New law: School districts might be banned from allowing intimidating or humiliating behavior by teachers toward other teachers--and the gratuitous sabotage of work performance

Will teacher culture change due to new laws requiring examination of bullying in the workplace?  I doubt it.  Teacher culture is really just human nature adapted to a particular setting, and it is perhaps most intensely practiced by those teachers who have become administrators. Here's an article about new laws in California, including the requirement to train employees about bullying.  It may be a first step toward making bullying illegal in the workplace.

CALIFORNIA: 5 new laws that will affect employers, workers

BY RICHARD K. De ATLEY 
Press Enterprise 

Updated: Jan. 4, 2015

It’s 2015 and with the new year comes new state laws that affect California employers and employees.

Among them is legislation that affects sick leave use and accrual, employer responsibilities regarding independent contractors, and the inclusion of “abusive conduct” training for supervisors. Unpaid interns and foreign workers also have new protections...

'ABUSIVE CONDUCT' TRAINING

Law: AB 2053. Expands existing sexual-harassment training requirements to include prevention of abusive conduct.

What it says: Employers already required to provide sexual harrassment training to supervisors must now also provide training on “abusive conduct.”
That conduct is defined as something that “a reasonable person would find hostile, offensive, and unrelated to an employer’s legitimate business interests.” Acts can include “repeated infliction of verbal abuse...verbal or physical conduct that a reasonable person would find threatening, intimidating, or humiliating, or the gratuitous sabotage or undermining of a person’s work performance.”

The law also states that no single act can be counted as abusive conduct “unless especially severe and egregious.”

What it means: The National Review article notes that AB 2053 does not say what should be included in the training component for abusive conduct, and suggests employers consult with approved trainers to see how it can be incorporated into sexual harrassment training programs.
Attorneys Messigian and Ratinoff comment that the law “does not create a cause of action for abusive conduct in the workplace, but it does appear to be the first step toward protecting workers against bullying in the workplace that is not linked to any form of illegal discrimination.”...

The current teacher evaluation system is no better than the system that evaluated the Fort Hood shooter

Anybody familiar with the teacher evaluating system in our schools knows that it's a joke. Even Camille Zombro, former president of San Diego Education Association, tells the story of how she repeatedly asked her principal for an evaluation, but her principal would say, "Oh, I know you're doing fine." It was the most honest thing the principal could do for such an active political figure. But other teachers have the same complaint: there are shockingly few observations by principals, and the evaluations are useless political statements at worst, and useless blather at best. Teacher culture, not professionalism, rules the schools.

We need evaluations done by outsiders with no personal or political relationship to the evaluatee. Evaluators should do frequent observations (at least three or four times a year) and should use specific criteria.

Ft. Hood shooter received glowing evaluations before attack
Maj. Nidal Hasan, convicted of killing 13 and wounding several others, was said to have 'great potential as an Army officer.'
By Molly Hennessy-Fiske
LA Times
August 24, 2013

Months before the Ft. Hood shooting in November 2009, the Army psychiatrist convicted Friday of killing 13 and wounding more than 30 was completing a fellowship at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where military supervisors praised his unique interest in Islam's impact on soldiers, according to documents provided to The Times.

Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's supervisors had also repeatedly recommended him for promotion, according to documents.

"He has a keen interest in Islamic culture and faith and has shown capacity to contribute to our psychological understanding of Islamic nationalism and how it may relate to events of national security and Army interest in the Middle East and Asia," supervisors wrote in an evaluation report July 1, 2009.

Among Hasan's "unique skills," the report listed "Islamic studies" and "traumatic stress spectrum psychiatric disorders," concluding that "Maj. Hasan has great potential as an Army officer."

The officer evaluation report, and another from earlier that year, were provided to The Times by Hasan's civil lawyer, John Galligan, who says he believes they are relevant to Hasan's sentencing, which is set to begin Monday. He is eligible for the death penalty.

Hasan, 42, has been convicted of 13 charges of premeditated murder in the Nov. 5, 2009, shooting in Texas. The same jury of 13 officers that convicted him will determine his sentence. For a death sentence to be imposed, the decision must be unanimous.

Galligan, a former military judge, said the reports could be used at Hasan's sentencing to argue against a death sentence. But Hasan, who will be representing himself at sentencing as he did at trial, has yet to submit them as mitigating evidence. Galligan says he is concerned the jury will have an incomplete account of Hasan's service record and the role superiors played in promoting him.

The evaluation reports were filed while Hasan, an American-born Muslim, was earning a master's degree in public health through a two-year fellowship in disaster and preventive psychiatry. A colleague of Hasan's at Walter Reed testified that he pursued the fellowship in order to avoid deployment.

The other report, completed March 13, 2009, said Hasan had "outstanding moral integrity" and that he had selected a "challenging topic" for his master's of public health project: "the impact of beliefs and culture on views regarding military service during the Global War on Terror."

Supervisors recommended Hasan for a position "that allows others to learn from his perspectives," noting his "unique insights into the dimensions of Islam" including "moral reasoning" were "of great potential interest and strategic importance to the U.S. Army."

