Maybe YOU'RE Not Ready to Learn

I'm writing my directed study paper for this term, which is basically just a write-up of a survey that my professors gave to a bunch of principals and reading coaches. In case you are not hip to post-NCLB literacy lingo, a reading coach is an instructional leader who is supposed to help classroom teachers by observing, modeling, providing resources and professional development and helping to manage the copious amounts of data that schools now collect on their students. Coaching can be very effective, when done right, because it essentially embeds ongoing professional development right into the daily rhythm of planning that goes on at school. And since elementary teachers, in particular, are inclined to plan lessons based on the current season, instead of setting specific, measurable goals and teaching them in a sequential fashion, having someone around to remind them of the data while they are planning their lessons is a good thing.

But a coach might also be a really terrible, yet tenured, teacher that the principal just wants to get out of the classroom. Or it could be a teacher that decides now is the time to have a baby, and gosh, wouldn't it be hard to come back from maternity leave to a regular classroom full of kids, so I'll just take on the position of coach, even though I have no real interest in doing this job. I'm not saying teachers with babies can't be be good coaches, just that they shouldn't take on that job because they think it will be less work.

In any case, I'm doing qualitative analysis on the survey question in which they were asked to describe the biggest challenges. And one response that popped up here, and in fact, has popped up in many conversations I've had with teachers is that kids show up to school "not ready to learn."

What the %$#@ does that mean? Have you ever met a kid without at least a glimmer of curiosity about how the world works? Maybe they don't give two hoots about what the teacher has to say to them, but that doesn't mean they're not ready to learn.

More on this later...I'm only 11 pages written and I have a ways to go.