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What happens when some of the best teachers in a district are invited to present at conferences across the country, but are never asked to share what they know in their own schools? In this solo episode, Gene Tavernetti reflects on the way classroom teachers with deep expertise in evidence-informed instruction can be sought out by educators elsewhere while their knowledge is overlooked or discouraged at home.
Gene explores Tall Poppy Syndrome, the social cost of standing out, and why sending teachers to conferences with instructions to bring learning back is unlikely to produce meaningful schoolwide change without leadership and a culture that values internal expertise. He revisits the Starfish Story with a less comforting conclusion: if conference learning changes only one classroom, perhaps all we can say is, “It made a difference to that teacher.”
Descriptions of effective teaching often depict an idealized form of "perfect" instruction. Yet, pursuing perfection in teaching, which depends on children's behavior, is ultimately futile. To be effective, lessons and educators need to operate with about 75% efficiency. The remaining 25% can be impactful, but expecting it in every lesson, every day, is unrealistic. Perfection in teaching may be unattainable, but progress is not. Whether you are aiming for the 75% effectiveness mark or striving for continuous improvement, this podcast will guide you in that endeavor.
Speaker: Hi, everyone. It's just me again, and I wanted to share some thoughts I had after attending a conference recently. And I just wanna say that in, 2003, I joined a consulting group that focused on training and supporting teachers in planning and delivering explicit instructions. When I started this work, people would ask me what I did, and I would answer very briefly, because when most people ask you what you do, they aren't really that interested.
Mostly, they're just being polite. When I told them I help teachers teach better, for most people, that was enough. Others might ask a follow-up question like, "What do you mean help them teach better?" Well, initially I was stuck at this point in the conversation because I didn't have a succinct response. I didn't have what some might describe as an elevator pitch.
For those of you who may not be familiar with the term elevator pitch, allow me to birdwalk for a moment and tell you about an elevator pitch, or more specifically, the metaphor of an elevator pitch. So the metaphor is that you unexpectedly find yourself in an elevator with someone important, in this case, at your school or in your district.
In education, this might be a site administrator, a district administrator, a grade-level lead, a department chair, or even your teaching partner, and you have only the length of the elevator persuade that person that your idea deserves further discussion. So the term elevator pitch grew out of the idea that you should be able to explain and sell an idea in the time it takes to ride an elevator, roughly thirty to sixty seconds.
Its exact origin is uncertain, but the expression became widely used at the late, part of the twentieth century. So after doing this work, training teachers how to design and deliver explicit lessons for nearly twenty-five years, I still have not been able to come up with an adequate elevator pitch.
Here's what my friend Al came up with, or I don't know. It... AI looks like Al to me, so that's what I call, my friend Al. "Teachers know dozens of evidence-based practices, retrieval practice, modeling checks for understanding, guided practice, but knowing pieces doesn't tell you how to build the lesson.
FAST is a lesson design framework that shows teachers how to put those pieces together in a coherent, effective instruction." Well, this doesn't help. And AI has access to all my work and work product. So why doesn't that help? Let's start with the beginning of the first sentence. "Teachers know dozens of evidence-based practices."
I'm not sure that's true. Some teachers know about evidence-based practices, but I've attended conferences from the East Coast to the Rockies, where evidence-based science of learning practices are presented in session after session, and most teachers report this is the first time they've been exposed to the information.
"Why didn't we learn this in our teacher prep training?" is a common refrain after attending these sessions. And teachers attending these sessions, they're self-selected. What many would label as early adopters of initiatives, teachers who would be called lifelong learners The conferences that I attend, many professional development sessions are led by classroom teachers.
They explain the evidence-based practices and then demonstrate how they personally use them in their classrooms. Most of the teachers who attend the conferences are hearing the information for the first time. The interesting thing about those teachers who are presenting and sharing their experiences, their successes, at the end of their sessions, they're circled by teachers who have more questions, that the attendees who want to glean every bit of expertise they can from their well-informed and experienced peers.
