Cincinnati, Ohio. All of my teachers in Cincinnati were white and mostly female. I had both good and bad educational experiences in Alabama and Ohio. The one thing these experiences had in common was that those experiences, both good and bad, were determined by the quality of teachers I had. No surprise there.
What is surprising is that the good teachers I had overcame all the "social and economic disabilities" a student like me brought to class with him. My parents were typical of most black families: uneducated or under-educated. My father had no education and could not read or write. My mother had a fifth or sixth grade education. So she could read and write, but knew little about how urban education systems worked. We were very poor, living on the largess of the landowners where we lived in Alabama and on welfare most of the time in Cincinnati. I worked at school and after school from seventh grade on. My experience was not atypical. Most of my classmates had similar stories. Some of us succeeded against great odds. The ones who did succeed educationally did so because there were teachers along the way who encouraged, inspired, and demanded our best.
Not only did the good teachers know their pedagogy and subject matter, it was clear they cared about whether we learned or not. Our social and economic circumstances did not matter. They expected us to learn in spite of our circumstances. No parental involvement, no problem; students on welfare, no problem. Good, dedicated, and highly qualified professional teachers can successfully educate children regardless of their circumstances. I've seen it happen first hand. The problem is, good, dedicated, and highly qualified professional teachers are few and far between. But that need not be. We can identify teachers and future teachers with those qualities and provide incentives for them to teach in schools in distressed communities. (See DFER's Ticket to Teach proposal.)
There are places where the values that prospective and practicing teachers bring to the classroom are emphasized in their preparation and professional development. The city-state Singapore, for example, has a diverse, economically stratified population. Internationally, Singapore is ranked first on The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), an international assessment of the mathematics and science knowledge of fourth and eighth grade students around the world. The United States is ranked eleventh.
I recently visited Singapore's National Institute of Education (NIE) and a conversation with Dean Tan Oon Seng revealed differences in how Singapore selects and prepares its teachers. According to NIE's literature, the organization "has been an integral part of Singapore's education system since it was first established as the Teachers' Training College in 1950." NIE provides pre-service teacher education, ongoing professional development for existing teachers, and conducts extensive educational research.
According to Dean Tan Oon Seng, NIE's teacher education program is grounded in "three value paradigms: (i) Learner-centered; (ii) Teacher Identity; and (iii) Service to the Profession and Community." Learner-centered values "puts the learner at the center of teachers' work." They are aware of learner development and diversity, they believe that all children can learn, and they care for the learner. Teacher Identity values refer to having high standards and strong drive to learn in view of the rapid changes in education and to be responsive to changing student needs. The value of Service to the Profession and Community focuses on teachers' commitment to their profession through active collaborations and striving to become better practitioners to benefit the teaching community. These values are considered as important as the necessary skills, depth, and breadth of content knowledge.
It occurred to me that my best teachers in Alabama and Cincinnati displayed some or all of those values. They clearly put their students at the center of their work and believed that we all could learn.
Perhaps we in this country should look closely at Singapore's approach - especially for teachers destined to teach in distressed communities, like the ones in which I grew up. We should look closely at the values of those teachers who are successful with students in those schools and consider those values in our hiring, evaluating, and compensating those teachers.
For more than 35 years, Harrison Blackmond has dedicated his life towards helping children achieve the education they deserve. Harrison has served a multitude of roles within Michigan's education system, including Chair of the Marygrove College Board of Trustees, President of the Business/Education Training Alliance, Vice Chairman and member of the Executive Committee of the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce, and President of the Detroit Black Alliance for Education Options. Read more about Harrison here.