Professional Development Activity 5-A
Submitted by John Smyth, Texas State University
(Comment option available at the bottom of the page.)

This activity relates to all of the standards of collegiality and collaboration 

Imagine you were the supervisor who had to engage with the teacher and the parents in the real situation described in the extract from the newspaper article below. Drawing on the information presented in this chapter, describe what you would do and how you would act in this situation. Specifically, what practical actions would you adopt as a consequence?

The instructions were easy enough for a seven-year-old to understand: Choose a word from the box on the right to complete the sequence on the left. I watched as my second-grade daughter, Maya, read “bear, wolf” then carefully checked her options in the box before writing “fox” on the line. She charged down the page, pausing only at number 5: “work, office.” The answer the worksheet was going for was “job.” Maya chose “fun.” I let it slide. She’d already demonstrated that she understood the assignment. And secretly, I was pleased by her choice. My husband and I like our jobs, and our office environments reflect that. His has beanbag chairs and employees who have known Maya since preschool. Mine has stacks of magazines, a stereo, and a hallway of people to visit. Offices are fun to this kid. But whoever marked Maya’s paper didn’t realize that. The homework came back with an “X” on number 5. Even worse, she’d had to erase “fun” and replace it with “job”—a bad workplace metaphor if I’ve ever seen one. I don’t know where to direct my frustration with this. Not at the teacher, whom I respect a great deal, and who wrote me a friendly and apologetic note when I brought up the issue, even agreeing with my point of view. And not at the classroom aide, who’s just earning her hourly wage. So should it be directed at a school that depends on parent volunteers to mark student homework? At a school district grappling with a multimillion-dollar deficit, where worksheets are used to reinforce concepts teachers might otherwise review with students themselves? Or at the worksheet publishers, whose products are so inferior that students themselves notice typos and mistakes? No, I suspect my frustration is with something much larger: with whatever—myself included—has already trained my daughter to shrug her shoulders and erase her answer without question, complacently accepting someone else’s standard of right and wrong. (Edelman 2004)

As an instructional supervisor with a commitment to the notions of critical inquiry advanced here, how would you judge your own performance in responding to the teacher, the parent, and the child in the instance just described?

 

Here are some possibilities worth thinking about: they are indicative more than prescriptive, and they are meant as a basis for individual or collective self-reflection and discussion on whether the standards are being achieved.

Whose interests are being served in this instance by having students respond to worksheets with reductionist answers? Where did the idea come from that this is an educative way to operate with children? Is it educationally defensible? What sustains and maintains this idea?

Where is the space for teacher–student engagement about what might be an appropriate answer to the worksheet question, and why?

 

When answers are struck out as being wrong with no attempt at explanation or opportunity to pursue reasoning processes, what message is this conveying to students, and is this acceptable?

 

What alternatives to this activity were considered and why was this option selected as being most appropriate? How inclusive is this teaching activity to the life experiences and family background of this student? How was that decision made?

 

What about other students from backgrounds where work is not an option, or where work is not of a professional or middle-class kind? How socially just is this as a learning activity?

 

What processes exist within the school for informed dialogue among teachers about why they teach in these ways or why they do what they do? Is an unreflective school something we should be endorsing or encouraging? Why are such opportunities denied teachers?

 

How does the school engage with parents and caregivers as partners in the education of children? How helpful is it to handle situations like the one described here by sending “apologetic notes” to parental complaints? Isn’t this too reactive?

 

Shouldn’t the school be more proactive in providing a venue for parents to understand what the school is doing and why?

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The Standards for Instructional Supervision