Lien On Me

Did you know teachers do not believe teaching matters? This has bothered me ever since I read the Learning Forward article, “ Flip the Script on Change” by Thomas Guskey   in April 2020. Guskey cited research by Evans, Teasdale, Gannon-Slater, La Londe, Crenshaw, Greene, & Schwandt, 2019 that investigated teachers’ perceptions of student achievement data. This study found teachers associated students’ performance to instruction merely 15% of the time. More often, teachers believed that student achievement was a result of student characteristics, like behavior and backgrounds, although decades of compelling studies have indicated teachers have two to three times the impact of any other school factor. What worries me is that if teachers have little confidence in instruction, then we have not been focusing on what makes a difference for student learning. Curriculums and assessments are meaningless without instruction and ineffective without teachers believing instruction influences st

For the past 20 plus years, I have worked in the world of mentoring. Even though our profession is about teaching, we weren't routinely paired with a mentor and it was often viewed as a luxury. In fact, I will always remember how my peers would tell me that mentoring was not needed for new teachers because "we never had one" or "we never needed a mentor." Well, we did need mentoring and we likely did have a mentor as a new teacher. Informally or casually, we were guided by veteran teachers. Nearly every teacher in my generation recalls someone who supported them. When I immersed myself in mentoring, I read how teachers "eat their young." I took exception to that until I paid attention. The above experience is one example of "eating our young." If we didn't believe mentoring was necessary as we became veteran teachers, then our beliefs and actions weren't supporting our newest colleagues. One of the most outrageous acts teachers do is