Subject: Role of a Teacher

Posted by Steve Bosacker on 12/2/2004
In Reply To:Role of a Teacher Posted by Scott Guthrie on 11/28/2004

Message:

What you share here, Scott, seems to me to be the beginnings of developing a model of how "education" works in America. You are describing numerous symptoms of negative feedback loops in the educational system. The struggle is to make sense of what forces are pushing against this wonderful and powerful new paradigm of systems thinking and systems dynamics. What are the levers we need to work on that will open the doors of peoples minds and hearts? This discussion started by Richard Turnock seems to be stirring up some inklings about these levers. Let's keep working on this problem.

In October I attended the Minnesota Association of Charter Schools Fall Conference. At one workshop a Jon Schroeder (Education Evolving) made a comment that may help us make sense of the NCLB. His comment went along this line: For 20 years governments and communities attempted to improve education by putting lots of money into the system. This did not produce intended results. So now there is this movement to try to hold schools accountable for performance. It works in businesses on employees. Perhaps it will work in education. The problem is, we don't understand the system we've created over the last 100 years.

The sense of urgency to improve education results is increasing. Who ever can get people's attention to explain what "makes the difference" for educational effectiveness will likely shift everyone's focus in a new direction. Because education in America involves so many thousands of people, and many voices are calling out "Come this way!", and "Come that way!", making a shift is a long and challenging prospect. But it happened before, and it will happen again. We can be part of the next shift.

Steve Bosacker
Minnesota