Rock star teachers are a problem for education systems

This title (rock star teachers are a problem) may seem counterintuitive, if not flat-out crazy. Can great teachers really be a problem? Not for their students, of course. But I believe they can cause problems across school systems by creating unrealistic expectations regarding what teachers can and should do.

Years ago, I was running a conversation at an iNACOL symposium, discussing building vs buying online content. A teacher told her story of building online content for her class, how great it was, how much students liked it, and how well they did. Only as she was ending her comments did she very quietly add “I didn’t have time to sleep at all during that semester.”

I was immediately worried that most people in the audience, other than those sitting right next to this teacher, had heard the story of her building her own digital content, without hearing her say she hadn’t slept much for months. Their likely takeaway? Our teachers can do this too. And probably most school leaders do have some teachers who will put in that effort. But most teachers can’t—and shouldn’t—be expected to, which means that if a district is going to build content, it needs to put in extensive support and systems. If leaders think the rock star teachers are the norm, they will not feel the need to create these systems and supports.

A recent Washington Post article, More teachers are asked to double up, instructing kids at school and at home simultaneously, describes teachers instructing some students who are in the classroom, and other students who are engaging remotely, at the same time. In a recent blog post I noted reasons why I believe this is a poor approach (although it was understandable as one element of emergency remote learning.) The article also highlights several stories of teachers going to extraordinary lengths to make this approach work. For example:

Rachel Breeding, 38, who teaches first-grade reading and language arts at Greensboro Elementary School on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, said pandemic teaching has tested her creativity, problem solving and tech skills as never before. She taught in a concurrent mode during the fall and has been back at it this month.

“Teachers are naturally multitaskers,” she said, “but simultaneous instruction takes it to a whole new level.”

Breeding said she became more competent through weeks of trial and error. Now she uses a computer at her desk to connect with Zoom students and circulates through her classroom with her iPad on, staying in touch as she moves around. She also wears a wireless headset.

Every morning, her first-graders start with a song, waving at each other through Zoom. “I will admit it’s the hardest thing I’ve done in my 17 years of teaching,” Breeding said. “But in my opinion, this year will affect students for the rest of their lives.”

On the surface, this is an uplifting story. However, is an instructional mode that requires “weeks of trial and error” really a good idea? Are enough teachers going to go through weeks of trial and error to come up with instructional strategies that work?

As the previous blog post mentioned, in the midst of the pandemic, requiring teachers to experiment on the fly made sense, if only because it was the least bad alternative. But as we look to the next school year, instructional plans need to build on teachers’ dedication and expertise by supporting them in new ways. Otherwise, we will hear more stories like this one:

Jonte Lee, a high school chemistry teacher at Coolidge High in D.C., said simulcast teaching allowed him to maintain the same student roster when only two students returned to the building. During a recent lesson on atoms, he gave the two in-person students physical models of atoms to build while the 14 remote students manipulated a virtual model of an atom on their screens.

“It was a little more work. It did push my creative boundaries,” Lee said of simulcasting. “But whatever it takes to make my students learn, no sacrifice is too great. It just takes a little extra creativity.” (emphasis added)

This is where the “rock star teacher” can inadvertently create problems. “No sacrifice is too great” sounds inspirational, and perhaps it’s unfair to over-analyze a quote in an article. But a belief that teachers can and should be expected to have a “no sacrifice too great” ethos is morally unfair and practically unsustainable. Is a teacher’s young child, aging parent, or personal health among the things that should be sacrificed? Are we as a society prepared to ask teachers to sacrifice those things?

When the questions are put that way, the answers are obviously no. The risk is that it may not be obvious to district and state leaders that their actions are requiring teachers to make such sacrifices. And sometimes leaders make decisions because they have been inadvertently mis-led by a rock star teacher who made the impossible seem manageable. As great as that may have been for that teacher’s students, if decision-makers believe that truly extraordinary teachers are the norm, those leaders will set up other teachers, and students, for failure.