Solving It --Supporting All Stakeholders to Educate All Students.

Above are the first two episodes of my book Solving It. Below is the transcript of the first chapter. Hope you find it meaningful and share it with others to start the start discussion.

In any school, the most influential stakeholder is the teacher. All other stakeholders exist to support teachers in educating students. However, the mainstream media's obsession with negative news about a few teachers' wrongdoings dehumanizes the teaching profession.

       When we ask teachers about their influences in making important school decisions, most say they have very little. Only a very few authoritative or vocal teachers make all the critical decisions. Most teachers are non-confrontational. "First-year teachers should sit quietly during staff meetings or PLCs," a veteran teacher would say.

       The constant fear of losing their jobs contributes to a toxic culture of fear and conformity in education. It is like a chain that shackles teachers to a prison of conformity, and the sacrifice of their students' learning is an easy ticket to keep their jobs.         

Teachers are too afraid to try new strategies or tools. They are limited to the same websites or resources that other teachers use. Come on! Everyone must use this website. All teachers need to implement this strategy. All teachers need to implement that strategy. The list goes on and on. It is very common in education that someone to go to a conference and brought back a new strategy to force on other teachers even though they have not been thoroughly tested in their classes. Some even went to school administrators to pitch their fantastic ideas to make other teachers do it too. It's so great! Let's do it together! Ignore the fact that those teachers rarely tested the strategy long enough to measure any outcomes. After hours and hours of training and presentations, many teachers would cave in and try it too.

       "Wait… I have questions. It's not working… WTF!" A frustrated teacher would say.

       "Let's give it more time. Let's try another month… semester…year." Some teachers would say.

       Nevertheless, I am not saying that schools should not try new strategies, but it exemplifies the ineffective process of introducing and implementing it. Statistically, making all teachers implement untested "proven" strategies does more harm than you think. It's like throwing all resources at testing a single hypothesis. It's wasting a lot of teachers' time and resources. More importantly, repetitive failures would cause teachers to lose faith in the process.

       After more than ten years in the teaching profession, a common complaint among teachers is the negative impacts of bureaucratic and top-down decisions. In most organizations, it could be effective. When stakeholders who are no longer in the classroom are telling what teachers should do, they assert themselves as leaders in teaching and create more problems. As more non-classroom stakeholders assert their influences on what should happen in teachers' classrooms, they unknowingly alienate the teachers whom they are supposed to support. I remembered very clearly a statement from a director who think that she would be the best teacher if she is back in the classroom because of all the knowledge she's gained being an education leader. Ironically, they think they can be more effective teachers after they left the classrooms for many years.

       I will agree if she's learned to be a better leader.

       The bureaucratic and top-down pressure on classroom teachers is a common frustration among all teachers. Still, no teachers dare to confront those non-classroom specialists. Nevertheless, the problem is more detrimental than teachers' frustration; it causes many other challenging problems for school administrators. Some teachers develop a toxic coping mechanism that "fakes" their ways when someone asks them to try new strategies or tools. The "fake" practices among teachers intoxicates a school with a culture with lies and mistrust. It becomes a culture where everybody is for themselves, despite what they said is for the "good of students." Each stakeholder weaponizes the argument "for students" to minimize their responsibilities by telling how others do their jobs for the "good of students" before looking at the real problems and possible solutions.

"It's how I can make my job easier for me."

Therefore, the most critical mission of this book is to identify the critical roles of different stakeholders in an education system, especially within a school. Perhaps, this is the most complex problem in today's education. Still, no one cares about it because it's almost impossible to solve the problem, or it is not profitable for many consultants. No consultant dares to tell school leaders and administrators that they could be the problem.

       As a current classroom teacher, I wrote this book not to become a specialist or a consultant; instead, I want to analyze the root causes of the most challenging problems that existed in most schools through the lens of teachers, students, and school administrators. Then, we can work together to develop step-by-step and simple solutions with measurable outcomes. As you continue to read this book, I want to apologize if my findings from many years of research may hurt your feelings in any way. In the end, you are the readers and judges of the content in this book.

       Starting from the most important stakeholder, we will attempt to summarize each stakeholder's primary responsibilities in an education system, specifically how they should educate all students with learning equity.

Teachers

       Effective teachers are the heart of any successful school. However, how do we know if a teacher is effective or not? It's almost impossible for anyone outside the classroom to tell. Even the students in the classrooms cannot do it. According to John Hattie and other research, they show that effective teachers have the most significant impacts on students' learning. However, we will look at solutions to support effective teachers to inspire ineffective teachers.

Students

       We can agree that all students are capable learners, but knowing which students want to learn or not try to learn is a problem itself. Trying to figure out if students need support from just making excuses has become a complex problem in today's schools. Many intervention programs like PBIS and MTSS are ideal on paper, but they make it worse by making excuses for students instead of identifying students who need support. Educating students is the primary function of all schools. However, does pressure from the community for higher successes, graduation rates, and many other criteria on California's school Dashboard create contradictory problems for all staff in a school? Combined with the endless problems of cell phones and social media, cheating becomes normal for most students. As a classroom teacher since 2011 and a co-department chair for many years, I can guarantee you that most teachers will do their best to support students who have tried. However, the problem is that some students don't care about learning at all. They

only want to pass their classes by doing almost nothing or cheating. Therefore, it is essential to empower teachers with the right technology and strategies to identify students who need support from lazy students.

