By Emilie Schwarz
Recently, Bank Street College of Education and Teach for America hosted a panel discussion that explored the findings of featured speaker, Elizabeth Green's, new book: Building a Better Teacher, which was published this past August. President of Bank Street College, Shael Polakow-Suransky, gave a welcome speech to a large, excited audience, followed by an introduction to the panelists presented by Charissa Fernandez, the Executive Director of Teach for America, New York. Prior to the panel discussion, Green gave a brief presentation to the audience on some of the revelations she learned and informative data she gained during the course of her research. The enthusiasm for the topic was palpable, with audience members sitting throughout the raised rows of the auditorium busily scribbling notes from the presentation.
Elizabeth Green is the co-founder, CEO, and editor-in-chief of Chalkbeat, a non-profit news organization that focuses on education policy, education-based effort and improvement in communities. The organization, formerly known as Gotham Schools, has just recently begun to expand its focus beyond the New York City area. Green, who "has been obsessively researching and writing about education since she was 17 years old," came up with the idea for the book after receiving an assignment from the New York Times; she was asked to write an article on teacher quality, which she describes as a "very buzzy topic at the time."
She ultimately wrote the book because she realized that there was a "great disconnect in our national dialogue on how to improve education" and that "a lot of it boils down to a misunderstanding of teaching." In a fashion appropriate for a room full of educators, Green began her talk by conducting an exercise with the audience that walked them through some of the surprising facts that she discovered through her research. The exercise involved a series of three questions, which served to show the audience her two major takeaway points: first, that teaching requires specialized knowledge and skill and second, that education has not been treated this way in the United States. In reflecting on her own attempt at teaching a group of students (as part of her research for her final chapter), Green discovered that she "actually needed some skills that [she didn't] have." According to her anecdote, she "utterly failed" at facilitating a discussion, due to the fact that "[she] just could not keep track of what each student was even saying; [she] was so focused on trying to do all the things at once that [she] knew were important, that [she] had seen experts do, that [she] couldn't even do the fundamental basic thing of hearing what everyone was saying."
Throughout the course of her opening remarks, Green enlightened the audience on key interviews or moments from her book, often siting specific examples that highlight some of her key findings. While most of her takeaway remarks appear to be on the pessimistic side, Green gave the audience and panelists reason to be optimistic. Most notably, she remarked on two final revelations that provide room for growth and improvement in the education system. Using an example she gleaned from research conducted on street children in Brazil, Green discovered that the problem with the disparity in test scores does not stem from the children, but with the school itself. She discovered that the researchers have found that kids who can get the right answer to a problem presented to them in the "language of the street," can get the same problem wrong on paper, presented in the language of schooling. However, this brings her to the more hopeful aspect of her research: children repeat the same mistakes "over and over again;" Green noted that the child from Brazil was making the same type of mathematical error that a student in the United States has made.
Valentine Burr, who works for Bank Street College of Education as both an adviser and an instructor of special education programs, noted many parallels in Green's research to incidences she has seen in reality, stated that teachers need to feel "that they have a voice [...] to advocate for what they think is right for their kids."
As Green put it: "the reality is that there is not an infinite number of mistakes that kids can make. It is actually a pretty discrete number, and we have it in our power to predict those mistakes," concluding that "a boy in Brazil will make the same mistake as a boy in Michigan [...] so we can prepare teachers to anticipate those errors."
Following Green's presentation, a panel discussion commenced, which was hosted by a professor of Teaching and Learning at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development at New York University, Joe McDonald. One of the panelists was Rousseau Mieze, a middle school history teacher at Achievement First Bushwick Middle School. He recently completed his degree at Relay School of Education. Apparently, Green referenced him fifteen times in the book, an experience which Mieze claimed "forced [him] to reflect on [his] experiences" as a teacher. Mieze spoke about the necessity for having a vision as a teacher, saying: "whether [teachers] want to accept it or not, a teacher [is a] leader, and like any leadership position, it requires vision." When asked what his idea of leadership encompassed, Mieze said that it was a combination of "courage and lots of humility."
Meghan Dunn, who has been teaching for over seven years and now serves as the Founding Principal of Riverdale Avenue Community School located in Brooklyn, stated that one of the main foundations of good teaching is the ability "to build trust first." Mieze reflected Dunn's notion of support, stating that it is important to have great people who can both recognize what one does well in the classroom, and also where one needs to improve.
Dunn, who served as New York City Teach for America Corps Member in 2005, prior to earning a master's degree from Bank Street College, stated "if you don't start building that trust, it really doesn't matter what your scheduling looks like or how you use your budget, or what kind of people you have in the building."
Phil Weinberg, another panelist, works for the New York City Department of Education, where he was appointed to the position of Deputy Chancellor for Teaching and Learning. Before entering this new position, Weinberg worked in the field of education for 27 years as a teacher and principal, primarily based in Brooklyn. For him, "we have to embrace the fact that the only thing we can do is collaborate with each other," noting that all of his successes in his 29 years of education were a result of collaboration.
Valentine Burr, who spent years teaching primary and middle school children with emotional and behavioral disabilities prior to stepping into her new role, weighed in on the discussion. In response to what she contributes to the discipline of teaching is that she hopes that part of the work that she does, "what good teacher preparation programs do" is it to help "teachers see their work as a puzzle, a puzzle they need to figure out."#
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