Taking Initiative to Improve

The common theme that runs through the first four chapters of the book, and is further highlighted in the story of successful reform in Connecticut and North Carolina, is the importance of investing in teachers. Quality teaching is at the heart of student success. Clearly this is an important message for politicians and administrators (as it seems too often get overlooked) but it is probably not much of a surprise to those of us who are ground level practitioners.

So the question becomes, how do the stories of North Carolina and Connecticut and the positive effects of improving teacher quality affect us in our classroom? I believe the first message we need to take from this is that we are the single most influential component when it comes to our student’s success. Often it is easy to point fingers at other factors such as limited resources, lacking family support, poor leadership, etc. for why students do not succeed. Instead, we need to accept that we have the potential to play the largest role in the development and educational experience of our students. The better we are as teachers, the more students will learn and the more likely they will be to succeed. If we fully accept this, then it should be ample motivation to continually improve our practice without being told by the state or district. What happened in North Carolina and Connecticut should be a wake-up call to all of us to take action to continually get better at what we are getting paid to do. If every teacher took such initiative we could expect to see large gains in student achievement without a major statewide reform effort.

Since everyone in this program has in some capacity established themselves as a successful teacher, we have an additional responsibility. We need to take this one step further and assume leadership positions in our schools to help other teachers improve. Using the ideas discussed in the Teacher Leadership course and in the Pay it Forward Projects, we have the capacity and ability to help our colleagues become better educators. Since quality teacher is so heavily correlated with student achievement, we need to take these ideas seriously and act on them. Again, we should not be waiting for top-down instruction or orders to improve. Instead, we need to take initiative, accept our roles as teacher leaders, and help those around us develop as educators.

If teacher quality is the largest predictor of student success, then we must recognize the importance of continually improving and take action to help students by pushing ourselves and our colleagues become better teachers.