Rhoda Bernard, Ed.D.

In the second episode of Teach: Tony Danza, Tony struggles to meet the needs of all of his students. Some of his students are bored and feel that the class should move more quickly, and other students are having real challenges with the material.

“The tag of teacher” must be earned through student learning. Tony’s principal tells him, “You don’t earn the tag of teacher until the students are learning.” This is after half of his class failed Tony’s first quiz. In this principal, we have a vivid portrait of a wise and thoughtful educator. She is absolutely right. Teaching is earned through student learning. No matter how much you love your students (and it is clear that Tony Danza is getting quite attached to his class), their learning is a teacher’s highest priority.

Tony must find ways to help his students learn. He seems to believe that all a student must do is put in effort and s/he will learn. It appears as though he is generalizing from his own experiences in school and applying them to all of his students who are having difficulties. Tony has a lot to learn about student learning, and particularly about special education. In one pivotal scene, Tony attends a seminar about dyslexia and sees what a page of text looks like to students with dyslexia. The seminar clearly challenges a lot of Tony’s underlying beliefs about students who have trouble in school.

The teaching profession demands respect. Tony’s principal notes that Tony Danza has many talents that she respects greatly – singing, dancing, acting, boxing. However, she also demands that Tony respect the teaching profession. Her words ring loudly for the general public, as well. Just as it is not easy to sing, dance, act, and box – and just as those skills take years of hard work and practice – it is not easy to teach. Teaching is a highly complex and multi-layered activity that is incredibly rich and challenging. It takes years of hard work and practice to become an effective teacher. Every day as a teacher is filled with challenges of various kinds – interpersonal (with students, other teachers, administrators, parents), logistical, administrative, instructional, emotional, intrapersonal, etc. Effective teachers know how to meet those challenges in multiple ways so that they can match their approaches to the particular situation or student.

If there is one thing that I hope that Teach: Tony Danza can do for education, it would be to provide the general public with a more realistic, balanced, and grounded perspective of what it takes to be a teacher – to increase people’s respect of the teaching profession.

There’s a new TV show on A&E: Teach Tony Danza. Yes, that’s right – the star of “Taxi” and and “Who’s the Boss?” is now pushing 60. Years ago, he studied education and was licensed to teach in the public schools. He’s decided to move to Philadelphia and teach 10th grade English in a large, urban high school. A&E is documenting his first year in the classroom.

Having seen just the first episode, I feel strongly that this television show is a must-watch for all educators, and would be very valuable for anyone interested in education policy. In just one hour, two very important lessons were communicated:

Most People Think Teaching is Easy. It’s Not. Tony’s principal makes this point later in the  show. Because we have all been to school ourselves, we all have gone through what sociologist Dan Lortie refers to as the apprenticeship of observation. We all think we know how to teach effectively, and that all you have to do is stand up in front of students and deliver instruction. Seems so simple. In fact, teaching is a very, very complex and difficult endeavor. It takes even excellent teachers several years to evolve into their work. There are many, many elements of good teaching that can develop only with experience and coaching. I am pleased to see that Danza works with an instructional coach during his first week of school. I hope that he continues to have a great deal of support. He needs it. He is a pretty awful teacher, at least at first.

Teaching is NOT a performance. Because Tony wants so badly to do a good job as a teacher, he is very nervous as he works with his students. When Tony gets nervous, he goes into “actor mode” – he gives long, rambling, semi-entertaining, charming speeches. Giving speeches and entertaining students is not teaching. Teaching has some elements of performance, to be sure – good teachers activate students’ imaginations and present material in an engaging way, and some good teachers use drama in various ways in their classrooms – but ultimately, the students are not your audience and you are not a performer. In the performer/audience scenario, what takes place is about the performer. It is the performer’s job to entertain the audience, and the audience’s job to applaud the performer. In the classroom, what takes place is about the students and their learning. It is the teacher’s job to get out of the way and facilitate student learning, and the students’ job to engage with the material, follow the classroom/school rules, and learn.