An Army doctor testified that a month before the attack, Hasan told her that if the military forced him to deploy to the Middle East "they will pay." He was later ordered to deploy to Afghanistan, and began plotting his attack.

Can toxic workplace cultures at schools and banks be deadly? Castle Park Elementary; Moritz Erhardt at Bank of America

Castle Park Elementary, Chula Vista California
UPDATE: Here is another story about Merrill Lynch workplace culture that has popped up in the news. Former intern Polly Courtney: "It wasn't just a culture of long hours and hard work; it was more a culture of desperately trying to impress, with 'face time' – pretending to be hard at work even when you were done for the night – and backstabbing – taking credit for a job well done, blaming others for problems – both commonplace. Ultimately, the money and perks could never make up for the exhaustion or the lack of control we all had over our lives..."

This reminds me of some of the teachers lounges in Chula Vista Elementary School District, where I observed a "culture of desperately trying to impress...pretending to be hard at work" even when you were sitting in the teachers lounge playing politics before school and at every break – "and backstabbing – taking credit for a job well done, blaming others for problems – both commonplace."

I would rarely see the teachers who called the shots working late or on weekends.

But I did see the Castle Park Elementary principal at lunch time during the 1999-2000 school year kneeling next to the seated J.H. (a teacher who actually put a crown on her own head at one assembly). The principal was asking J.H. what to say at the staff meeting about the Comer Program. J.H. told her superior exactly what to say to turn the "all-stakeholders-have-a-voice" Comer Program, for which our school paid $20,000 for training, into a tool for the politically powerful teachers at the school to exert control over every decision. These teachers even overturned a decision NOT to have the Kingdoms Program. The teachers reached the decision by a vote of all teachers. The controlling teachers clique cherry-picked parents and teachers to form an illegally constituted School Site Council (yes, there is a law that specifies how the council should be constituted), which rubber-stamped their demands. It was at a Kingdoms assembly that J.H. wore her crown.

I myself conducted the voting about Kingdoms, and I had the ballots in a box in my classroom, but the ballots disappeared after J. H. and her acolyte L. W. made a concerted effort to get rid of me. Someone actually went to the trouble of searching every box in my room to find the ballots and remove them. I have wondered recently if the culture of advancing oneself through sabotage of coworkers, which reached a remarkable intensity at Castle Park Elementary, might have transferred to Allen School along with several Castle Park teachers, and claimed the life of teacher Teri Coffey this past June. Peggy (AKA Peg, then Margaret) Myers was one of them. She is now in disrepute after many shenanigans at Castle Park and Chula Vista Educators CVE).

The disappearing ballots remind me of A Tale of Two Cheaters, a recent story about voting fraud at Los Alamitos High School when Superintendents Rudy Castruita and Tom Anthony headed the school.



Bank of America reviews long-hours culture after intern's death
Moritz Erhardt, who was 'tipped for greatness' was found dead in shower after working solidly for 72 hours at Merrill Lynch
The Guardian
23 August 2013

Bank of America said it would form a working group to look at its office culture, especially the hours worked by younger staff.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch will review its working practices and culture of long hours following the death of a German intern last week, who colleagues said had pulled three all-nighters in a row before being discovered by emergency services.

One of the world's largest banks issued a statement on Friday afternoon expressing shock at the death of 21-year-old Moritz Erhardt, who was working in Merrill Lynch's investment banking division, and announced a review of working practices with a special focus on junior members of staff.

Erhardt, from south-west Germany, was found dead in a shower cubicle at his temporary accommodation in east London last Thursday evening.

The death of the "dedicated" student sent shockwaves through the world of global finance, as reports of his alleged extreme working habits sparked debate about the culture of punishing hours in some high-profile financial divisions.

A Bank of America statement said: "We are deeply shocked and saddened by the news of Moritz Erhardt's death. Moritz Erhardt was popular amongst his peers and was a highly diligent intern at our company with a bright future.

"Our immediate priority is to do everything we can to continue to support the Erhardt family, our interns and impacted employees at this extremely difficult time. We have also convened a formal senior working group to consider the facts as they become known, to review all aspects of this tragedy, to listen to employees at all levels and to help us learn from them."

A spokesman from the bank said the panel would review "all aspects of working practices with a particular focus on our junior population". He added: "We're going to look at everything."

He said it was too early to say how long the panel would take to complete the study but it would involve very senior members at the multinational bank who would have the capability to bring in third parties for extra scrutiny.

"If the committee decides it wants some additional expertise then they can go and hire it," the spokesman said. "We will look at hard factual evidence. We want a lot of employee feedback and we're going into this with no preconceptions as to what the outcome will be."

The exact circumstances surrounding Erhardt's death are yet to be officially determined. The coroner's court at Poplar told the Guardian that no decision had yet been taken as to whether an inquest would go ahead. A toxicology report as part of the autopsy conducted by Prof Petter Vanezis, was yet to be filed.

A fellow intern at the bank described the aspiring student as a "superstar", adding: "He worked very hard and was very focused. We typically work 15 hours a day or more and you would not find a harder worker than him." He told the Evening Standard: "He seemed a lovely guy and was very popular with everyone. He was tipped for greatness."

