Start with Respect| Professional Development

Alfie Kohn Start with Respect

By SUZIE BOSS

When he was a young teacher, Alfie Kohn remembers "being left to my own devices" to seek out opportunities for professional development that might improve his classroom skills. Back then, he admits, "if an administrator had asked me, 'How's everything going? Anything you need?' — which no one ever did — I wouldn't even have known enough to ask the right questions."

More recently, as an author of seven books on education and human behavior, Kohn, 42, has sharpened his thinking on what will help teachers improve their craft so that they can help children learn to think for themselves. But as this nationally known advocate for child-centered education cautions, "The best kind of staff development is very difficult to sustain and sometimes even impossible to begin when the imperative is higher test scores."

Kohn will have a chance to expand on these thoughts this fall when he is the keynote speaker for Education Now and in the Future, a two-day conference focusing on professional development. Sponsored by the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory and scheduled for October 30-31 in Portland, Oregon, Education Now and in the Future will showcase the latest in research and good practices for educators from throughout the region. As a preview, Kohn spoke recently with Northwest Education about some of the implications of his research.

NORTHWEST EDUCATION: Your latest book, The Schools Our Children Deserve: Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms and "Tougher Standards" (Houghton Mifflin, 1999), makes a powerful case for changing classroom practices so that children will be more avid, active learners. But aren't you asking a lot from teachers?

ALFIE KOHN: Real change may take a generation. As Dewey pointed out, teachers don't necessarily teach the way they were taught to teach. Rather, they teach the way they were taught. We need a cohort of students taught in better, nontraditional classrooms who will eventually become teachers themselves. In the meantime, there are things we can do — and things we can stop doing — as a way to promote better instruction.

NW: What approach is likely to help teachers develop better classroom skills?

KOHN: You can't take even good ideas and shove them down the throats of teachers, because they'll just cough them back. But we can issue an invitation that's respectful and collaborative and appeals to teachers' long-term goals for their students.

NW: What needs to stop?

KOHN: Above all, we need to stop confusing better learning with higher test scores. The extent to which we conflate those two and demand better results on dreadful tests is the extent to which experimentation with more rigorous and engaging kinds of teaching is stopped in its tracks. It's not that standardized test scores are partial or inadequate measures of meaningful teaching and learning. They are often inversely related to meaningful teaching and learning. Every hour that teachers have to spend preparing kids to take standardized tests is an hour not spent improving their craft and helping kids to become critical, creative, curious thinkers.

NW: What happens to teaching when the focus shifts to standardized test scores?

KOHN: You have to ask what's been abandoned in the classroom in order to raise scores. Are students spending their time doing practice tests or more multiple-choice exercises and worksheets? Is there less time in class for following kids' questions and interests? Is it difficult for teachers to build a sense of community, allow for creative play, or develop their students' conflict resolution skills because those things aren't on the test? Raising the scores may be ruining the schools.

NW: Your new book contrasts what you call "Old School," traditional education with more progressive classroom practices. What's the difference?

KOHN: Traditional education is based on treating kids as passive receptacles into which a "bunch o'facts" is poured. Traditional teaching methods teach students to memorize facts and definitions, and have skills "drilled into" them. It's a process that relies on getting the child to listen to lectures, read textbooks, and, often, practice skills by completing worksheets. This approach prevents kids from connecting ideas, exploring deeply, and finding what they're doing important enough to pursue.

NW: So the more progressive approach is about helping children learn to think for themselves?

KOHN: A nontraditional or progressive classroom is a place where a community of learners engages in discovery and invention, reflection and problem solving. What makes it hard for teachers to improve their craft is that many parents, journalists, and public officials are nervous, if not hostile toward the best kind of instruction. Either they don't recognize it, or they are misinformed about its implications and the research supporting it. Or, they figure that if kids are having such a good time, they can't be learning.

NW: As you point out, it takes more skill on the teacher's part to help children be active learners, right?

KOHN: It takes a lot more skill to help children think for themselves than it does just to give them information.

NW: Which leads us back to professional development. How can schools use their time and resources in a way that will lead to better practices in the classrooms?

KOHN: Effective staff development sessions help some teachers reflect on how they can move in the right direction, and help others realize that they're on the right track already. It's important to remember that you can't compel people to learn. You can't compel students if they aren't motivated to get it. Similarly, incarcerating teachers in an auditorium for a mandatory inservice day is likely to generate resentment or at least resignation as people sit in back rows and work crossword puzzles.

NW: What about motivating those teachers who aren't yet motivated to examine their practices?

KOHN: The more a given teacher needs to hear something, the less likely that person will voluntarily show up at the event. That's the damning paradox of staff development.

NW: You've spoken about inviting teachers into staff development opportunities in a way that's more respectful. What would that look like?

KOHN: You can appeal to teachers' long-term goals for their students. You might say, if you want your kids to be interested in science or think like an historian or get hooked on making sense of ideas, then let's take a look at what you've been doing in the classroom. Let's compare that to what else might be available. To have any chance of succeeding, it will take an enormous amount of delicacy and skill and respect on the part of those inviting the teachers to reconsider their methods.

NW: What about the teachers who agree to reconsider how they teach?

KOHN: It takes a fair amount of gumption their part. You're asking them to confront the fact that they may not have been doing things as well as they could — for years. That can be hard to acknowledge. Many teachers will defensively and defiantly pull themselves up and say, I'm a very good teacher, thank you very much. And that's the end of the discussion. You need to give them ongoing support and coaching.

NW: Are there structural changes schools can make to better support teachers?

KOHN: Yes. We can restructure what happens in schools so that teachers are able to be in and out of each others' classrooms. Both the observer and the observed can learn from this process, and it's not construed as an intimidating evaluation session. There also has to be time for teachers to get together and talk about their craft. We need a culture created from the top down that values and encourages the admission of fallibility. That's what will allow teachers to say to their peers, 'I don't know what to do with this kid.' Or, 'I feel like I've reached a dead end in my teaching.'

NW: So asking for help isn't a signal of failure?

KOHN: Right now, experienced teachers assume they're supposed to know what to do. New teachers want to pretend competence. The result is that, individually, people feel too vulnerable to say out loud that they could use some help.

NW: And changing that culture — so that teachers are more free to ask for help, and have time to carry on discussions with their colleagues — will help students learn?

KOHN: I remember a class I had one year that was very difficult. I assumed the kids got together at night to figure out ways to make my life a living hell. I didn't realize until years later that the problem wasn't that the kids were trying to make me miserable. They were trying to make the time pass faster. When I think about the curriculum I was using — full of stuff like, "Our Friend the Adverb" and "Meet Mister Semicolon" — I can't blame them for acting out. But no one ever invited me to think about throwing away that god-awful text or my drill-and-skill assumptions about how learning happens. I didn't understand the connection until years later, when I observed the classrooms of talented, skilled practitioners. If there is a common characteristic of the very best classrooms, it is that kids are taken seriously. Superb teachers strive constantly to imagine how things look from the child's point of view.

Education Now and in the Future will offer participants two days of interactive, skill-building sessions designed to inspire and educate. The conference aims to improve the skills and performance of practitioners who can positively affect student learning and outcomes. Check out the conference Web site at www.nwrel.org/enf/. E-mail questions to enf@nwrel.org, or call NWREL at (503) 275-9500.

And for more information about Alfie Kohn's research, visit his Web site at www.alfiekohn.org.