As an example, I don’t think I heard Tony Danza ask a single academic-related question of his students in all of the teaching clips in the first episode. (He did ask some students about themselves as they were talking in the first class, but those questions did not take place during an academic lesson.) Good teaching is not telling, where the teacher does all of the talking and the students passively listen. Good teaching requires asking, where the students are asked to inquire, think, and discover for themselves. The first thing Tony Danza needs to learn as a teacher is to stop talking so much and start listening to his students. His instructional coach said just this in one of their meetings. Tony is also working with the football team as an assistant coach, and the head coach also told Tony to stop talking so much. Teachers need to talk less and listen more – something Tony has yet to learn.

Teaching is About Relationships. At the football game, Tony’s principal emphasizes to Tony that he needs to get to know his students well and establish strong relationships with them. She is absolutely right. Good teaching is undergirded by relationships – most importantly, between teacher and students, but also among teachers, between teachers and administrators, and between teachers, students, and parents. Tony must get to know the people in his school community. Teaching is a human endeavor conducted by human instruments. Relationships are the foundation of excellent teaching. Students can be more willing to engage, learn, participate, and grow in the classroom when they feel secure in their relationships with the teacher and the other students. Teachers can be more productive when they have strong relationships with their students and when they are supported by good relationships with colleagues, administrators and parents.

I am looking forward to the next episode of Teach Tony Danza. I hope that there are more lessons ahead – for Tony Danza, who has some work to do as a teacher, as well as for anyone who is interested in public education.

There has been a great deal of hype about Davis Guggenheim’s documentary, Waiting for Superman, which finally opened in Boston this weekend. Many education bloggers and scholars whom I respect have expressed outrage over the film because of its oversimplification of the issues in public education today, its teacher-bashing perspective, its adoption of a crisis  narrative, its creation of heroes in Bill Gates and Michelle Rhee, its treatment of charter schools as silver bullets, and its lack of examples of successful and effective public schools (especially urban public schools). While some of these charges that are aimed at the film do hold some water, I was surprised to find that the film does present some of the issues in public education in a reasoned and thoughtful way. At the same time, I found other problems with the film that haven’t been mentioned in the press. And I do continue to share the concerns that the film’s oversimplification of the issues in public education could mislead the general public, who is uninformed about these issues.

So what do I think was presented in a reasoned and thoughtful way in the film? Guggenheim argues that there are serious issues in public education today. He points to many aspects of public education that remain as they were over 100 years ago, such as the tensions between local, state, and federal control over education and the role of teachers’ unions. Throughout the history of public school education in this country, there has been a battle between local forces and federal forces over a number of aspects of the ways that schools are run, curriculum is created, and funding is allocated. These issues plague our educational system today. Teachers’ unions were first formed at a time when teachers were victimized by corrupt administrators and school boards. They desperately needed protection and organization. Today, our schools remain structured in ways that are tied to the world the way it used to be – even down to the agrarian need for a long summer break. Guggenheim appropriately argues that these arcane elements need to be reexamined and that we need an educational system that reflects today’s world. That should include teachers’ unions, but there needs to be some serious rethinking about the ways that teachers’ contracts are structured. Tenure is not necessarily a bad idea, but maybe it should be earned.