According to his biography on the social media platform Seelio, Erhardt said he was naturally inquisitive and had previously stated that he'd undertaken work experience at Morgan Stanley, and Deutsche Bank's corporate finance division.

Polly Courtney, author of Golden Handcuffs and an intern at Merrill Lynch in 2001 before its merger with Bank of America, said the culture of punishingly long hours was endemic. "During my internship, all-nighters were like a rite of passage. They were discussed among us in the Merrill Lynch canteen each night with an outward sense of loathing, but tinged with pride. You weren't seen as a 'proper' analyst until you'd worked through the night.

"It wasn't just a culture of long hours and hard work; it was more a culture of desperately trying to impress, with 'face time' – pretending to be hard at work even when you were done for the night – and backstabbing – taking credit for a job well done, blaming others for problems – both commonplace.

"Ultimately, the money and perks could never make up for the exhaustion or the lack of control we all had over our lives, but it took most of us a few years to realise this. Looking back, the money was just an anaesthetic."

It's Not the Test That Made Them Cheat

It's ridiculous to say that teachers and administrators in Georgia and elsewhere committed crimes only because they had to give high-stakes tests to students.

The Georgia indictments are, in fact, just the tip of the iceberg of White Chalk Crime in schools.

The indicted educators tried to get rewards that they had no right to, and to take them away from those who deserved them. This happens all the time in schools. It's the reason the education system is failing. The wrong people are in charge of most districts, and too many of the wrong people are teaching kids.

If we had a system for correctly evaluating teachers, like this one, we wouldn't need to test kids so much, and we would save billion dollars a year. We could trust the teachers to do their job, and part of that job is to know exactly what each child knows and how each child learns best. Standardized testing could go back to its original purpose: to make an official determination of which kids are most advanced academically.

It's Not the Test That Made Them Cheat
By Michael J. Feuer
Edweek.org.
April 9, 2013

News came down, or up, earlier this month about the indictment of the former Atlanta schools chief Beverly Hall and 35 other current and former officials for their alleged roles in a massive cheating scandal that has rocked the city for the past three years.

The best coverage of this story is by Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Heather Vogell and her colleagues, whose fine journalism uncovered the muck.

There is nothing good to say about cheating on tests, which, in this extraordinary case, involves allegations of tampering with student answers, racketeering, theft, influencing witnesses, conspiracy, and making false statements. It’s wrong, period, and if Ms. Hall et al. are found guilty, they will hopefully use their time in jail to think about the damage they have caused to the kids, to the system, and to the public’s trust in schools and in the measures we use to gauge their quality.

Still, some of the reactions to the scandal have been surprising, if not scandalous in their own right. The most troubling response comes from people opposed to standardized testing generally and to current federal policy specifically. They somewhat gleefully use this sorry episode as the ultimate smoking gun, the perfect we-told-you-so case that clinches their claims about the evils of testing, and, by extension, the entire reform movement. It’s a big nail, they hope, in the coffin of test-based accountability.

"Shall we excuse individual or group criminality because certain social institutions create pressures for greed and misconduct?"

Among the more remarkable statements is one posted by William C. Ayers on Valerie Strauss’ Washington Post blog. For Bill Ayers, an education professor emeritus from the University of Illinois at Chicago, the Atlanta story proves that “teaching toward a simple standardized measure and relentlessly applying state-administered (but privately developed and quite profitable) tests to determine the ‘outcomes’ both incentivizes cheating and is a worthless proxy for learning.”

Mr. Ayers goes further. Not only does he attribute the alleged cheating to the testing policy, thereby essentially absolving Ms. Hall and her colleagues of their own ethical and professional lapses, but he uses the example to issue a sprawling condemnation of the U.S. Department of Education, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and even the president. As he puts it, “the road to the massive cheating scandal in Atlanta runs right through the White House.”

I have four problems with this logic (echoed in other commentaries, such as Jason Stanford’s bold assertion in the Huffington Post that “high-stakes testing makes cheating inevitable”; and FairTest’s pronouncement in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution op-ed last year that “[t]hese scandals are the predictable result of overreliance on test scores”).

First, shifting the blame for egregious mischief away from the perpetrators and onto the system strikes me as morally and politically bankrupt. Here’s an analogy to consider: Do we react to the worst instances of tax evasion by condemning the concept of taxation rather than by prosecuting the evaders? I assume that Mr. Ayers would not call for abolition of the graduated income tax as a way to finance public goods and redistribute wealth just because the system has its imperfections and because some people lie on their tax returns. Shall we excuse individual or group criminality because certain social institutions create pressures for greed and misconduct? Banking executives accused of fraud will be delighted.

