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Being an educational consultant is, at its core, about crossing over to the Other Side. I won't say "the Dark Side" because many teachers might think I mean administration. No, consulting occupies the same glamorous status as purgatory: a limbo hovering between the earthly realities of teaching and the heavenly heights of district-office salaries. Some consultants get paid exorbitant amounts, too, though they wisely hide their earnings in the educational world. If you choose to consult, as I did last year, the role forces you to become the Other, where in the eyes of the world you have donned a cloak of idiotic, blissful ignorance and arrogant know-it-allness, no matter how savvy and modest you are underneath.
My task was to be the staff developer and one-on-one assistant to high school teachers at a North Carolina high school as its district was implementing WOW: Working on the Work.¹ WOW does indeed market sound pedagogy: it asks teachers to engage students in quality content that is product driven, with "clear and compelling product standards." The high school administrators that hired me knew these were worthy principles, and as newly hired leaders of the school, were determined to see that these principles be the guiding force across the curriculum. Fortunately, these administrators knew from their daily dealings in discipline and complaints about teachers that there are some mountains that are not going to be moved by curricular reform.
Yet the role required that I as consultant be eternally optimistic and joyful, despite these grim facts in front of me. All problems presented must have a curricular solution. Joey doesn't eat breakfast before class and sleeps the day away? Put some zest in his life with a multiple-intelligence, kinesthetic activity! Mr. Smith has been pushing "Play" for years rather than teaching? Hand him some differentiated activities, and you'll find a new man wowing the students in Room 105! Public education faces myriad problems that WOW will never address. Poverty. Parental apathy. Teacher burnout and cynicism. Novice teachers. Being a perfectionist, I could never leave that school site without feelings of guilt that somehow, somewhere, I was failing someone, since the task at hand is so huge and unsolvable by a package reform movement.
Obviously, being a consultant is some sort of a psychological platform where I could work out all my guilt issues regarding the state of the world and why I am doing so little to save it. We're all magnetized to certain careers for a reason; any psychiatrist would have a field day with my admissions here. The fact that I was also teaching part time at an independent school was another nail in my consultant coffin, something I and the administrators decided was wise to keep covert as I was getting to know people. The fact that I'd once taught Vietnamese refugees and California gangbangers and pregnant teens in the public schools would not suffice for this faculty because, the point was, I wasn't teaching them NOW. When I finally gained some confidence about what I had to offer the staff, I stopped worrying about whether or not they knew about my other day job.
Like most package reform movements, WOW strategies assumed that teachers automatically knew how to provide quality content and substance or knew inherently what "protection from adverse consequences of initial failures" meant. So I found myself offering a potpourri of strategies gleaned from my own ten years in education in order to explain what WOW really entailed. I advertised the best wisdom I had thus far: Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe's theories on understandings, Carol Tomlinson's theories on differentiation, and classroom management strategies from Perry Good and Diane Gossen.
All of these ideas got lumped somehow under WOW, as I worked individually with teachers grappling with how to teach the next day's lesson. I have always viewed the latest reform coming down the pike as not The Answer to all educational ills but rather as One Piece of the Puzzle. I often wonder: if more teachers viewed our profession as a challenging jigsaw, with exciting possibilities--not formulas--as methods of solving it, that they would take more kindly to the latest sound byte from educational consultants. Some of us get a charge out of trying to solve the unsolvable problem, delighting in the fact that we're getting close, even if we never finish. Others seem to seek The Answer and are resentful when several reform movements have proved unworthy of that title.
One on one work with teachers is where I made the difference. I learned quickly that meaningful sound bytes from me at faculty meetings weren't helpful: I just can't be that dynamic in five minutes or less. The administration would have willingly given me more time, but five minutes is all I could muster when the grim, blank looks of faculty or, more often, the top of their heads pointed downwards at papers told me to buzz off. There was nothing I could communicate to this group of faculty past 3 p.m. that would have any impact.
Soon my goal for these large-group times evolved into a repeated advertisement of "Here are the services I can offer you, and hey, wanna try webquests (or whatever curricular treat was popular at the moment)?" My work was also slowed by the initial faculty backlash against the administration: What is this WOW? We're not ready! The administration scaled back its original request for teachers to produce a WOW unit that school year and required only that they observe one another and look for WOW design qualities in their colleagues' lessons. In the meantime, I would work with those faculty members who were already doing WOW and had a WOW lesson to showcase.
Requests for my help started to come trickling in. I would get quite a charge after a session with a novice or a veteran teacher where we'd toss back and forth lesson ideas. I spent a lot of time encouraging teachers for their current efforts and acknowledging the complexity in this task of educating. I'd sometimes just take over the conversation and rattle off a lesson plan idea, when they were too tired to think, and I would leave resolved to find this scrap of a handout I knew I had stowed somewhere or that web site I'd seen one time that might just help. I'd pore over piles of curriculum and build lesson plans to fill up their mailboxes.
I worried that I was being too pushy, but I found that most teachers appreciated all the handouts and plans. They consumed them just as guiltily as I provided them; teachers are not used to assistance. I really do think that some of them wondered if there was something dishonest about the process. I left the classrooms of certain history teachers, Spanish teachers, one Physics teacher and English teachers convinced that the world was being saved, despite all the odds, by these people. Their dynamism and devotion to the profession was inspiring, and our problem-solving conversations energized me to go back to my own classroom.
