I’m trying to decide what I want to get my masters in. I've thought about educational administration in the past, but I’m now fairly certain that I’d rather pursue an educational technology masters. Of the many reasons I’m leaning towards this rather than administration, there’s one I think about a lot. To explain it, I have to go back a bit.
It was two years ago. I was at a session at the Nebraska Educational Technology Association that was presented by a tech administrator I admired. He talked about using tech to modernize how we structure schools and focused the presentation on administrators and how they can use technology to rethink school policies. It generated a good discussion, and at one point, I shared a few ideas based on my experience. We were discussing strategies to improve teacher retention by giving teachers more independent prep time during the day. I suggested making class sizes larger and using computers to keep things individualized, thereby allowing for fewer classes, more teacher prep time or class offerings, or shorter school days. Another administrator in the room, who I also know well, laughed out loud. Her response was a flat “No” to larger class sizes and multiple teachers in a room. She justified it with the ample research showing that smaller class sizes are more effective for learning. In a sense, it was a very reasonable response…..yet it still bothered me. A lot of educational research in curriculum and instruction was done in pre-tech classrooms, so it seems at least questionable to view it as an undeniable proof of "best-practice" in 1-1 classrooms. All the same, it wasn’t just the “no” that got me, it was the tone of the rebuff; it was as if I were naive to be suggesting larger classes sizes at all. It created a rabbit hole that I haven’t really gotten out of: Are education administrators oriented against change and innovation?
I stand by my suggestion of larger class sizes as a way to make teachers jobs easier IF paired with technology and/or co-teachers. I still care about the idea, but I’ve started to care more about the response to it. It was shot down by an administrator who I have a lot of respect for. To just say “I have a lot of respect” for her is an understatement. I admire her, and she’s a major reason I went in to education. Her flat refusal to give the idea any thought hurt. Using larger class sizes still doesn’t seem like such a negative thing to me if technology is used to individualize learning and we were to have multiple teachers in a room. That opinion is based on my experience with tech and my time in China, where average class sizes were about 65 students. It was also based on my time student teaching in a modular schedule at Westside High School in which large group instruction in a 1-1 environment is already central to their curriculum model.
But, okay, put the idea aside. It was the response’s tone. It implied that I was being naive and unrealistic. That I clearly-had-no-idea-what-I-was-talking-about because I wasn’t taking into account research on class sizes, scheduling constraints, or any of the other practical concerns that administrators have to weigh when making decisions. The problem is, I think my naïveté about these concerns is a good thing. Being “naive” might even be an advantage.
By being only vaguely aware of the demands administrators are under, one is allowed to think about solutions with no constraints. The only thing that matters is the solution that would create a better education system, not the solution that is our best option given our current system. I think we have to come up with the solution that will work, then work backwards to fit it to the practical, on-the-ground logistics that take the forefront of administrators’ thought processes. It’s the nature of an administrators job, though, to begin with the constraints, then fit new solutions into them...which to me seems completely antithetical to innovation.
If your thought process on innovating and improving schools begins with worries about...I don’t know…. busing or teacher contracts or how certain teachers might react or salaries or parent reactions or state curriculum requirements or budget cuts or privacy concerns or general legal concerns or….whatever it is that any given administrator worries about. If that’s where you begin your thought process on how to innovate schools, you’ve missed the point. Innovation means changing what’s established. When you react to new solutions by first thinking about all the constraints put on you by your district, you’re starting with said establishment. You have to start with the changes.....but by doing that, you're not really doing your job right.
That’s the catch 22. The person I’m referring to is a great administrator. She has a deep understanding of teaching, is socially intelligent, and genuinely honest in a way that puts you at ease working with her. She’s relatable while simultaneously being clearly smarter than you and is easily able to balance the complicated demands put on administrators…..but by being great at her job, I think she is necessarily shutting out whole new schools of thought. The same goes for every great administrator. They shut off whole threads of new thought on education because they are great administrators and they are doing their job well. It is the nature of their position, if they are good at it, to think about problems within the lens of multifaceted constraints and make the best decision given those constraints. But by starting there, you’ve limited how innovative you can be. That’s not acceptable in an era where schools need to change for the better, quickly.
If we're looking for reasons why schools have not changed their structure in any substantive way in the last 100 years, this has to be a jump off point. Why is it that we still have 8 hour school days that start at 8 a.m., giant summer breaks, bells and lockers, one prep period, GPA’s and class rank, percentage based A-F grading scales, and all the other trappings that define American schools when we know, through research and anecdotally, these things do not work? I think you have to look at all those constraints rattled off above that, by nature of their job, take the forefront of administrators’ minds.
I don’t like being the person that takes shots at the decision makers from afar. It’s lazy, stupid behavior and I generally avoid teachers that engage in it. It’s easy for me to sit here and think of all sorts of new-fangled ideas and complain when no one listens because I’m not the one whose butt is on the line. Administrators have difficult jobs, and I don’t mean to say that administrators cannot be innovative. They can be, and many are, including the one I reference here. I only mean that I’m beginning to believe that administrators fill a role that is naturally inclined against innovation, and because administrators are our decision makers, innovation in education is a rare thing. I think this is one of the most important reasons that innovation in education is not currently coming from the education system itself. It is coming from outsiders, from people who have an even more vague understanding of the demands of school districts than I do….and it’s driving me to want to be an outsider.
Khan Academy was created by a former hedge fund manager who wanted to tutor his cousin. It took off and was harnessed, not by a school district, but by a tech entrepreneur (Bill Gates). It is now the official prep course for the ACT and it hasn’t even scratched the surface of the impact if could have on education systems. Coursera, EDX, and all the other higher ed movers and shakers started in computer science departments, not education departments. When I lived in Lincoln, Mike Smith and The Bay were creating a school based around projects and individualized learning that sounded more interesting than just about any initiative I had heard coming out of public schools. The “growth mindset” that is now canonical in the education world and causing people to rethink everything from grading to the self-confidence movement comes from Carol Dweck, a psychology professor. Politicians, in their flawed desperation to make a better education system for a lower cost, are turning to charter schools to foster competition and (hopefully) create a laboratory of educational innovation (For the majority of Nebraska districts, charters are a garbage solution. But these misguided efforts come from the fact that schools have been unable to change in substantive ways on their own).
The reason these outsiders are the ones innovating, I believe, is because they don’t worry about the constraints of the system as we know it. They only pay attention to better ways of doing things, then find ways to implement them. I think we’d be better off in education if we all started thinking and acting that way. Maybe. I’m only five years into this whole thing and trying to figure out a masters plan. I’m still naive of the job of an admin….but maybe that’s a good thing.
NOTE: This was originally written in the spring of 2019 while working as a 7th/8th grade social studies teacher at Milford Public Schools in Nebraska.
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