Second, even if one could make an evidence-informed case that testing “inevitably” leads to illegal behavior—as if high-stakes testing overwhelms the human capacity for moral choice—there is the added problem of guilt by association. Pinning the responsibility for the Atlanta disaster on the White House is an extravagant example of misdirected blame. Maybe current federal policies lead to unwanted outcomes, such as narrowing of the curriculum and teaching to the test, but that’s a far cry from the outright fraud of the sort listed in the Atlanta indictment. Nothing in the No Child Left Behind law requires states or districts to use test scores to fire teachers and principals or to protect and reward those who achieve targets by tampering with answer sheets. In any case, there’s no evidence that federal policy causes cheating, or that “cheating is inevitable.”

Third, indicting testing, rather than cheating, undermines the possibility for reform in the design and uses of tests. The compelling logic in Campbell’s Law—“The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decisionmaking, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures ...” —is supported by abundant empirical evidence on the effects of overreliance on tests for accountability.

But what’s often ignored in the popular frenzy against testing, especially in the wake of cheating scandals, is the benefits side of the argument: Tests can help gauge individual learning, give teachers additional information about their students’ progress, provide objective indicators of student achievement, and expose inequalities in the allocation of educational resources.

We may never be able to completely “overturn” Campbell’s Law, but what’s needed is a sensible approach to assessing the ratio of benefits to costs and to the design of mechanisms meant to keep the ratio strongly positive.

Fourth, it turns out that in Atlanta there were schools, and kids, that actually did improve during Ms. Hall’s tenure, according to data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress. As U.S. Commissioner of Education Statistics Sean P. “Jack” Buckley noted, “There were obviously rampant violations of testing integrity going on there, but there were also schools there that were legitimately improving.”

We shouldn’t allow score gains inflated from cheating to be misconstrued as evidence that any measured improvement in student learning—especially among poor and minority children—must always be the result of cheating or other mischief. This kind of smoking-gun logic saps the morale of educators, parents, and policymakers working in behalf of our most disadvantaged students and provides free ammunition to those who believe investments in public education are essentially futile. Just when we education researchers and social scientists are facing increasingly mean-spirited political challenges to our profession, Bill Ayers’ and others’ evidence-free diatribes further erode public confidence in the credibility of our work. One can only hope that the temptations of guilt by association won’t prevail, and that the research community as a whole won’t be blamed for the shoddy logic of some of its members.

Michael J. Feuer is a professor of education policy, the dean of the graduate school of education and human development at the George Washington University, and president-elect of the National Academy of Education.

Rutgers Trial: Tyler Clementi's nemesis Dharun Ravi Sentenced to 30 Days in Jail

Trying to gain popularity by abusing outsiders seems to be a typical tactic of human beings. It's the preferred strategy of both student and teacher cliques in schools. It's known as "girl culture" but obviously it's practiced by men, too.

And, of course, witness tampering is very common in schools. I saw it firsthand in Chula Vista Elementary School District. Administrators do it as a matter of course. It's appropriate that there should be some punishment for a crime that undermines our justice system.

Rutgers Trial: Dharun Ravi Sentenced to 30 Days in Jail
By MICHAEL KOENIGS, CANDACE SMITH and CHRISTINA NG
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J.
ABC News May 21, 2012

Former Rutgers student Dharun Ravi was sentenced to 30 days in jail by a New Jersey judge today for spying on his roommate's gay tryst. Ravi's freshman roommate Tyler Clementi committed suicide days later.

"I do not believe he hated Tyler Clementi," Judge Glenn Berman told the court. "He had no reason to, but I do believe he acted out of colossal insensitivity."

Ravi must report to Middlesex Adult Correctional Center on May 31 at 9 a.m. for his probationary sentence.

"I heard this jury say, 'guilty' 288 times--24 questions, 12 jurors. That's the multiplication," Berman said. "I haven't heard you apologize once."...




Rutgers webcam case: Victim's family wants prison for Dharun Ravi
By Tina Susman
May 21, 2012

...A jury last March found Ravi, who is now 20, guilty of invasion of privacy and a host of other crimes, including hate crimes, which could bring at least 10 years in prison. Ravi denied wrongdoing and denied allegations he was motivated by anti-gay attitudes toward Clementi.

“I believe Mr. Ravi exploited my budding … relationship with Tyler Clementi in his vain attempt to gain attention and popularity with others,” M.B.’s statement, read by attorney Richard Pompelio, said in part. M.B. wrote that he was “devastated” to learn he had been “placed under a microscope for the sole amusement of Mr. Ravi and his friends,” and that his emotions had not lessened. In fact, he said, they had only intensified.

“I just wanted him to acknowledge that he had done wrong and take responsibility for his conduct,” M.B. said in asking for Ravi to be sentenced to some prison time. He did not specify how much time Ravi should receive. Neither did Clementi's family members.

The statement was one of several made to Judge Glenn Berman in the run-up to the sentencing. After M.B.’s statement, Clementi’s father, Joseph, spoke, as did Clementi’s brother, James, and his mother, Jane, who said Ravi had given her son the cold shoulder from the moment the two young men had met at the start of classes in the fall of 2010.

Joseph Clementi accused Ravi of acting “without a thought” of how his actions might affect his son or his son’s date when he set up the secret video cam. “And he did it in a cold and calculating manner and then he tried to cover it up,” said Clementi, who at one point seemed about to break down but who kept on speaking after briefly halting.