Problems with the film? The superficial treatment of several profound issues in education. First, No Child Left Behind and its influence on public education in this country. It was completely glossed over. The tyranny of the high stakes test, and the use of high stakes tests as the sole means to evaluate students, teachers, and schools was barely addressed. What high stakes testing has done to schools in terms of pushing out subjects that are not tested did not even get a mention in the film. Second, the well researched correlation between the socioeconomic status of students and their academic achievement was touched on, but very superficially. Third, we see very, very few examples of public schools (and particularly urban public schools) that are effective. We hear very, very few teachers’ voices about their work. The narrator mentions the profound impact that excellent teachers can have on students, as well as the demands and responsibility of a teacher’s job, but we don’t hear about that from teachers themselves, which I see as a grave omission. They also say just a few words about the fact that only a small percentage of charter schools are successful, but so much of the film focuses on a handful of very successful charter schools, that the point is probably lost. And there is no mention that the original intent of the charter school legislation was for the best practices of charter schools to be replicated in regular public schools. And there is almost no discussion of the issues regarding the evaluation of teachers – how we can do it better, and what that would need to look like (in my view, a combination of many data points, including sustained observations, peer review, review of their service to the school community, and many other measures). Finally, there is a lot of time spent pointing to other nations whose students outperform ours but very little time spent discussing some of the reasons for this, which often include a more homogenous population and national curriculum.

So what’s my overall verdict? The film should not be the entire extent of a person’s knowledge about the issues in public education. That is my fear – that folks who know very little about education will see this film and think that they are well informed. However, I do think that there is the possibility that fruitful discussion can spring from this film, and that may help move the conversation about public education in this country forward.

Making new things happen is something that I find very exciting. I see myself as a sort of educational entrepreneur, someone who looks for opportunities to create new programs. I love when I have made it possible for others to learn and grow. I enjoy seeing something that I developed come to fruition, always in ways that I never thought possible because the other people involved end up making wonderful contributions.

I guess I am a person who is comfortable with change, at least when it comes to changes at work, and changes in terms of making new things happen.

But humans in general are not comfortable with change. We like things the way we like them. There is security in familiarity, in knowing how things work, in understanding what is likely to happen next, and so on. I get that.

How can those of us who want to make exciting new things happen comfort the others who are distrustful of change? What do those people need so that they can trust in something new and different? What kinds of changes are easier for people to accept? What kind of pacing does the change need to have in order for it to be less threatening? What pieces of information to people need to have in order to feel reassured about change?

In today’s technology climate, with social networking in its myriad forms, the name of the game is sharing. But when does sharing in the name of generosity cross the line into oversharing?

As an educator and academic, I enjoy posting links to interesting, cutting edge articles on my Facebook page. I subscribe to dozens of blogs and Google alerts, and I often share the latest news in music, education, and music education with my social network. As an avid reader, I relish letting my various networks know about books that I have read that I feel are particularly insightful (most recently, educational historian and policymaker Diane Ravitch’s new book) or fiction that blows me away (see my regular posts on Goodreads). This kind of sharing strikes me as generosity. I want my networks to know about meaningful, interesting, insightful information or publications that I have encountered.

This blog is another way that I share. In it, I write about things that have been on my mind, and the topics range quite a bit. Some of the posts are academic in nature, while others are more reflective. I don’t really have a sense of the audience for this blog, though I do receive some feedback from people I’ve never met. So I use the blog as a forum to write about things that are on my mind, in various categories.

[By the way, I have been asked to contribute to the Boston Conservatory website beginning this fall as a regular blogger. That forum will give me the opportunity to write about what is going on in the Music Education Department and in the Boston Conservatory Program for Students on the Autism Spectrum. I am excited about this new blog opportunity – I will post here to let folks know when it begins.]

And, of course, my status updates and other posts on Facebook (I have not yet succumbed to Twitter, though I am thinking about it) are yet another way of sharing. For me, that form of sharing is definitely sanitized. My Facebook friends list includes friends from all areas and times of my life, professional contacts, colleagues, students, and former students. I make sure to post only those updates and pieces of content that are appropriate for such a wide audience. The very first thing that is on my mind may not be what I post in a status update. First I stop and think – would it be appropriate for everyone in my friends list to know that this is on my mind at this moment? – and if the answer is no, I go to the second thing that is on my mind, and sometimes even to the third.

