This isn’t broken

It’s taken me many years to see the pattern, but I finally do:

A teacher comes along wanting to be part of my school. On the surface, they are going along with things. In every training meeting, they agree with my points and agree to implement my feedback.

But in reality, they are going their own way. Their underlying motivation for joining the staff at an alternative school is to push against the status quo, and they keep doing it even once they’re on the team. In other words, they are wary of me because I’m an administrator. I must be the enemy, part of the system they are pushing against. Therefore, they seek to subvert my authority and ingratiate themselves with the students — often without even realizing that they’re doing it.

In designing my educational programs, I’ve sought to create a place where students, parents, and teachers are all on the same team. Instead of adversarial relationships in which the teacher sets the bar and the student succeeds or fails to clear it, we partner with the students to set the bar together and collaborate to reach a mutual goal. We coach them on how to think, how to pace themselves, how to talk to themselves — how to learn.

The teachers who are uncomfortable with our approach tend to have unresolved issues from their own schooling. They see themselves and their former classmates in the students. They tend to label students with specific identities (the class clown, the sensitive jock, the artist, a “good kid”). They are threatened by assessments of students’ academic abilities because they see such assessments as identities, too; therefore, they understand these abilities as permanent conditions. So when I say, “Anne is struggling with fractions,” they respond, “I think she’s just bored and not trying very hard.” The first story is too uncomfortable, and the second one is familiar and acceptable.

A student like Anne has been labeled as bored or lazy or distractible for years, which is why she’s never had adequate support on fractions. Ironically, the new teacher’s stance actually reinforces the same rigid thinking that she is trying to avoid. In order to help Anne, we have to correctly identify the gap in her knowledge. However, to the teacher who sees herself in Anne, this is too painful. Instead of making Anne the cool, misunderstood rebel, we’re saying that she doesn’t understand fractions — and therefore, we must be saying that Anne (and therefore, the teacher) is permanently inferior. We’re saying that the teacher’s own story about herself is wrong.

It has been fascinating and sad over the years to see how these problems show up. The teacher will tell parents what they want to hear (“Your son is a good kid”) when the rest of the team is hesitant to apply such a pat label to a human being. They’ll work hard to be the “fun one” or the one that all the students confide in. They frame student progress entirely in terms of themselves (“She didn’t understand the concept, but once I helped her, she got it!”). They argue with me about pedagogy or procedures after just a few weeks in the building. And when all else fails, they bring candy for the kids and tell them not to tell me about it.

When a thirteen-year-old whines that no adults understand her, it can certainly be tempting to be that one adult who gets it. Finally, it’s your chance to be there for someone the way you always wished someone could be there for you. But when you’ve known hundreds of adolescents, you realize that their narrative isn’t the only one — and it isn’t the most helpful one. Sometimes, the best way to be there for that thirteen-year-old is to commit the ultimate betrayal and not buy into her bullshit.

It’s hard for someone who wants to fix students to accept that they aren’t broken. It’s hard for someone who wants to fix education to accept that they’re part of a program that, while it isn’t perfect, isn’t broken. And as an administrator, I may not get everything right, but I got into this not because I wanted to be a power-mad Dolores Umbridge, but more of a Dumbledore. I want to leave room for students to make their own decisions and to earn their own success. It isn’t about what they think of me or even whether they like me. It’s not about living vicariously through them, but helping them become who they want to become.

At first, the teachers on my team see the conflicts in our approach. Why are we so flexible in some areas and so firm in others? Why do we spend so much time coaching kids to ask for help, and yet decline to give them a straight answer when they ask certain questions? Why are we so strict about the way the teachers must do things when the students are supposed to have so much freedom? And if Casey wants to be Dumbledore, then why is she so bossy?

Eventually, some of the teachers get on board. They realize that there is a method to the madness. It’s difficult to learn it because you have to throw out so much of what you thought teaching was going to be while dealing with so much baggage from your own schooling. But when you get to the other side, you get the magical experience of meeting students as fellow humans, full of potential and surprises.

Not everyone is going to jibe with my program. And that’s okay. We’re small — we don’t have to be for everyone. For those who are a good fit, this is just right. That goes for students and teachers.

I appreciate that people want to make my program better. But I don’t necessarily have room for them. I already have my own carefully chosen mentors and advisors. I have done this work for years. So much of it is exactly the way I want it. I don’t need anyone to fix it. It’s like this on purpose, for a purpose.