Let's Change This Thing Called "Teaching"

First a confession.  I’m as guilty as the next professor standing in front of a group of teachers, lecturing them on what they should be doing to become a better teacher.  Decades ago, I delivered these “sermons” from sheets of paper, lecture notes scrawled on 5X8 notecards, on overhead transparencies, or some other comparable format.  Within the last decade, I’ve sometimes used PowerPoint presentations.  (PowerPointless?) Today, when I walk by the open door of one of our School of Education classrooms, I’m more apt to see a PowerPoint presentation on the screen in front of the classroom.  Since reading the biography of Steve Jobs, I’ll never be able to see a PowerPoint presentation without thinking about how he used to go ballistic every time someone tried to use a PowerPoint presentation to convince him of some point.  He used to cry out “Stop this shit” or something equally as offensive.  His point was that presentations should be so polished the presenter shouldn’t have to rely on PowerPoint slides to make his/her point.  (Job’s favorite tool was a white write-on board.)  So, I would like to propose a series of “What if…” scenarios.

What if…you could deliver no more than 25% of your instructional presentations to the use of PowerPoint or some other comparable program (Apple users…that’s Keynote)? 

What if…25% of your candidates’ learning was to take place out of the conventional college classroom?  Students would need to listen to podcasts, iTunes U presentations, YouTube, or some other technology delivered medium.

What if…25% of your class time was spent posing questions to candidates? Candidates would be required to use laptops, iPads, smartphones, etc. to gain information to help them answer the questions you posed?  Teams of students would assemble to discuss what they found for answers.  Then, a whole-group share would occur.  The professor would serve as a moderator and role model for the candidates.

What if…the leadership of the School of Education had a pot of money to support faculty who were interested in building such a learning community?

What if…every faculty member had to redo his/her course outlines every two years?  I’m not talking about simply changing the meeting dates and/or times but substantially redoing the content of the course, attempting to integrate some of the ideas presented earlier in this piece.

What if…there was a group of faculty members who were off-loaded to help faculty members designed courses based on the above principles?

What if…there was a School of Education retreat every year where selected faculty members could share what they’ve done to integrate new learning strategies in their courses?

What if…the union supported this effort instead of kowtowing to some disgruntled faculty member(s) who felt they were being unfairly treated or persecuted?

What if...this effort was linked in some way, some fashion, to the Teach for America or State Department of Education initiatives?

What if…?

Unions

This post is probably going to raise more controversy than I anticipated but I’m putting it out there and you can decide for yourself where you stand on unions.  Let me say that I firmly believe that unions have served a valuable function in America’s past.  This is especially true in blue-collar jobs where company managers and executives sometimes have a tendency to overrun their employees with roughshod labor practices.  But, we’re not talking blue-collar jobs, today.  We’re talking about higher education specifically and education in general. 

Once per year, around tax time, the reoccurring question that comes to my mind is “What union benefits have I derived from my union membership?”  Or more specifically, over the course of my higher education career, what has almost $20,000 in union dues achieved?”  ($500.00 per year X 39 years.)

This same feeling creeps into my soul during the December holiday season.  That’s when our union holds it’s annual holiday party to which all union members are invited.  For some reason, I’ve always felt that the party is the union’s way of justifying it’s biweekly deduction from my paycheck.  Maybe that’s my own issue but I have a high degree of confidence in my gut level feeling and my intuition and that’s how I feel.  Frankly, I would feel much better if the party expenses were donated to some worthwhile charity…say for the homeless or some soup kitchen.  At least I would know that my money’s doing some good instead of expanding the waistlines of my coworkers.

My wife is a public school teacher, just as I was at one point in my career.  She, too, pays a chunk of her salary to support her union.  And while her union is instrumental in negotiating district contracts, they are more active in protecting underperforming teachers who give a bad name to the teaching profession. 

But back to higher education.  There have been two points in my professional career where unions could have supported me.  In each case, they failed miserably.  The first case was when I was chair of our department and I had a faculty member threaten to file a frivolous lawsuit against me because of a scheduling disagreement.  While I’m not permitted to discuss the details of this case because I signed a non-disclosure agreement to settle it, let me simply say that had this faculty member been employed in any other type of business, he/she would have been fired on the spot.  The union failed to support my position.  Indeed, it was the college administration that soothed the roiled waters and not the union!

The second case occurred much later.  I had returned to the faculty and had a student who had lost her job as a public school teacher.  Because she hadn’t completed her college coursework, she received a grade of “incomplete.”  She lost her certification and claimed I (the college) was the cause.  Again, the union never came to my aid.  Instead, it was the college lawyer who was there to support me. 

I know of other cases that haven’t directly involved me, where faculty members were so incompetent that attempts have been made to relieve them of their teaching assignments.  Parents, students, and lawyers have all pressed their cases against these faculty members.  In each instance, the union has chosen what I perceive as the wrong side.  How can I be expected to support such an organization that acts in direct opposition to everything that I hold sacred?

I don’t consider these instances to be issues of labor vs. management or faculty vs. administration.  Instead, I think it’s right vs. wrong.  Most of us know, intuitively, when something is morally wrong.  How then, can we be expected to support such an organization?

I’m waiting for the day when our union officials step forward and publish a yearly summary of how it has improved the education of our students.  After all, that’s why we are in this business.  I think smaller class size is one proactive thing the union has done for us.  There must be others.  Let’s hear a discourse on this topic.  And keep the propaganda mumbo-jumbo out of it.  After all, you’re dealing with an intellectual elite constituency.

A Postscript

I just finished reading Walter Isaacson’s book entitled Steve Jobs.  In it, starting on page 544, Isaacson describes Job’s 2010 private meeting with President Obama.  Job’s went on to describe to the President how teacher’s are crippled by union work rules.  Until unions are broken, he said, there “was almost no hope for education reform.”  Teachers should be treated as professionals and principals should be able to hire and fire teachers depending upon how good they are.  He then went on to tell about how absurd it was that American classrooms were still based on the model of the instructor lecturing to a class and using a single textbook.  (Take note college professors!) Isaacson also described Job’s disappoint with Obama’s leadership style. 

My reason for even mentioning all of this is that I don’t believe business executives know much about education, just as education professors don’t know much about business.  We should stay out of each other’s way.  I do find it compelling, however, that more and more individuals are questioning unions’ effectiveness.  And, it befuddles me why unions aren’t more concerned about the quality of instruction instead of supporting faculty members who have no business being college professors.