This is a guest post by
Andrew Brennen, a junior at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in Lexington Kentucky, and a member of the Prichard Committee’s Student Voice Initiative.
Like many of my peers nearing the end of high school, I have spent a good part of my life studying teachers up close. If I’ve learned anything from them
beyond the academic content, it’s that the quality of my comprehension is directly proportional to the skill level of the person teaching it.
Apparently, I am not alone in this revelation. The Kentucky Chamber,
whose top public policy priority is education, describes quality of teaching as “the single most important factor in students’ academic success.” And over
the last three decades, the Prichard Committee, a national model for civic engagement in education
advocacy, has identified teacher effectiveness as a primary focus.
Recently, I had the chance to observe one of the Prichard Committee’s
Team on Teacher Effectiveness
meetings in Frankfort. The team consists of legislators, parents, teachers, business leaders and other education advocates who are charged with studying
Kentucky’s approach to training and retaining high-quality teachers and making policy recommendations. I was invited there as part of the Prichard
Committee’s Student Voice Initiative, a group of Kentucky high school students who are building a case about whether and how to better integrate student
perspectives into the organization’s work.
From my seat with other observers, I watched as representatives from both Asbury College and the University of Louisville described their approaches to training new teachers. They were proud of their
programs which provide teaching students with hands-on, classroom experience from the very beginning. By partnering with local elementary schools, their
college students insert themselves into the culture of the school and become a part of the students’ lives.
We also heard from Dr. Deborah Ball, dean of University of Michigan’s College of Education, who offered insight into the effectiveness--or rather ineffectiveness--of
the common practice of throwing new teachers into the classrooms before they really know how to teach. She drew a stark contrast between learning the
content material required to be a teacher and learning how to convey that understanding to young people.
The meeting in Frankfort was energizing. It gave me a new respect for the teaching profession and ideas of how to go about addressing teacher effectiveness
from a policy perspective. But despite all the wisdom gleaned from the room that day, I couldn’t shake the sense that something vital was missing.
The more I thought about it, the more I was struck by the absence of secondary student perspectives. If more people like me were asked to sit at the
decision-making table, we might raise some different questions:
· When teachers-in-training do their student teaching in a classroom, what is done to ensure that learning is not disrupted for the students in the
classroom?
· How can students in the classroom help new teachers get the most out of their experience?
· What opportunities, if any, are there for students to provide formal comments to teaching colleges about what is working--or not--in their classrooms?
Students offer unique perspectives on the problems facing education in this country. We are there every day witnessing school-related issues that often
times go either unnoticed or unaddressed. Students also have the greatest stake in the education system. We care, and many of us want to be involved in
applying our years of experience in the classroom to making that experience better. Wouldn’t it be something if, when it comes to improving our schools,
adult decision-makers would start to see us as policy-making partners?
Andrew wrote this op-ed which appeared in the
Lexington Herald Leader
.
(As you advocate for education reform in your communities are there student voices at the table? As I shared in an
October 2012 post
about the importance of student voices, I urge you to ensure that our students have an opportunity to provide needed input as we move forward. Do you know of best practices for student voices at the table? Please share them with us.)
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