The Rationale for Preparing Mature Adults as Teachers of Diverse Children in Urban Poverty

Tests. The number of tests taken by students in urban schools is not likely to diminish. District and state mandates have now made testing a fact of life for urban teachers. In some districts the curriculum is so tightly aligned with the mandated tests that teachers actually follow scripts in order to cover all the topics on which students will be tested in the exact same way. This is a critical condition of work for many beginners who are misled into believing that as teachers they would be professional decision-makers rather than script readers and test tutors. The very strong likelihood is that the pressures felt by teachers to prepare their children for tests will continue and increase since so many will be assigned to schools officially designated as failing.

On the positive side there has been an increase in several conditions which beginners rate as critical conditions of work. First, there is more teacher teaming than in past. This means that teachers have greater access to other teachers’ ideas and experiences. Second, there is more mentoring of beginning teachers by experienced teachers with released time. Both of these factors are expensive because they involve greater costs for staff development and while implemented in a few urban districts they are more likely to be cut than expanded.

Section VII. How Do Effective Teachers Cope with the School Bureaucracy?

Mature teachers are more likely to survive in the school bureaucracy. First, rather than feel persecuted, as many young teachers do, mature teachers with work experiences quickly discern the weaknesses and contradictions in the plethora of rules, regulations and policies that characterize school bureaucracy. Their work and life experience leads them to see that the school district organization is far from a well-oiled machine. While there may be rules and procedures for everything, there is typically an inadequate administrative span-of-control to oversee compliance. In my training programs, for example, we train beginners not to respond to everything that is put into their mailboxes. We teach them how to sort the barrage of messages and paper dumped on them at the start of the school year so that they only take time from teaching to comply with the most urgent demands. Similarly, part of our training deals with specific strategies for cutting down on interruptions.

Many administrators and secretaries act as if the teachers are there to help them run the building and complete reports for central office. They do not act as if they believe that their administrative and support jobs should be focused on helping teachers teach and students learn. Beginners must find ways to obtain the assistance they need without allowing their teaching time to be wasted on paperwork or endless out-of-class responsibilities. Mature teachers are much easier to mentor in these regards because of their previous work experiences.

Second, one of the items on the Urban Teacher Selection Interview deals with burnout. Younger teachers responses to the causes of burnout more frequently resemble those of quitter/failure teachers. They do not expect to ever experience burnout. They perceive burnout as something that only happens to teachers who lack dedication. They have no concept whatever that burnout can be caused by working hard in depersonalized organizations, thick with regulations, which impact negatively on teaching and learning. Mature adults tend to answer this question by seeing burnout as a natural consequence of working in large organizations. They know that burnout can happen to anyone including themselves. Candidate’s answers to this question are predictive of who is more likely to survive in an urban school district.

Third, mature teachers network with other teachers for the purpose of gaining personal and professional support. This is the most effective antidote to burnout. By developing allies (teachers, principals, secretaries, even students) who support their initiatives, they make it more difficult to be turned down. They also obtain greater involvement and support from parents.

Fourth, mature teachers search for ways in which the bureaucracy can actually be used to help them and their children. Experienced insiders in any large system can be very effective change agents, if they so choose. They can point to rules and procedures which are little known or seldom used that offer new opportunities. They know about networking. Savvy teachers make and utilize connections in the interests of their children. Examples include, how to secure a piece of equipment or extra supplies, how to get permission for a field trip or special activity, or how to qualify for a small grant. Negotiating, compromise and conflict management skills are successful responses used by mature adults when dealing with any bureaucratic system. Such skills can be learned from experience but mature teachers who come into the classroom already equipped with such skills can be immediately more helpful to their students. They are also more likely to survive the first difficult years. It must be remembered, however, that effective urban teachers use such skills to gain greater access to learning opportunities for their students, not to promote themselves.

Fifth, the willingness to be responsible for one’s actions and to accept accountability for children’s learning are also clearly related to maturity. These are attributes that are vital in urban schools where testing has become the norm. In effect, urban teachers must be accountable in spite of conditions in the lives of the children over which they have no control. Teachers must also function under conditions of work they cannot control. The willingness to accept accountability in spite of conditions one cannot control is present in other occupations as well, e.g. air traffic controller. Effectiveness in such roles is clearly related to maturity and the wisdom gained from on-the-job experience.

Ultimately more mature teachers are able to cope with the school bureaucracy more effectively because they are more successful in building relationships with the students…not only in teaching but in managing them. This helps maintain a safe school environment for everyone. As superiors, colleagues and aides become dependent on these teachers for managing students others cannot handle, they are less likely to harass them with mindless, inhibiting interpretations of rules.

A major reason that mature, effective teachers are able to cope in urban schools is that their focus is on their students. They devote their energies before, during and after school to their students. Mature teachers do not challenge the system but merely seek some “elbow room” from the bureaucracy in order to teach in ways that help their students learn. One sign of maturity is the wisdom to know which conditions are amenable to change and which must be lived with.

HOW WILL MATURE ADULTS BE RECRUITED AND PREPARED?