Recently, Andrew Garcia, a Facebook friend of mine, who happens to be a professional contact, was interviewed about social media and teaching. In the interview, he talks about this culture of sharing – the fact that social media make it possible for us to share information with a wide range of people in new ways. What a wonderful set of tools for educators at all levels! Create web-based bookmarks on various topics for your students to use as resources. Broadcast important web-based information to your class with just a few clicks. Teach your students to create their own web pages, wikis, podcasts, online portfolios, and other vehicles for sharing their work and their learning processes with each other and with you.

This is the positive side of the sharing culture. But it has its negative side, as well, and that is where I become concerned.

First, how well do we consider the source when we share? There is no truth-tester for the internet. There is a great deal of unreliable information and material online. How can we teach students to evaluate critically the information that they receive from any source? How can we help them to become discerning consumers of information? Our students – hell, all of us – may need to develop new skill sets to make sense of our information encounters.

And then there’s the issue of documenting sources. Because social media make it possible for people to share information so quickly and so freely, we often do so without crediting the source of the information. And this can cross the line into plagiarism. What new frameworks do we need to help our students to use to think carefully about documenting the sources of the information that they share?

Finally, and we’ve all seen instances of this, sometimes inappropriate material/posts are shared publicly on social networking sites. In today’s world, this can be costly in many ways. We have all heard stories about times when online posts have interfered with someone’s professional life, either in a job interview situation or in some other way. This is where we need to do a better job teaching people a sense of boundaries for their sharing. How do we help people use social networking sites appropriately, and how can we make sure that people define what is appropriate in ways that will not be harmful to themselves or others?

So while social media create tremendous possibilities for us in a number of ways, they also create new ways of thinking about information, sharing, and responsibility. And this may be the next challenge for educators. And the next opportunity for us to think creatively about the new skills and ways of thinking that we need to develop in the 21st century.

The other day, I was an extra in a film project. My husband has a speaking role, and someone I used to work with is the Director of Photography. Being an extra was a lot of fun, for a few reasons. First, the people working on this project are all very nice, and I got to hang out with them for 12 hours and chat between takes. Also, it was a very nice day and we were filming outside. The work that I had to do was not at all strenuous (filling in the background during a “reception” scene). I got to watch some very savvy and professional technical folks at work, first and foremost the DP, who is incredible at his job. But perhaps the most fun part of the experience, and the thing that I found most refreshing, was that I wasn’t in charge. I didn’t have to make any important decisions. I wasn’t at the center of any high stakes discussions. I just had to show up and do what I was told. I could put myself into the other folks’ hands and go along for the ride.

In most of what I do, I am the boss. I run the show. I make the decisions, and I have the responsibility as to whether something succeeds or fails. While I enjoy the autonomy and the decisionmaking power that come with being the boss and leading, there is something wonderful about not being in this role all of the time. Going along for the ride, like I did as an extra, is not something I regularly do in my life.

Now, of course, being someone who is accustomed to being in charge can make it difficult to cede control. I can find myself noting the ways that I would do things differently if I were in charge. The different decisions I would make, the different systems I would use, the different ways that things would be organized, etc. It’s very easy to be an armchair quarterback in such situations. But if I put myself fully into the role and let those in charge take control, I can let go in a very refreshing way.

It’s kind of like when I go to get a massage (which I do at least once a month). While I do have preferences (ticklish feet that should be avoided, a back injury that should be highlighted, and an area of tension that needs extra work), once the massage begins, I am quite literally in someone else’s hands. I might have feedback along the way (responses to the pressure, etc.), but the actual massage is up to somebody else. Somebody else is doing the work of the massage. Somebody else is managing the time. Somebody else is making the decisions about what to massage, when, and how. This adds other layers to the therapeutic aspects of the massage experience for me.

In many areas of my life, I simply am in charge, and I can’t step out of that role. This is particularly true in my job. But when I can step back and cede some control in other areas of my life, I need to encourage myself to do so. Letting somebody else worry about the big decisions, the organization, the systems, the operations, etc. can be therapeutic and very healthy, when it is appropriate. Even if I might do things differently.

