A Star is Born!

"It says here that there will soon be a severe teacher shortage!"
"Gee, I wonder why."

There once was a time when teachers were thought of as super humans. When someone would identify themselves as a teacher, they would be greeted with warm wishes and kind remarks regarding how wonderful teachers are and how well they make an impact on children. These days, though, people make snarky comments and present sympathetic looks when someone identifies themselves as a teacher. Why is this the case? Because it is thought that the United States is not producing "quality" teachers. (People clearly haven't met the professionals that are a product of the University of Montevallo.) So, the way I look at it, teachers can do one of two things: 1) Teachers can continue doing what they are doing, allowing people to think and speak negatively of the incredible career path they have chosen, thus allowing degradation of teaching to become the "norm;" or 2) teachers can take every action possible to make the world realize there ARE good teachers and they are worth celebrating! According to Marzano & Simms (2013), there are three categories of teachers:

1. Superstars- These teachers are considered "irreplaceable;" they're the best of the best; students BEG to get these as their teacher.
2. Backbones- These teachers are pretty great; they're overall quality is satisfactory.
3. Mediocres- These teachers, exemplified by this brief comical clip, are the ones who are easily replaced; they resist change (and quite frankly, they're the ones giving other teachers a bad reputation). 

In order for our country to stop the act of degrading teachers, an act that has become too common, we, as teachers and coaches, need to step up and SHOW that we are better than ever. It's time to get all of our teachers to the "superstar" level! The first step is motivating teachers to WANT to be better. It has been proven that students perform better when they are actively engaged, motivated, and have a desire to succeed. The same theory can be applied to teachers. Often times, though, teachers do not understand what it is they should approve on. This is where the self-assessment and reflective teaching come into play. A study conducted by S. Pennington (2015) showed that the practice of reflective teaching had a noticeable positive impact on teachers' practices in the classroom. By asking all teachers to participate in reflective teaching, teachers will be able to identify which areas they need to focus on for professional growth. This will allow the teachers to take ownership of their professional growth, which will hopefully make them perform better in the long run. Also, by engaging teachers in this reflective teaching, there is a greater possibility of them becoming teachers of High Skill and High Will. "These teachers are motivated and know what they need to do to improve. They are relatively easy to coach and often coach themselves" (Marzano & Simms, 2013, p. 215).

In the perfect world of coaching, all teachers would be Superstars of High Skill and High Will. (Finding a teacher like this, at times, feels as difficult as finding a unicorn!) Although that is seemingly unrealistic, I was lucky enough to coach one of these unicorn teachers. To keep anonymity, I will call this teacher "Unicorn." Unicorn is a fairly new teacher; this is actually her third year teaching. She excelled her first two years; so much so that the principal moved her to a new grade level in need of strong teachers. By changing grades, Unicorn noticed that what she had taught in a lower grade did not work with the older grade. That is when she came to me. I have been incorporating "teacher-initiated coaching" with Unicorn. After completing her self-assessment, she asked me to help her better engage students in mathematics. We decided to focus on incorporating gaming into mathematical instruction. Over the past few months, Unicorn has seen tremendous gains in her students' motivation, as well as gains in their understanding of the materials. Unicorn is a great example of what amazing things can happen when a teacher WANTS to continue to grow professionally. All she did was ask for help, and then BOOM...a star is born!


References

Marzano, R. J. & Simms, J. A. (2013). Coaching classroom instruction. Marzano Research: Bloomington, IN.

Pennington, S. E. (2015). Inquiry into teaching: Using reflective teaching to improve my practice. Networks, 17(1).