Counselors

       Counselors are critical support staff. However, their fear of parents' and students' complaints shifts their focus from supporting teachers to making excuses for students. Some counselors even attempt to assert themselves as expert teachers who should tell classroom teachers how to teach. Luckily, most counselors are former teachers, so they still remember the challenges of being a classroom teacher. Therefore, it is essential to empower counselors and teachers with the technology and strategies to monitor students' progress easily. However, such technology should not make it easier for counselors while creating more work or impossible tasks for teachers. It should be making it easier for teachers while counselors can do it with a little more effort. School leaders need to remember that all other stakeholders' main function is to support classroom teachers, not the other way around.                       

SPED Case Carriers

       Most classes are inclusive of students who have IEP's and 504's. These students need extra accommodations to be successful. However, the same problems exist with SPED students too. How do we identify SPED students who need accommodations from students who don't want to put in any effort? The roles of SPED teachers are like counselors. Their main roles are to support classroom teachers to educate inclusive students. Like counselors, SPED teachers also face similar problems. They are bombarded by constant complaints from needy parents and students. SPED teachers have even more challenging tasks because it is their job to make sure all students are improving. Is that even possible? Therefore, it is essential to empower SPED and teachers with the technology and strategies to monitor students' progress and provide MTSS. Again, such technology should not make it easier for SPED teachers while creating more work or impossible tasks for teachers. It should be making it easier for teachers while SPED can do it with a little more effort. Again, school leaders need to remember that all other stakeholders' main function is to support classroom teachers, not the other way around.          

School Administrators

       Initially, I thought school administrators have little impact on most students' learning because they only deal with the most challenging students. However, I learned their impact on the classroom can range from nothingness to empowering innovative teachers or destroying teachers' careers.

       If we ask any teacher, very few of them will admit to being ineffective. Likewise, the last thing they want to hear from anyone, especially school administrators, is about their ineffectiveness. It destroys their self-efficacy and causes them to give up on their students. Therefore, it's essential to provide ineffective teachers with specific strategies with visible outcomes to inspire them. Therefore, it is essential that we empower teachers and administrators with the right tools and strategies to understand why each student fails. Looking at the total number of D's and F's is meaningless if you don't look at why those students have D's and F's. Also, such incomplete data will ruin teachers' morale if teachers believe that they have been accused of failing too many students.

District PD Specialist (or TOSA)

       Each year, students' needs change. Therefore, I find it hard to believe in any non-classroom specialists who can call themselves "expert" teachers. Nonetheless, I believe the roles of District Professional Specialists (TOSA) are essential. TOSA plays a vital role in connecting teachers. They should not be walls that classroom teachers need to climb because they keep asking teachers to try new projects or strategies. Instead, they should be a bridge that connects effective teachers with ineffective teachers by being a great storyteller of effective teaching in their schools. Therefore, it is essential that we empower teachers and TOSA a common technology for them to capture effective teaching to share with other teachers easily. Equally, the effective teaching tools and strategies are easy to duplicate by other teachers.

District Directors and Officers

       I don't know much about their roles in directly supporting classroom teachers. However, I do understand that they value the importance of supporting teachers to support all students. For example, they want lower numbers of suspensions among at-risk groups of students. At the same time, they want at-risk students to excel and do well on standardized tests.

       However, the goals are not easy to achieve. At the same time, they want to do their best to support all teachers to achieve their goals. The difficult question is how? What do teachers need?

       Therefore, it is essential to provide district directors and leaders with specific tools and strategies to produce measurable outcomes. If the outcomes are not met, then how can district directors specifically support classroom teachers to make improvements?

Parents

       Parents should have little influence on a teacher's teaching in a classroom. However, they have become a powerful influence that pressures all non-classroom staff to dictate what classroom teachers should do to best support students. However, many parents do not realize that real learning does not always equal to students' achievement. Instead, some parents blindly view better grades equal greater learning, which is partially true if teachers are not pressured to give students good grades.  On the contrary, many schools are so focused on passing students and increasing graduation rates, but they forget about students' overall learning. Different interventions and support are created and implemented with the goals mainly to pass more students. Consequently, many students may graduate without learning from their mistakes or having to work hard for their grades. For example, cheating is becoming a norm that many teachers ignore because it is happening so often. Students take pictures of their answers and share them on social media. Of course, teachers should not ignore or punish students who need additional support. It would be wrong. Students are human beings, and they make mistakes too. Helping students learn from their mistakes is not the same thing as allowing students to continue making more mistakes.

       Therefore, it is crucial that we empower teachers and parents to use common technology, tools, and strategies to monitor students' progress and effort in the classroom. Parents need more than just letter grades on report cards, they need access to other detailed data about students' grades and efforts in different learning activities. Again, school leaders should not make teachers do more work at the convenience of parents. Rather, school leaders should focus on teaching parents how to access such data that is provided by classroom teachers. Some school administrators would sacrifice their teachers just to please parents.

       We know that the different roles of different stakeholders are complex in their own ways. However, we can agree that educating students is the mission of all stakeholders. As we look at specific solutions, I want you to remember that mission and how solutions empower all stakeholders to support the missions.