Recently, I had lunch with a new friend who has moved to Boston from Canada to take a position teaching in the Music Education Program at nearby Boston University. He was dismayed and confused by the fact that music education in Massachusetts appears to be uneven – some school districts have outstanding programs, some districts have no program at all, and a lot of districts have a situation somewhere in the middle. He wanted to know what accounts for these differences.

From my perspective, there are several factors at play:

a. Proposition 2 1/2 – The passage of Proposition 2 1/2, which sets a 2.5% cap for annual property tax increases, plays a prominent role in the state of music education in the Commonwealth. Communities that have difficulty balancing their budgets (which, these days, is most communities, unfortunately) end up having to make very difficult choices and cuts OR trying to pass an override to Proposition 2 1/2 so that they can increase property taxes by more then 2.5%. Overrides are very, very difficult to pass. Just earlier this week, residents in Belmont, a community with a very strong music program, voted against an override of Proposition 2 1/2. They are bracing for cuts in schools and town services.

I was an entering high school freshman the year that Proposition 2 1/2 passed. We lost the school bus (even though I lived more than a mile from the school), much of our sports program, and a couple of music teachers in the district (to name just a few of the immediate repercussions). Music programs across the Commonwealth have fallen victim to cuts because of Proposition 2 1/2.

b. Economies of Scale Issues – In Massachusetts, most school districts are drawn on town lines. Each town is its own school district. (There are some exceptions, particularly where two towns will share a high school, like Concord-Carlisle, and some regional school districts, like Hamilton-Wenham, and the larger Gateway Regional School district, which serves the towns of Huntington, Russell, Blandford, Chester, Worthington, Montgomery, and Middlefield.) This means that each town must have a central office to perform all of the administrative and support functions for the town’s school district.

In Maryland (like many other states), school districts are county based (the well known Montgomery County School District is an example). This means that only one central office is needed for the entire county.

It is expensive and inefficient for virtually each town in Massachusetts to support a central school district office. Why does it take place? See c. below.

c. The Tension Between Centralization and Local Control – As I discuss with my students every summer, one of the ongoing tensions throughout the history of public school education in the U.S. (as well as throughout the history of other areas in U.S. life) lies between centralization and local control. In education, there have been generations of battles between those who wish for centralized education – national curriculum, larger school districts, etc. – and those who desire local control of education – school districts based on towns, each district determining curriculum decisions, etc. Right now, we have a mishmash of both of these forces at play. We have national educational mandates like No Child Left Behind and national educational initiatives like Race to the Top, but we have local control of the particular standards and curriculum for each subject. (Discussions about national standards and curriculum have begun, but they are in their early stages.)

Music education is affected by this tension because individual communities get to make their own decisions about what their arts/music curricula and programs should look like. There is a lack of parity among various communities as those decisions differ.

d. Site Based Management – In Massachusetts, individual principals determine the management of their schools’ budgets and resources. They are provided with guidelines and certain requirements by the central office, but the ultimate on-the-ground decisions are based with each principal. So while some arts program is required of all principals, the way that it takes shape in a particular school depends on the person in charge. A principal who values music and wants a music program will find a way to have one in his/her school. One who doesn’t, won’t.

e. Participation MMEA – I am a big fan of MENC (the national music education organization), and I am active in the Massachusetts chapter, known as MMEA (Massachusetts Music Educators Association). A great number of music educators in Massachusetts are active MMEA members, and they gain a great deal from their membership (journals, conference participation, advocacy, festival opportunities for their students, networking, and many, many more).

However, there are music educators in the state that are not active in the organization. These music educators often are isolated and lack the resources and support that MMEA can provide them, as well as the professional development that the organization offers through networking, festivals, and conferences. MMEA is actively working to increase its reach; a notable portion of its strategic plan focuses on recruiting more members and targeting those communities that are under-represented in the organization.

Bringing more music educators together would strengthen the state of music education in Massachusetts in a number of ways. I am hopeful that MMEA’s efforts in this regard will make a powerful contribution to music education.