“Mr. Ravi still does not get it, he has no remorse, and he has said he was genuinely surprised that a jury could find him guilty,” Clementi said before his surviving son, James, delivered another impassioned statement tinged with bitterness toward Ravi.

“My family has never heard an apology…the behavior I saw in the courtroom…suggests a complete lack of concern for my brother or the pain inflicted on him,” said James Clementi. “I watched as Dharun slept through court as if it were not something worth staying awake for,” he said of the trial, which ended with the guilty verdicts in March.

“Through it all, I bit my tongue.” But James Clementi added that his brother’s “fate was sealed” from the moment a computer randomly assigned him to share a room with Ravi. “He could never have known the viper’s nest he was walking into,” he said...



Guilty verdict in Rutgers webcam spying case
By David Ariosto
CNN
March 17, 2012

...His roommate, Tyler Clementi, killed himself in 2010 after learning of webcam spying
Ravi was not charged directly with Clementi's death

A former Rutgers University student accused of spying on and intimidating his gay roommate by use of a hidden webcam was found guilty Friday of all counts -- including invasion of privacy and the more severe charges of bias intimidation -- in a case that thrust cyberbullying into the national spotlight.

Dharun Ravi, 20, was also found guilty of witness tampering, hindering apprehension and tampering with physical evidence, and could now face up to 10 years in jail and deportation to his native India.

How unhealthy is teacher culture? Suggestions to create a culture of collaboration

In my experience, far too many teachers spend their energy trying to sabotage other teachers rather than improving their own teaching. The phrases "teamwork" and "collaboration" are often just a cover for team dysfunction. The reality is that teacher cliques tend to operate with the tactics of high school girl culture.

Response: Several Ways Teachers Can Create A Supportive Environment For Each Other
By Larry Ferlazzo
Education Week
November 29, 2011

S.H. asked:

Our school culture has a growing sense of [unhealthy] competitiveness. I believe a lot of this stems from the fact that our administration does not recognize (or maybe they do and simply don't voice) teacher expertise using specific, positive praise. We do receive thanks yous - but they tend to be blanket statements and pretty general. (For example, "Thank you Ms. _____ for helping your team out.")

This appears to have led to some teachers to measure themselves against others. Rather than feeling grateful that the students in our school are being taught by many talented teachers, it has become a zero-sum game and fed rivalries and pettiness.

It's sad for me to admit this, but I don't think there's a ton of hope in my administration changing their ways. I guess my question is, how can teachers create a sincere, supportive environment for each other?

I've asked Bill Ferriter and Parry Graham, co-authors of Building a Professional Learning Community at Work: A Guide to the First Year, to provide guest responses to this tricky question, and also include some excellent reader responses later in this post.

I think they offer excellent specific suggestions. The one thought I'd like to contribute is that a challenge to many of us -- whether it is how we operate as teachers with our colleagues or with our students, or if we are administrators or policymakers -- is that it's easy to get caught up in the belief that power (or potential advancement, or success -- whatever you want to call it) is a finite pie -- that if you get some that means I will have less. The reality in the vast majority of instances is that the more I share with you, the bigger the whole pie gets and greater possibilities are created for everyone.

If I share my lesson plan with you, that really means that you might be able to make it better for both of us. If I tell you about the challenges that I faced in the classroom today, instead of making me appear weak, it instead demonstrates that I have the self-confidence to share and hear ideas from others who have probably experienced similar problems (or will in the future).

This perspective of the "pie getting bigger" is a core belief of community organizers (which I was for nineteen years prior to becoming a teacher). The first step towards making this happen in any institution or neighborhood is to build relationships -- an exchange of personal and professional stories -- so that people can learn the hopes, dreams and challenges of each other. The trust that develops during these conversations is the key building block towards countless possibilities...

Response From Bill Ferriter:

Bill Ferriter teaches 6th grade language arts in North Carolina, where he was named a Regional Teacher of the Year for 2005-2006. He is a member of The Teacher Leaders Network.

Another factor that feeds rivalries and pettiness in PLCs is the unhealthy push in many districts and states to use standardized test scores to rate and sort teachers.
Anytime that we try to assign numbers to individual teachers--rather than recognize that improvements in student performance come from collective reflection around practice AND the collective contributions of all of the practitioners that work with a group of children--competition is inevitable.

One way to address this is to establish a team norm that collaborative efforts AREN'T about studying successful people. Instead, they are about studying successful PRACTICES. While that may seem like a subtle bit of semantic gymnastics, it is an essential shift made by every healthy learning team. Conversations focused on the practices--instead of the people--that produce the best results are safer for everyone.

More importantly, they send the message that by working together to enhance and amplify effective instructional practices, a learning team can make tangible improvements in student achievement.

You'll have to be militant about language in order to cement this norm into your collaborative work, though.

Because teachers are (1). surrounded by efforts to tie performance to individuals instead of collaborative groups and (2). used to working in isolation, it is only natural to see competitive teacher-centered language slip into our conversations.

"Wow," we'll say, "Mary is a master! Look at her student's scores on the last assessment."