There is no shortage of young teacher candidates in traditional programs of teacher education whose primary motive is to secure licenses that will enable them to be hired in any state. The need is for teachers for specific urban schools serving diverse students in poverty. Mature adults from a specific urban area who begin with a focused local, urban commitment are more likely to not only succeed but also survive. Securing the teachers that diverse children in urban poverty deserve requires changing some of the institutional values in traditional university-based teacher education.

1.The clients of teacher preparation are not students in programs of teacher education but the diverse children in poverty in urban schools who need effective teachers. This change of perception regarding who the clients are will cause many shifts in practice, the most notable being that teacher candidates will be put through selection and training procedures that result in significantly more of them self selecting out or being failed before they are licensed.
2.The long-term, continuing shortage of effective urban teachers does not mean that standards should be lowered but that they must be raised. Teachers who will be effective and who will remain are individuals who not only have knowledge of subject matter and pedagogy but who can connect with diverse children in poverty and can function under adverse working conditions.

3. Candidates should not be admitted into programs of teacher education because they have passed the traditional selection criteria at a college or university. Urban school districts must first process candidates through their selection procedures. Only those who the district would be willing to hire should be admitted into preparation programs.

4. The locus of preparation must be urban school classrooms in which the candidates function as teachers of record. The various pools of adults who can be recruited, selected and prepared to be effective in urban schools envision themselves changing careers in order to function in the role of teachers. They are not willing to take on the role of students in teacher education programs and have demonstrated clearly, over decades, that they will not be recruited if their primary role is to become college students rather than teachers. This means alternative certification programs, intern programs and on-the-job training must be used to recruit and prepare mature candidates.

5. The traditional practice of young college students deciding they would like to be teachers of a particular age or subject matter and then seeking employment after graduation must be abandoned as a strategy for preparing urban teachers. The starting point for creating the pools of teachers to be trained in the various specializations should be based on the projections of teacher need in the local urban school districts. Only those who can fill a specific school need for a particular teacher specialization should be recruited, selected and prepared.

6. For teachers to remain and be effective their training program cannot focus on universal truths re: the nature of children, teaching and learning. Training programs cannot be preparation for teaching in the best of all nonexistent worlds. From the outset preparation must focus on serving particular groups of children from specific local cultures attending schools in a particular urban district. Assuming that preparing candidates for no place in particular prepares them to teach all children everywhere will only perpetuate the current system of turning out “fully qualified” graduates not taking jobs, quitting or failing. There is no shortage of teacher candidates whose primary motive is to secure licenses that will enable them to be hired in any state. The need is for teachers for specific urban schools serving particular constituencies. Mature adults from a specific urban area who begin with a focused local, urban commitment are more likely to not only succeed but remain.

7. The tradition of waiting for young undergraduate students to apply to a university to be prepared as teachers must be replaced with aggressive and targeted marketing programs directed at pools of local, adult college graduates, particularly those of color. Traditional forms of nationwide recruitment by urban school districts competing with each other for a limited pool of young graduates need to be replaced by strategies which focus on mature residents in a specific metropolitan area. Local churches, businesses, governments and community organizations are basic sources for the recruitment of African American and Latino applicants. While women and mothers with children in the very same school systems in which they would like to become teachers are the primary target, ways of reaching local male pools must also be utilized. New ways of explaining the work of a teacher in an urban school district need to be an integral part of honest, realistic marketing that lets applicants know what they are getting into from day one. Urban school districts must accept the fact that new teacher recruits need to be oriented and prepared to work in inefficient even failing bureaucracies.

8. Specific attributes of great urban teachers should guide the selection of new teachers into preparation programs. State mandated skills of subject matter and pedagogy are necessary but not sufficient. All programs of preparation should utilize both interviews of applicants that compare them to effective teachers and the direct observation of candidates actually relating to children and youth. These are the two most powerful predictors of success with diverse children in urban poverty.

9. Inducements for candidates who are hesitant about teaching diverse children in urban poverty do not recruit the appropriate population. Signing bonuses, reduced apartment rentals or down payments on homes will attract quitter/failures. Funds used for such inducements should instead be used for mentors and tuition remission. This is the financial aid that helps mature candidates the most. Such support will be most effective in keeping the pathway into teaching open to adults with financial responsibilities and low-income candidates.

Considering the working conditions beginning teachers say they need versus those they regard as debilitating, the likelihood is far greater that the negative conditions under which teachers work are likely to worsen. What this means for securing teachers who will stay and become effective is clear. While all constituencies must do everything possible to try and improve the conditions under which urban teachers work, the students cannot be held hostage waiting for change agents who have been completely unsuccessful up to now. The need is for teachers who can be effective with today’s children and youth in today’s schools. Teacher educators should not be allowed to take the pious position that it is unfair or even immoral for beginning teachers to function in today’s schools and therefore those who prepare teachers cannot be held accountable for the quality of their training programs until the urban schools are first transformed. There are real children, and youth spending the only lives they will ever have being miseducated in these schools everyday. Demanding that the schools improve before effective teachers can be prepared for such places will sacrifice still another generation. The most prudent course is to scale up the successful models of urban teacher education we now have and recruit, select and prepare caring effective, mature teachers who will make a difference immediately.

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February 13th, 2008

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The Rationale for Preparing Mature Adults as Teachers of Diverse Children in Urban Poverty

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