Some days I did guest teaching. Stepping into another teacher's classroom is a little like waltzing into a friend's living room and taking over the CD player so you can strut your latest salsa step. You're not entirely sure you're going to remember all the moves, and you're also not sure whether or not s/he's going to laugh if you occasionally miss a step or bump into the furniture. I came smack up against others' styles of classroom discipline (or lack thereof) and assumptions about how class should begin or end, as well as the realities of the students they taught versus my own waiting back for me at my school. But the guest teaching did incredible things for my reputation: once people heard that I actually could teach, they began to trust that I wasn't just a flake in a suit (actually, I rarely wore suits because that sent the wrong message).
Technology was a boon; the principal had cut a deal with Dell computers to get a fleet of laptops with remote Internet access. Many teachers were experimenting on their own, and other times, the media specialists and I would descend with the rolling carts on a classroom of a teacher a little leery about their first lesson with laptops. After creating a webquest² for the class to use, I would help the teacher guide students through it. It took the power of three adults to keep the class on track; the media specialist stayed on hand just to deal with technical failures, of which there were many. After such a lesson, I would feel badly about leaving a teacher to instruct solo; how do teachers do it, day after day, period after period, with more than 25 in a room?
After all these positive meetings and lessons, the experience was getting far too easy, so I needed a group like the underwater basket weaving department (name withheld) to set me straight about the real world of educator attitude. The ubw chair asked me to visit one of their department meetings since they "just didn't get this WOW stuff." There they plucked, grilled and skewered me. To my credit, I remained calm and tried not to argue with their barbs about my inability to solve the problems they'd been slaving over the last 14 years (that was the shortest amount of time anyone in that department had taught). To them, I was the arrogant and clueless suit who'd never seen a classroom of 30 students, and I could say nothing, nay, not even produce pictures of past classes to convince them otherwise (I didn't do so, but I sure was tempted). I knew the meeting was over well before I left. I had just shared that I would be happy to come in and guest teach a lesson when a veteran who'd been rolling her eyes the whole meeting remarked, "Yeah, I'd like to see THAT."
I told the principals there wasn't much I could do for the ubw department. They shrugged without seeming too troubled; that group had a reputation for being quite "tight" and resistant to outside influences. That experience forced me to look inward and think hard about why I could be so hated without having done much of anything, I thought, to incur the wrath. I have realized, with help from some good sources, that there needs to be a paradigm shift. I came up with a list of Why Old-School Consultants Can't Win.
1. A consultant looks like s/he is resting on her laurels, even if she has taught every gangbanger of the last century. For no teacher who has to listen to the consultant is being allowed to rest on his laurels; instead, he is being berated (so it appears) for not outfitting his classroom at DSL modem speed for the new millennium. Consultants should stop jawing, get off their résuméd asses, roll up their sleeves and get back in the damn trenches if they want to see education improve so fast.
2. A consultant's very existence implies that there is something gravely wrong with the current system, and that the teacher is at fault for everything that brought the consultant here. Who wants to attend a session of Judgment Day, as representatives of their own sin and error personified?
3. A consultant is often talking about curriculum development, which is an art and science (with its own process and language) that does not appeal to all teachers. The teaching profession does not always draw intellectuals; your average faculty contains a large number of people who might excel at coaching, behavior management, or holding forth on why they love a particular subject, but who are not necessarily keen on thinking about the intricacies of lesson design. Or, if the teachers happen to be intellectually interested in curriculum, there is guaranteed to be a population that resents others with PhD's and other ivory tower experiences who seem to think they have the answer (refer to #1). These teachers spend most of their time during the staff development workshop asking rhetorical questions with attitude and writing nasty notes to colleagues about all the flaws in this consultant's idea of good curriculum.
4. Consultants, like teachers, fall prey to the myth that education is a numbers game: hit the majority of the contestants, and you can go home satisfied about a job well done. So consultants spend too much time in front of the crowd rather than buddying up with teachers in the classroom trenches.
In his work at the University of Kansas Center for Research on Learning, research associate Jim Knight encourages consultants and staff developers to work side by side with teachers. Teacher Guided Professional Development is new school, a shift away from the old "blast the big group" methodology. Beginning with interviews where the consultant seeks to learn firsthand about the school while honoring the teachers' current experiences, the staff developer focuses on listening before recommending. Large-group instruction occurs with the faculty after the consultant has built a relationship with many teachers. In addition, Knight and his colleagues provide a number of highly effective strategies for instruction that teachers can practice alongside consultants in the classroom.³
If I were to start my consulting over again, I would stick close to Jim Knight's paradigm. Fortunately, I met him at a conference as I began my consulting, so his ideas helped me shift toward individual work with teachers. I discovered by making that shift the essential truth that one can quickly forget when assuming any kind of leadership role: that every individual has a lot of wisdom, experience and perspective well worth hearing.
I wouldn't trade any of those one-on-one conversations, because that's where the true teaching and learning occurred within the consulting - and it was a two-way process. Teaching is not a solo venture in the classroom, so why should it be during the most creative aspect, the planning and designing of curriculum? Better that together we navigate the mysteries of our profession. Aspirants to this vocation are likely to find success if they stay optimistic there are indeed answers to this teaching puzzle and that as a team, we can put the "wow" into the daily grind.
Footnotes:
1.The brainchild of educator Phillip Schlechty, WOW focuses schools' attention on improving the quality of student work. For more information, see a good description at http://www.salemschools.com/wow.htm.
2. For more information on webquests, go to http://www.webquest.sdsu.edu.
3. For more information, go to http://www.ku-crl.org/htmlfiles/tgpd.html.
Lyn Fairchild WOWs students and teachers alike in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina |
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