Instead, we should be saying, "Wow. Mary has discovered a practice that works! Look at her student's scores on the last assessment. How did you teach those skills, Mary?"
When your team stops talking about teachers and starts talking about teaching--or more accurately, student learning--you'll begin to erase the competition and defensiveness that is destroying your collaborative work.

Response From Dr. Parry Graham:

Dr. Parry Graham is the current principal of Luftkin Road Middle School in the Wake County Public School System. He is also an adjunct professor in the education department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

From what I can tell, there are two levels to this complex question. The first level is, what can an individual teacher do to impact the culture of her individual professional learning team? The second level is, what can teachers do to impact the culture of their schools?

At the team level (or department level or grade level), I think there are a couple steps a teacher can take. First, model what you think is positive behavior: don't gossip about other teachers, keep comments about others positive, praise others when you see something worth praising. Second, bring up your observations in team meetings. Mention your perceptions of negativity during a team meeting, ask if others have similar perceptions, and identify specific behaviors at the team level that can help to build a positive team culture.

At the school level, things get more complicated. First, I am somewhat dubious that a relatively simple behavior on the part of the administrative team--i.e., not recognizing teacher expertise using specific praise--could be the primary factor underlying a competitive culture throughout a school. School cultures are complex creatures that typically result from years of behaviors, actions, attitudes, and beliefs. Yes, administrators have some control over culture, but my guess is that the factors underlying this school's culture go much deeper.

So get involved in the kinds of groups that can influence school culture. If they exist, volunteer to serve on the school's improvement or leadership team, on curriculum committees, or on a hospitality group. If your backyard will handle it, host a schoolwide barbeque to bring teachers together outside of school. Set up a Friday afternoon club that meets after school to decompress over beverages of choice. In short, work to improve the relationships between the adults in the building, one interaction at a time.

Reader Responses

Kristen Hewett:

Building a sense of family and community spirit has been something that my school has struggled with for the past few years. As a mentor to our beginning teachers, one thing that I have started this year has been to ask them to select a staff member who exemplifies a certain trait that they admire and would like to emulate and have them let this teacher know this through a short note or a card. My hope is that this will allow my beginning teachers to make connections with other staff members and that it will help to build morale. My ultimate goal is to take this idea and slowly branch it out into other areas and begin a "pay it forward" type of movement. I know that this is just one small step, but my hope is that our small steps will eventually spark bigger changes.

Tyrion Lannister shares a way not to create a supportive environment:

My old school ordered teachers to collaborate, and then graded our collaboration according to a rubric.

Which part of “PUBLIC schools” don’t you understand?

The Educated Reporter
December 11, 2009
Which part of “PUBLIC schools” don’t you understand?
Linda Perlstein

Major-league kudos to Michael Miner at the Chicago Reader, who writes about the culture of fear in that city’s school system that shuts out reporters—and, by virtue, the public. Reporters around the country tell me it has gotten worse for them, nowhere moreso than in districts led by big-shot reformers. There is no justification for filtering every single contact between journalists and educators through PR people, or creating a climate in which nobody feels free to talk about ... anything.

Miner writes that the head flack at Chicago schools “spoke of the value of having ‘everybody on the same page.’” Ack. I could rant pretty thoroughly about how creepy and unproductive it is to want everyone in a massive organization to be on the same page—and foray into my loathing of how “being a team player,” which principals say all the time, has come to mean “not questioning anything”—but perhaps today is the day I should start trying to blog shorter.

I’ll just say two things:

1. The “same page” climate means that only the crankiest, most out-there gadflies have the guts to question or criticize, which is not as productive as an honest dialogue among everyone.

2. Reporters should write forthrightly, in the stories themselves or on their blogs, about every roadblock they face in this regard.

COMMENTS

john thompson said...

"Everyone on the same page" may be the most destructive cliche in education. It tends to be an exxcuse for ... whatever, as in "this will only work if everyone is on the same page."

If its Tuesday, everyone must be on the same page, is the most destructive sentiment around. One of the best lines in The Wire was the teacher's comment on nonstop test prep, "this year the term is curriculum alignment."

How does the Chicago flack reconcile his statement with secretary Duncan's recent endorsement of "creative insubordination?"



dlaufenberg said...

In a time of technological development that makes transparency so easy, it is interesting to see the 'age of accountability' in education coupled with less access for the media. How perfectly contradictory.




Mar 1, 2011
What Happens When Schools Shut Me Out
by Emily Alpert

I heard recently that the four small high schools on the Kearny High campus are slated to lose their nurse. While other schools have trimmed back a few days of nursing, the Kearny campus is going from a full time nurse to none. It's the most dramatic cutback in nursing I've heard about in San Diego Unified.

What will that mean for Kearny? I wanted to find out by shadowing the school nurse to see what she did. The nurse was OK with the idea. But after a week of going back and forth with Laura Bellofatto, one of the Kearny principals, I was told in an email that "we are not moving forward with the visit."

