Outstanding educators know that if a school has great teachers, it is a great school. Teachers are a school’s keystone of greatness. More importantly, all of their audiences take the same view. If my third-grade daughter has a great teacher, I think highly of her school. Otherwise, I see her school as less-than-stellar no matter how many awards she wins, no matter how many students earn top test scores, and no matter how many plaques adorn the main office. Students share this perspective. If a high school sophomore has four great teachers (out of four!) each day, then believe me, that sophomore will think the school is great. As the quality of teachers drops, so does a student’s opinion of the school. All the way from kindergarten through college, the quality of the teachers determines our perceptions of the quality of the school.
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School improvement is actually a very simple concept. However, like many simple concepts, it is not easy to accomplish. There are really two ways to improve a school significantly: get better teachers, and improve the current teachers.
We can spend a great deal of time and energy looking for programs that will solve our problems, but too often, these programs do not bring the improvement or growth we seek. Instead, we must focus on what really matters. It is never about programs; it is always about people. This does not mean that no program can encourage or support improvement of people within our school. Each of us can think of many innovations that were touted as the answer in education. Too often, we expect them to solve all our woes. When they do not, we see them as the problem. However, no program inherently leads to that improvement. Believe me, if there were such a program, it would already be in place in our schools. It is people, not programs, that determine the quality of a school.
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It’s Not What You Do, It’s How You Do It
All teachers are aware that the students in their schools have individual needs. Educators must be equally aware that faculty members also vary in their individual abilities and approaches. Whether the arena is classroom management or instructional techniques, effective educators focus on the people, not on the programs. They see programs as solutions only when the programs bring out the best in their teachers.
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Banning lectures from our classrooms won’t improve our schools. The person, not the practice, needs to change. And, as we mentioned in Chapter 1, the first step may be the hardest: The teacher must recognize the need to improve.
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Great teachers never forget that it is people, not programs, that determine the quality of a school.
