In Focus: The "Meaning Needs" of Teachers

Sorry to say, but the level of discourse about education in America is not very high. I read newspapers, journals, blogs and books, listen to public radio, go to state senate hearings and union halls, sometimes I even watch television.

I can tell you with authority: We are not piercing through to the real issues underlying how we improve schools and teaching.

Mostly, we are dealing with education through the frame of politics: looking at test scores, teacher "accountability", and school choice -- using these to argue for political causes or candidates.

Such debates cover issues on a superficial and abstract level but never approach the kind of granularity necessary to understand the learning process, and especially the people who have to "do" learning--students and teachers.

Except perhaps in a negative sense, as in, the public or its politicians wanting both students and teachers to prove that they are even minimally competent as human beings before receiving public monies.

In general, education has become one more political football to be tossed and kicked by players trying to win some other, larger game, usually ideological in nature.

None of this actually works to improve schools or learning.

And, in fact, finding good teachers to staff our schools, especially in urban environments which have the highest need, receive fewer resources and have the highest rates of teacher turnover, is getting more difficult than ever.

I had a conversation with an instructional coach from a large metropolitan district at a conference recently. On the subject of teacher turnover, she said that her district was looking at the average length of stay for new teachers as being less than two years.

Let me say that again for the people who only scan blog entries: The average length of stay for new teachers in this large urban district is now less than two years.

In terms of reducing, or even addressing, the so-called "achievement gap", this is devastating. We will never even be able to hold the gap steady if we do not have a regular, sustainable, experienced teaching staff in place in our urban school buildings.

Which brings me to the topic of choice today: the meaning needs of teachers. It is my thesis that we cannot tackle any of the substantial challenges of our public schools, and especially of our largest urban school systems, unless we fundamentally change the way we, as a society, think about the role and job of teaching.

How so?

Simple. The job of teaching is a tough one. Most people see and admit that.

(Though there will always be a few hard-cores who complain about the length of the school day or year and think that teachers are somehow lazy and feed at the public trough. I'm not sure we can ever win those folks over to a new paradigm, other than perhaps asking them to come in and shadow a teacher for a day.)

And, teaching is especially tough to do well. And, it is super-tough to do well in urban environments where kids and schools have fewer assets and more intractable problems.

Yet, we know, or should, that teachers are the single most important factor in the overall learning experience of young people at school.

So, tough job, but terribly important, and we need to get the best teachers we can find, especially in urban environments.

But, how do we do that?

Money? Benefits? Better career track? A bigger challenge?

Let's talk frank.

Very, very, very few teachers go into the profession for money, and those that do are usually severely disappointed. In fact, in general, the idea that we can simply dangle greater material rewards in front of teachers and fundamentally change education in this country is flat-out wrong. We aren't talking about the same dynamics as the private sector; teachers went into the profession knowing full well what the salary realities are.

And, even when teachers are well-compensated, even when they are successful, even when they like the work, they might still leave the profession between years 5 and 10 anyway, despite being successful on multiple levels. And very, very few, especially in the post-Boomer generation, will stick it out all the way until retirement, even if they are very good teachers.

What I am trying to say is that teachers are much more concerned and moved by factors other than their salary, their relative success or their staff seniority.

In fact, they are much more swayed to stay or leave by the outcome of their "meaning needs". So, things such as relationships with colleagues, sense of mission in their building, sense of efficacy in their school and classes, opportunities to continue to learn and grow as a professional, possibilities for new challenges and professional tracks--these are the deciding factors for new and experienced teachers when it comes to remaining on the job.

I call this set of factors "meaning needs" because they constitute something very basic, yet very important, about understanding the job, and even the gestalt, of teaching.

It's a human job. To do it well, you have to be adept at working with human beings. To stay with it a long time and do it well, you have to be able to grow, change and develop new facets of who you are and what makes you feel valuable, needed and a part of something important.

All of these things are about valuing, supporting and investing in teachers to grow them as human beings--to do everything we can to find roles and channels in which they can achieve their full potential, challenge themselves and find meaning through their work.

Is that an easy thing to do, given the institutional nature of schools? NO.

But, it is possible, especially if we start to focus on it, generate dialog and initiate new approaches and policies that attempt to achieve these objectives.

I will say this: demonizing, degrading, finding fault, holding out for humiliation and generally dismissing teachers as not doing their jobs will never result in excellence in our public schools. Just as when you do these things to children, you end up getting the exact opposite than what you hoped for.

The real way to approach schools and teachers is to start by empowering them and encouraging them, then building systems that allow for collegial relationships to form, collaboration to take root, a sense of mission to flourish, and for the institution to value the growth of its staff, both as a team and as individuals.

When, and only when, a teacher feels good about their work, their colleagues, the mission of their school, and their individual professional aspirations, will they want to stay on the job, continue to innovate and find new ways to "empassion" their students.

America continues to thrash about in the debate over education, thirsting for new levers of power to compel students to learn and teachers to teach. But, as any good teacher could explain from the very start, learning is not about coercion. You can't force students to excel and you can't compel them with punishments to be excellent.

But, you can create an environment which invites, stimulates, encourages and channels people toward positive outcomes. We need to do that for teachers even before we can expect to get it right for kids.