Newly elected BOE members will be sworn in at the November 17th BOE Meeting, according to the Board Of Education's central office. This means they can start working almost immediately which is important given the fact that we are in the midst of superintendent search and beginning the budgeting process.
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A reminder that there will be a Parent Forum for the Superintendent Search on Thursday November 5, 7:30 p.m. in the Community Room, Rm A330 at Norwalk City Hall. Spanish and French Creole translators will be available. If you can't make it, fill out a Leadership Profile Assessment available on the NPS website and send in your criteria for a new superintendent.
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Finally, I read a terrific article in the New York Times this weekend about teacher training. The author, Susan Engel, is director of a teaching program at Williams College. She writes:
If we really want good schools, we need to create a critical mass of great teachers. And if we want smart, passionate people to become these great educators, we have to attract them with excellent programs and train them properly in the substance and practice of teaching.Ms. Engel argues that the best colleges and professors need to get involved in Education as a subject matter. Teaching programs should be selective and free of charge (with a stipend for teaching three years in a public school). She also writes that teachers need to be trained differently.
(Teaching) students should learn their craft the way a surgeon learns to operate: by intense supervision in a real setting with expert mentors. Student-teachers are usually observed only twice during a semester and then given a written evaluation. But young teachers, like young doctors, should work side by side with skilled mentors, getting plenty of feedback, having plenty of opportunities to observe and taking on greater and greater responsibility as they improve.Ms. Engle writes that teachers should continue to study the subject they teach, watch and critique videotapes of themselves teaching and learn more about child development psychology. She also suggests that new young teachers should be hired in groups of seven or more in a district so that they won't feel isolated.
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There are problems with teacher training, but focusing on that misses the point. The greatest problem is the model of education that this country has used for more than half a century. It may or may not have worked when it was developed (and it probably didn't), but it surely doesn't work now. Changing it is going to require massive change, far greater change than most people are prepared to accomplish and to fund. We talk about the extreme cases of bad teaching and toxic teachers, but the far greater problem is our acceptance of mediocrity.
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