Elizabeth Green: Building a Better Teacher: How Teaching Works • Abstract

Shannon, the teacher, solved the issue through mediated discussion with the students. The girls learned about Jamal's difficult home situation and he learned how his aggression had upset them.

The conversation changed the students' behavior, and Jamal himself said he gained a “different view on life” because of it.

It might seem tempting to simply hire lots of teachers, try them out, keep the best ones and fire the rest. That idea is dangerous, however.

Accountability alone won't lead to better teaching. Many theorists have tried to isolate the traits that make a good teacher, to then support those traits and reward those teachers. The Hamilton Project, for instance, was an initiative that tried to use statistics to correlate teachers' attributes with their success.

Yet the project itself was unsuccessful. The Hamilton Project found that a teacher's education level and certifications had no relationship to students' performance. It seemed the only way to tell if a teacher was good or bad was to let them start teaching.

Using statistics to determine a teacher’s career trajectory is also dangerous, as an individual teacher's scores can vary dramatically.

In New York City, for example, 31 percent of the English teachers whose performance scores were in the bottom 20 percent in 2007 moved up to thetop 40 percent the following year.

If those teachers had been fired in 2007, New York would've lost nearly 400 teachers who were destined to dramatically improve.

The best method for improving teaching utilizes both observation and teacher development. Evaluations can offer a good overview of a teacher's performance and also help them become more effective. Teachers benefit from having an observational rubric and a set of criteria for evaluations.

The Bill Gates Foundation developed the Protocol for Language Teaching Observations (PLATO) to offer helpful evaluations for language teachers. PLATO has also been used as a development tool. It allows teachers to examine their teaching styles together, by watching videos of their lessons and collaborating in workshops.

Observations can help a school and its teachers improve, but teachers must be able to engage with feedback to improve their teaching skills.

The key message in this book:

Good teachers aren't simply born, they perfect their craft over time. Teachers need a chance to practice and improve, especially now as the American education system lags behind international standards. If education in the United States is to raise its standards, we need to nurture our teachers through a combination of accountability and development methods.

Actionable advice:

Don't discipline children too harshly.

It's certainly tempting to punish or suspend children that behave badly. That might fix the problem in the short term, but it actually inhibits a child’s overall learning. It's much more effective to solve conflicts through social problem solving. When children can engage with a problem in a safe environment, their behavior is more likely to change for the good.

Suggested further reading: The Smartest Kids in the World by Amanda Ripley

These blinks examine the education systems of three countries – South Korea, Finland and Poland – which have done especially well in the international test for scholastic aptitude known as PISA. They also investigate the problems of the current US education system, and how they might be fixed.