What would it be like.....Teaching in 2030?

Warning: notes below may be verbatim from what the Author said during interview. These are notes from his lecture.

In aiming to sharpen my knowledge around the issues of education policy and child-centered reform, I often listen to leaders in the field online. I just listened to an MP3 interview with Barnett Berry and John Holland through http://www.stevehargadon.com. Barnett Berry is President and CEO of the Center for Teaching Quality, offers his knowledge and insights about America's efforts to build a real teaching profession.

Barnett has been working I education for 55 years and an advocate for the profession. He calls teaching, the teaching that "makes all other professions possible". Center for Teaching Quality is a think tanks of educators that seek to inform ed. policy. Their aim is to elevate voices of accomplished teachers. The

book is called Teaching 2030: What We Must Do for Our Students and Our Public Schools─Now and in the Future, (just ordered it!!) Excepts from the book can be found here.

**Berry speaks about a new type of teacher leadership, in which teachers take ownership of her own professionalism. He says that the entities now driving education policy do not trust teachers, yet, the public does. He predicts toward a more differentiated education profession, in which we elevate the workforce and blur lines that separate the teacher and the administration.

**The Authors also states that Waiting for Superman, the movie, offered false dychotomies, dysfunctional issues,and was pure 20th century thinking and action. He urges us to get above that debate and to get people on both sides to move forward together on a more transcendental form of way. He likens the current educational situation in this country to a factory model, a system in one thing is tweeked to get a desired outcome. Berry says we need to have the abilty to accept different views and to work together to get multiple possible positive outcomes.

**The good news, he states, is that more and more the work in education research circles around teacher input. Plus he's hopeful that the growing new technologies will allow teachers to better know what kids are able to document what kids know and for the ability for the public to be more aware of what it really takes to teach.

**In the coming decades Beery sees more students learning from students, teachers learning from teachers. He also predicts that teachers will need to be more involved in community, and become like part time community organizer. This need being driven purely by the growing divide between 'haves' and 'have-nots'.

**They both impart the importance of teacher voice in order to elevate teachers from the current role liked to a

factory employee. They described the expectations of the teacher's role as shown in Waiting for Superman unrealistic. They claim teachers cannot be caped crusaders.

**He further emphasized that the current educational model is a factory model where there are a few administrators, controlling slew of teachers that play the same roles in lockstep fashion. Berry is hopeful that the new technologies will become the seeds of change for the community for its ability to have a wider audience.

** In terms of accountability they say there needs to be new schema for accountability conmessurate with the 21st century student and that it's the teachers who need to do it for they know their students best.

**They offer a reshuffling of responsibilities os support personnel as a way to maximize on everyone;s expertise.

**The put forth this new concepts called, teacherpreneurism . Right now we have a socialist-style mentality in class in which all teachers all equal, giving teacher ideas in marketplace in education....that teachers can do things differently.

**They call for a need to utelize public engagement to elevate education dialogue with parents and the community. They think we should also invest on promoting the complexity of teaching, through a deliberate campaign.

**They offered a solution concerning unions in which they encourage them to have guilds, allowing them to essentially be the trustees of the profession.

**They made an excellent point in saying that Waiting for Superman never was able to tap into the hopefulness that teachers bring with them when they enter the field, yet, there are 100 of thousand ready to hear that message.

**They called for a reframing of the reform narrative? It needs to be about students and only teachers can talk about students...They also call a need for more student voice in matters of policy.

**Don't JUST look at DC, NYC for answers, but look at other countries, Finland, Brazil, to help inform this shift in narrative.