Why? I still don't know. Getting shut out of schools happens to me much more often than I'd like. While California law does not require journalists to register with the principal to gain access to a school, San Diego Unified policies give principals the ultimate say over whether journalists are allowed in.

I can walk onto a school without principal permission. But teachers and other staff are often reluctant to talk to me if they haven't heard from their principal that I'm coming to campus. So I ask first. And that has made a big difference in which stories I tell and how I tell them.

Some schools just don't return my calls. I've been sending emails and phone messages to Michael Jimenez, the principal of Serra High, for a month. I don't have any specific story in mind; I just want to visit the Tierrasanta school since I've never been there. Principal Jimenez, if you see this, please call!

Others tightly control media access. For instance, the King-Chavez charter schools require all media questions to go through their CEO. When I rung up a teacher after school to ask about how an infusion of federal money was impacting his classroom, he said he couldn't talk to me directly about it. Instead I had to email CEO Tim Wolf my questions for the teacher, who emailed responses back to Wolf.

This might just sound like griping about people making it harder for me to do my job. (OK, a little bit of it is.) But the bigger reason that I get frustrated is that it makes it impossible to show what really happens in schools — good, bad, ugly or fabulous. Does it matter if Kearny loses its nurse or not? It's really hard to tell if you can't sit down and see what she does. And at a time when San Diego Unified could be cutting back significantly on nursing, it's something that parents, elected officials and the public should know about.

This isn't just a problem in San Diego. Linda Perlstein, who helps education reporters around the country as the public editor for the Education Writers Association, wrote last year:

There is no justification for filtering every single contact between journalists and educators through PR people, or creating a climate in which nobody feels free to talk about ... anything. ... The "same page" climate means that only the crankiest, most out-there gadflies have the guts to question or criticize, which is not as productive as an honest dialogue among everyone.

Thankfully, most schools are willing to let me in. For instance, Principal Stephanie Mahan at Carver, a K-8 school in Oak Park, was incredibly helpful when I wanted to know about their unusually small classes. Mahan spoke candidly with me, introduced me to teachers who talked to me on their own, and let me watch classes in action as long as I liked. That made the difference between hearing small classes matter to Carver and seeing why they do.

Of course, getting into a school doesn't mean school leaders always love what I write. And I don't expect schools to spend a lot of time accommodating me — that's not their job and it shouldn't be.

But I worry when public schools shut the media out. And frankly, it usually makes me way more suspicious than anything I find out when I actually get into schools.


COMMENTS

Genxer65

Emily: I must agree with you that this sounds suspicious. Everyone's busy, but I think it is more of a fear of the bad reality getting out, than someone not being willing to accommodate a reporter. I'd rather know the truth and the reality; be it good bad or ugly. It is what it is and as taxpayers, we have the right to know.


Maura Larkins

It's surprisingly rare to find a school where the staff is truly in a learning mode, willing to freely discuss the best solutions for problems. Usually the decision-making process is controlled by a few powerful teachers and/or administrators. If everybody and his brother were sticking his nose into how the school operates, offering suggestions and asking for explanations, that would make the whole process less comfortable for those in control. But a little discomfort is needed in our failing schools. If the adults don't know how to solve problems, how can they teach that skill to students?

The cool kids really are that mean

The bad news is that teacher culture is similar to high school culture.

The cool kids really are that mean
By Eryn Brown
Los Angeles Times
February 8, 2011

It's something your teenage child already knows well: Those popular kids can be mighty mean.

But he or she might not be clued in to the conclusion drawn by a paper released Tuesday in the American Sociological Review, which found that the more central you are to your school's social network, the more aggressive you are as well -- unless you're at the top of the heap, in which case you're more likely to give your peers a break.

“By and large, status increases aggression, until you get to the very top,” said the study's lead author, UC Davis sociologist Robert Faris. “When kids become more popular, later on they become more aggressive.”

The study asked boys and girls in three North Carolina counties to list their five best friends, five people they had picked on (physically, verbally, or indirectly through ostracism and the like), five people who had picked on them and a variety of other questions about socioeconomic background, dating habits and so on.

The more connected a student was, the more likely he or she was to engage in hostile acts, suggesting that students see aggression as key to attaining and maintaining status.

As to why the most popular kids were less aggressive, the researchers suggested that it could be simply because they're genuinely super-nice. But a more likely explanation, said Faris, is that the kings of the hill simply have nothing to gain by lashing out. Striving with claws bared just makes them look insecure and weak.

Dan Kindlon, a Harvard psychologist and author of the books "Raising Cain" and "Alpha Girls"...

Are You Trapped in a 'Compliance Culture'?

Are You Trapped in a 'Compliance Culture'?
Education Week

Our book club discussion with Kathleen Cushman, author of Fires in the Mind: What Kids Can Tell Us About Motivation and Mastery, is going on all this week. Here's a sampling of some of the topics that have come up so far:

• Are teachers weighed down by a "compliance culture" in schools, and how do they balance curriculum demands with deeper, more student-centered learning models?
• What "small decisions" can you make as a teacher to spark students' engagement in a lesson?
• Do we overestimate the amount of direction students need from adults?
• Do prescriptive lessons diminish student creativity and motivation?
• How important is relevance in lessons? How do students develop the intellectual discipline to stick with assignments that don't seem relevant or exciting to them?
Sounds interesting, doesn't it? Share your ideas, experiences, and questions. Join the discussion. (You don't have to have read the book.)

