Education isn't a hard science and sifting through the numbers isn't magic bullet for our problems. There's a lot of talk of data and science in education today. Everyone is looking for a one size fits all solution to the decline of achievement in our public schools. That approach in itself is the problem. Not one campus in DISD is the same as the others. That means that teachers and teaching methods have to be different from campus to campus and classroom.
We've talked about Differentiated Instruction in DISD classrooms at length both in this blog and in our podcast. We are called and expected to differentiate, but the higher ups in our district don't practice what the preach in terms of allowing us to differentiate our teaching methods. They want us all to be the same. In their language, that's what would be called "bad modeling."
Our students are dynamic so we must be as well. Removing that autonomy only makes it that much more difficult to get results. At some point, there will have to be a decision between methodology and success as the district is headed. Why? Because education is not a hard science. Replicating the same methods will not yield the same results 100% of the time. Why? Because every child is different. Every teacher is different. We are dealing with humans, not meat.
We resist things we haven't seen work with our own eyes. Have I seen MRSs work before? Yes. That's to say I've seen the kids do them. I haven't seen a teacher doing MRSs blow a teacher not doing MRSs out of the water with their data. I haven't seen anyone come into one of my challenging classes and all of a sudden whip the class into shape with a "stop and jot." Let's be honest, I haven't seen anyone come into my class and do anything because none of my admins will show me what they want to see in my classroom because my kids don't respect them.
There's room for all of their theories of education at the table. Do what works for you, but you can't read a book then say this method works for all kids. Why? Because the books aren't written about our kids. Books and movies focus on the finished product and not the journey there. Unfortunately, sometimes I think our leadership focuses on that as well and penalizes us teachers for not having instant success.
We've talked about Differentiated Instruction in DISD classrooms at length both in this blog and in our podcast. We are called and expected to differentiate, but the higher ups in our district don't practice what the preach in terms of allowing us to differentiate our teaching methods. They want us all to be the same. In their language, that's what would be called "bad modeling."
Our students are dynamic so we must be as well. Removing that autonomy only makes it that much more difficult to get results. At some point, there will have to be a decision between methodology and success as the district is headed. Why? Because education is not a hard science. Replicating the same methods will not yield the same results 100% of the time. Why? Because every child is different. Every teacher is different. We are dealing with humans, not meat.
We resist things we haven't seen work with our own eyes. Have I seen MRSs work before? Yes. That's to say I've seen the kids do them. I haven't seen a teacher doing MRSs blow a teacher not doing MRSs out of the water with their data. I haven't seen anyone come into one of my challenging classes and all of a sudden whip the class into shape with a "stop and jot." Let's be honest, I haven't seen anyone come into my class and do anything because none of my admins will show me what they want to see in my classroom because my kids don't respect them.
There's room for all of their theories of education at the table. Do what works for you, but you can't read a book then say this method works for all kids. Why? Because the books aren't written about our kids. Books and movies focus on the finished product and not the journey there. Unfortunately, sometimes I think our leadership focuses on that as well and penalizes us teachers for not having instant success.
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