ASCD's Fall Conference Begins on an Optimistic Note

Rick Allen

Education reformer Barnet Berry kicked off ASCD’s Fall Conference in Las Vegas, Nev., with his session “Teaching 2030: What We Must Do for Our Students and Our Public Schools—Now and in the Future.” His hopeful message emphasized that despite widespread budget cuts and routine teacher-bashing in the press, it will be educators themselves who are in the best position to develop and create the future of education.

Berry contrasted popular movie depictions of teachers over the course of 30 years, ranging from the negative (think of the boring history teacher  in 1980s Ferris Bueller’s Day Off or 2011’s Bad Teacher played by Cameron Diaz) to the “super teachers” in Stand and Deliver, Dead Poets Society, or Freedom Riders. All extremes are distortions of the teaching profession, Berry said.

Recalling his own days teaching in the late 1970s and his move to academia and consulting, Berry said that he left the profession because he didn’t feel supported by his principal when he sought to improve as a teacher. Berry, who is founder and president of the Center for Teaching Quality (CTQ), a Hillsborough, N.C.,-based organization dedicated to improving student achievement by reforming the teaching profession, also vowed that he would keep advocating for change in schools and resources for that change until teachers are the highest paid “anybody” in a district. 

“Teacherprenuers”  Blur Lines Between Teachers and School Leaders

Key players in the future of education are “teacherpreneurs,” Berry said. These are proven and effective teachers who still teach regularly in a classroom but also are given the time, space, and compensation to lead where needed to reform education.

In a new book Teaching 2030, Berry and 12 experts from the CTQ’s Teacher Leaders Network provide fresh ideas for retooling the teaching profession for the future. For example, schools can make better use of both technology to personalize learning and the latest research on how people learn. New York City Public School’s School of One program, he points out, allows students to use computer technology to advance their learning at their own pace. Teachers take on the role of diagnosticians, who can help determine students' mastery of content and skills that will allow them to move to the next  level.

Berry also highlighted the Teaching Channel, which allows teachers to observe one another and critique one another’s practice. Imagine what it will be like when we open up opportunities for teachers to share their expertise, he said.

Teachers don’t have to be in same room, and students don’t have to be in same class to learn from one another, Berry emphasized. Technology can connect classrooms across the world while still being rooted locally in schools, community centers, or at home.

Promoting Change

Citing a recent Phi Delta Kappa-Gallup poll on the public’s view of teachers, Berry noted that public trust of teachers is quite high, even if the media seems only to report the negative. In fact, 71 percent of those surveyed said they "trust teachers," and 73 percent said that teachers should have freedom and flexibility to teach as they see fit instead of being tied to a script.

“The public actually thinks a great deal about teachers. But they also trust teachers,” Berry said.

He suggested a number of “levers” that can help policymakers and the public embrace a different paradigm of teaching:

• Engage the public to bring about change. Like the recent antismoking movement, we can make this happen, Berry said.
• Think differently about budgets. How can other kinds of budget sources figure into this pool of resources?
• How can  teacher education and preparation be retooled for the future?
• How can educators think differently about teacher accountability? For example, technology can help teachers access data, analyze them themselves, and influence what kinds of data are collected.
• Create conditions to allow teachers to teach effectively in these new types of schools.

Research shows that teachers are the single most important factor in student achievement, and their voices and ideas are crucial for real reform, Berry said. He noted that the March 2012 International Summit on the Teaching Profession, which will bring together education ministers and education union chiefs from all over the world, will include 45 teachers as part of the U.S. delegation.

With teachers as essential players in education reform, Berry suggests, change will happen. He noted that 2011’s International Summit on the Teaching Profession featured progressive ideas from Finland, considered the world’s highflier in both student achievement and the teaching profession. Finland seriously prepares its teachers at government expense, offers staged induction so that new teachers don’t get the most difficult classes, offers ample weekly professional development, and most of all retains its teachers in their profession.

As a call to arms, Berry gave the audience who packed the conference hall a parting quotation from the late Apple founder Steve Jobs: “Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important,  have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”