I am a founding member of UMEC, the Urban Music Educators Coalition, a group of music educators, arts organizations, and higher education institutions that seeks to increase participation in music by students in urban school districts. We began our efforts in Boston and have worked closely with principals and other school leaders on a variety of issues (building music programs, scheduling for music programs, finding partners in the community, etc.). Through our recent affiliation in MMEA, we hope to launch chapters of UMEC in the other MMEA districts.

The kind of work that UMEC is doing is just one example of the ways that various organizations can collaborate to help to improve the state of music education. There are other initiatives at play in Massachusetts. Some involve bringing in outside arts organizations, and others involve teacher training. Those of us who care about the state of music education in Massachusetts must get involved in this work and do what we can to bring about the changes that we need.

Having just returned from a research conference on Narrative Research has gotten me thinking about the ways that we ascribe to narratives in our daily lives.

Some of these are cultural or societal narratives – what the field calls “master narratives” – broadly held discourses about aspects of the way that the world works. One master narrative that was a big part of my doctoral research (and that continues to be a big part of my work in music teacher education) is the widely held notion that music educators are “failed” musicians who are “settling for” teaching because they could not achieve the “ultimate success” of being full time performers. There are many other master narratives out there, of course. Some have to do with gender roles, for example – ideas about what is “appropriate” for males or females, specific “ideal male” and “ideal female” portraits, and so on. Others have to do with what “counts” as success in our society. I could go on and on. These master narratives play out around all of us. The degree to which we allow them to have an effect on our thoughts or actions is what can be quite interesting. How do we respond to these master narratives? Do we play along with them? Resist them? Try to change them? Ignore them?

Another way that narratives play out in our daily lives is through what I learned at the conference is called “frozen narratives” – stories that are stuck with us. We may wish to have nothing to do with these narratives, but for some reason, they are frozen in place and we cannot change or eliminate them. The stories are too powerful over us. We all know someone – or have the first-hand experience ourselves – who holds on to a particular worldview or a particular narrative in his/her life. “I am a victim” is a good example. I know people who approach every interaction, activity, event, and thought in their lives from this standpoint and play out the story of being victimized over and over again.

What master narratives and frozen narratives are you dealing with, and how do you encounter them? How might you rewrite those narratives that you wish to rewrite? Which master narratives and frozen narratives do you wish to continue in your life, and how might you do so? How can we become the authors of the narratives that influence us?

In teaching, in friendships, in work collaborations, the single element that stands out to me when I think about what makes for success is lack of ego involvement.

The people I most enjoy collaborating with are the ones who are interested in doing good work, not in showcasing themselves. Their focus is on creating an effective program, writing an excellent article, or putting together a meaningful event, not on making themselves look good.

The same is true of good teaching. Interviewing candidates for the Master’s Program in Music Education this spring hit this one home to me all the more. The best teachers put their students and the subject matter ahead of themselves. They value their students’ learning and growth, and they deeply care about and are interested in their students as people. They are passionate about the material that they teach and the classes/lessons that they facilitate. They are not concerned with how they themselves appear – with making themselves look smart, making themselves more powerful, being able to “look down” upon their students, or other such ends.

This applies to my friendships, as well. At different times in my life, I have stopped getting together with certain friends who dominate our relationship. Every conversation is about them, and I rarely get a chance to speak, never mind share anything personal. Every plan we make is about them. They see themselves at the center of all that they do. These people drain me and frustrate me. Of course, there are times when our friends are going through something challenging, and they need our support. My oldest and dearest friend loves to remind me about the year during which we never talked about what was going on with me because she was going through a very, very intense personal crisis. She needed it to be all about her during that year, and I was happy to shift our focus – because it was necessary, because it was temporary, and because I knew that she would do the same for me (and she has).

Come to think of it, I can’t come up with a context where I would prefer that someone was egocentric. When would it be better to be self absorbed than to have a more balanced view? When one is very sick? When one is in a crisis? I need to spend more time with that one.