Teachers demand respect, but don't give it: RI school that fired, rehired teachers faces new struggles as instructors quit, call out sick

I am familiar with teacher culture, and so I'm not surprised by this story. Teacher culture is very much like high school "girl" culture.

RI school that fired, rehired teachers faces new struggles as instructors quit, call out sick
ERIC TUCKER Associated Press
January 6, 2011

CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. (AP) — The teachers at Central Falls High School struck a deal to get their jobs back last year after the entire staff was fired in a radical, last-ditch attempt to raise student performance. But if the administrators thought the teachers would be grateful for a second chance, they were wrong.

Many teachers aren't showing up for work, often calling out sick. Several abruptly quit within the first few weeks of the school year. Administrators have had to scramble to find qualified substitutes and have withheld hundreds of student grades because of the teacher absences.

The progress that the city's school board — and the Obama administration — had hoped for seems increasingly, and alarmingly, elusive.

The problems come despite a labor agreement that union leaders and administrators in this poor, heavily immigrant city trumpeted as a breakthrough at Central Falls High, a struggling school of roughly 840 students where just 7 percent of 11th-graders were proficient in math in 2009.

"I expected when everyone came to the school that there would be more of a shared focus on making sure that everything was successful," said state Education Commissioner Deborah Gist. "At this point, we're concerned about whether or not people are going to be able to let go of the past and work together toward moving forward."

Exactly what's causing all the problems is unclear, but both sides acknowledge lingering discontent over the firings and the changes that followed.

Richard Kinslow, an English teacher who has not been calling out sick, said a new management team that was put in place was inexperienced and failed to offer support for teachers or crack down on rampant discipline problems, including what he said were physical and verbal assaults on staff members by students...

Is teacher culture harming education rather than helping it?

In my experience, politically powerful teachers, even those who are close to clueless when it comes to teaching, have a tendency to sabotage good teaching by their peers rather than promoting it. Emily Alpert writes:

"I recently talked to an elementary school teacher who said he regularly gets stellar test scores out of students who came into his classes woefully behind. Why, he wondered, wasn't San Diego Unified calling him to ask what he was doing?"

Teachers: Give Us Your Best Idea
August 25, 2010
Voice of San Diego
Emily Alpert

Yesterday I wrote about how San Diego Unified is seeking to reform schools by letting them come up with their own ideas and share their successes. My trusty editor Andrew Donohue asked me a great question: Don't schools do this already?

The answer is yes, but probably not enough. I've heard school district officials talk about bringing principals to see other schools or sharing strategies they saw elsewhere in the school district.

But sometimes, ideas just don't travel very far. I recently talked to an elementary school teacher who said he regularly gets stellar test scores out of students who came into his classes woefully behind. Why, he wondered, wasn't San Diego Unified calling him to ask what he was doing?

So let's start that conversation.

Teachers, parents, principals and everyone else: What are you doing that other schools could learn from? What is the best idea or strategy you have that no one has ever asked you about? ...

The similarities between teacher culture and police culture

I was a teacher all my working life, so I'm not terribly knowledgeable about the workplace culture of other occupations.

People have compared teacher culture to high school "mean girls" culture.

But I've been amazed at how similar teacher culture is to police culture. Here is a story that made me think I'd feel at home in a station house:

The NYPD Tapes: Inside Bed-Stuy's 81st Precinct

I've known two main types of teachers, the nurturing type, and the policing type. But all types are asked to present a superficial appearance that is often not compatible with the truth, and to engage in actions that are not compatible with teaching children.

Teacher culture: does it explain why there's a higher turnover in small high schools?

New research pinpoints factors that affect teacher turnover
By Sarah Karp
Catalyst Chicago
June 29, 2009


Small high schools, once heralded as a way to build stronger relationships between teachers and students, have some of the highest rates of teacher turnover in the district. This is one of the more interesting findings from the report The Schools Teachers Leave, released today by the Consortium on Chicago School Research.

Linking teacher personnel data, survey data and information about schools and communities, researchers found that Chicago’s one-year turnover rate is similar to that of other schools in Illinois and across the nation: about 80 percent of teachers stay at their school from one year to the next. But within five years, most CPS schools lose about half of their teachers.

At both the elementary and high school level, small schools had higher turnover than larger schools. Elementary schools with more than 700 students retained 83 percent of their teachers from year-to-year, compared to just 78 percent at schools with fewer than 350 students. Similarly, larger high schools retained 83 percent of teachers; small high schools, just 73 percent...

Much of the report seeks to pinpoint why teachers leave.

At small high schools, researchers said that more intensive work may be required, as teachers are supposed to reach out and bond with students. Also, school conflicts might be more acute...



http://www.catalyst-chicago.org/notebook/index.php/entry/347/New_research_pinpoints_factors_that_affect_teacher_turnover