Controlling Teachers Through Scripted Programs.
I am not a big fan of expensive scripted teaching programs. Our school is an Every Day Math School (The Wright Group) . Our classes departmentalize and we do it for 2 periods a day. We spend a bloody fortune on Every Day Math’s ” expensive supplies” . The first two periods of the the day is dedicated to Every Day Math, a decision made by our administration.
I have noticed that the people who make these decisions , high level/ low-level administrators were usually not , ” master teachers” themselves (if they were they would have stayed in the classroom). Often they were adequate teachers, but the classroom was not where they wanted to be, or where their talents lie. They are good communicators, good at managing people, but few of them has a love affair with the classroom or curriculum. Not completely true in my building, one of our administrators after the fact I think is becoming ” a master teacher” , and has a post classroom love affair with all things curriculum based. You know the geeky stuff real teachers are made of, getting excited about “real learning”, designing an assignment, the execution of that assignment, the creating projects, and observing how that lesson changed the classroom culture, how the classroom culture impacts the lesson, and how the entire encounter impacted it’s participants, both students and teachers..
The thought that you can ever “script” an encounter that complex is ludicrous. It is like trying to script modern dance . Though I admit that great modern dance executed by someone trained in the Russian Ballet can reach dizzying heights. Modern dance is about freedom, a four-way dialogue; between the dancer, his body, the music and the audience. Modern Dance is about true honesty of expression, the fact that you cannot predict outcomes, or would even want to, and ultimately the fact that the body never lies.
The Russian Ballet, historically is a strict, even rigid disciplined dance. Where the “scripted ” technique understands and celebrates the possibility of movement to such an extent, that highest achievements of “personal expression” can only be reached by total submission to the ” Script”. Following the script frees the participant to reach his or her potential, create that magical 4 part dialogue.
That said, I have seen both Michail Baryshnikov and Rudolf Nureyev ( I know I am old) perform both modern dance pieces and classical pieces. The classical pieces were beautiful, elegant if predictable, and particularly in Nureyev’s case often thrilling. However all of the moves could have been replicated, taught, and followed. Sort of like “best practices” in dance.
The modern pieces were explosive, sometimes beautiful, as well as horrifying at points, unpredictable, inventive, and I as an observer had to participate. This was not Swan Lake, but something I had never seen before, Modern dance demanded my participation.
Now I love Classical Ballet, ( I will purchase Tickets to the Nutcracker which I have seen 20 + times performed after I finish this blog piece) but Modern dance requires my presence, it does not exalt the script to a level where, diversion is seen as anarchy, and anarchy is always bad. (Often met by a strike with a thin stick across the dancers legs in Russian Studios)
Ok, so I digress. Why compare teaching to Ballet? Or more far fetched, compare the current scripted teaching programs to the classical ballet. Well Ballet is so difficult, having befriended some professional dancers in another life in a Universe far, far away , when I was trying to be an actor in NYC in my teens and very early 20’s, I learned that Ballet on many levels was the most difficult things I think you can do.
A choreographer the one who creates the “scripts” in the ballet must have complete command of the dance and be a genius. A dancer must be dedicated, disciplined, practiced, intuitive and sensitive to all the elements that make the dance; body, mind, audience, and music. A dancer like a teacher is a communicator, and the communication is highly complex.
I think as we flop around like fish in this nation trying to figure out how to create a fool-proof instant out of the box answer to education, we should remember that teaching like dance is a complex art-form. We would find it ridiculous if you they sold “instant scripted programs ” to teach ballet. We should find it equally ridiculous that we think a communication as complex as teaching can be scripted. Teaching/learning can never come out of a box, or be completely predictable.There are always unintended outcomes. Often teaching/learning may benefit from rigorous discipline, but only if this discipline is based in something thouhgtful and brilliant. As in the case of dance it is the dialogue of many elements that give it it’s potency. not a script.