I like to ask these teachers who are presenting and sharing their expertise how the information on evidence-informed practice is received by teachers at their own sites or in their own districts when they've shared the information with them It's a trick question because I know the most common response is that they never present to their own faculty.
They are never asked to provide input at PLC meetings, even if the information would be relevant to the agenda, and sometimes it's even worse. There are teachers who I have met who are presenting at conferences that are serving entire states, teachers who've gained a reputation and even a following because of their expertise they share at conferences and on social media.
These same teachers who have volunteered to provide training to entire staffs or to PLC groups in their own districts, and have had their offers turned down. I've met teachers who are known nationally for their work, who are asked to talk about their work on podcast after podcast, teachers who have documented student success, and those very same have been specifically asked not to share their knowledge or experiences.
What happens to these teachers who are sharing their knowledge and experience at conferences when they return to their sites? They return to their classrooms and continue to be excellent teachers. They keep their heads down. They do their jobs and do it well, but they don't volunteer their opinions because they've learned they aren't valued.
Many experience what has been called the tall poppy syndrome. Tall poppy syndrome in school occurs when teachers who stand out because of their successes, expertise, innovation, or recognition are criticized, revented, resented, or socially undermined by colleagues. Essentially, the tall poppy gets cut down to the level of everyone else.
In practice, it can sound like, "She thinks she's better than us." "He's just the principal's favorite." Or resistance when a successful teacher is asked to share practices with colleagues. The danger is that it can create a culture in which excellence carries a social cost, discouraging teachers from taking risks, sharing expertise, or publicly succeeding.
So what happens to these teachers? Some just keep their heads down, continue to do excellent work in their classrooms while working to maintain their anonymity, while quietly continuing to share their expertise at conferences and in other districts. Some leave the classroom to take leadership positions in other districts.
Some are recruited by consulting firms who recognize their talents and expertise. Some venture out into their own on in the world of consulting. What all three of these options have in common is that in some way they were invited out of their districts before they had an opportunity contribute to the utmost of their ability.
Ironically, the teachers who attend these conferences and are exposed to evidence-based practices and the science of learning for the first time are chomping at the bit to return to their sites to share what they've learned. In fact, it's extremely common for teachers who ask to attend conferences, who ask for districts to provide monetary support to attend, are granted that financial support under one condition: when they return from the conference, that they share what they learned with the rest of the staff.
Isn't it interesting that teacher with a few hours of exposure will be asked to share what they learned, while it's possible there are teachers with more expertise who are on the staff and will never be asked to share? Naively, these newly exposed teachers, even if they're not asked to present to the entire staff, are encouraged by pro- conference presenters to share what they learned with their colleagues.
The hope, of course, is that if their colleagues only knew what they now know, their colleagues would change their practices, too. And then they would share, and then they would share, and there would be a snowball effect. I hold out zero hope for teachers returning to their district from a conference and being able to lead any type of change at their schools.
I hold out some hope for site and district ad- leaders returning from a conference to lead change. Before I end, I want to make one plea to administrators. Do everything you can to discover the talent on your staff. They want to help make positive change, but it's up to you to ensure that you're not asking them to step up in a poppy field culture.
Let me leave you with this. Several years ago, it was impossible to attend an education conference without someone telling the starfish story as a way to inspire teachers to view success with any student as important and significant. Story goes like this: A man is walking along a beach after a storm and sees thousands of starfish stranded on the sand.
Farther down the beach, he sees a young person picking them up one at a time and throwing them back in the ocean. The man says, essentially, "There are thousands of starfish. You can't possibly save them all. What you're doing isn't gonna make a difference." And the young person picks up another starfish, throws it into the water, and replies, "It made a difference to that one."
Teachers attending conferences are not able to make changes in classrooms beyond their own. Unless something changes to eliminate the poppy field culture, the best we can hope for when teachers attend conferences is to be able to say, "Well, it made a difference to that teacher."