Irvin Scott's 9th Grade Football Poem: Inspired by Tony Dorsett, Robert Frost, and Ms. Scritchfield

I Am Determined: An Ode to Dorsett, Frost, and Scritchfield*

Behind two back I stand
Waiting for the first Back's hand
Which holds the thing
To make me spring
To reach the touchdown's brand.

Sometimes I'm hit,
Which brings great pain
But it's even worse
When my run's in vain
Because some lineman
Jumps offsides,
And the Ref yells out,
"That'll cost you five!"

But through all this,
I must keep running'
So the defense will think:
"He's quite stunning"
They'll key on me
From that play on,
But I am determined

To keep on going.

*When I wrote this poem nearly 30 years ago as a ninth grade student, I don't remember giving it a title. However, when Dr. Laura Stout, Principal at Jackson Middle School in Grand Prairie Texas Independent School District asked for a copy of the poem to share with her students; I realized my poem needed a title.  So, on the plane ride home, I thought for a few minutes and came up with the title above: "I Am Determined: An Ode to Dorsett, Frost, and Scritchfield. I know it's a weird title, but if you've ever heard me talk about how I came to write this poem, you will understand why all three names are important.  

http://www.impatientoptimists.org/Posts/2012/07/A-Response-to--How-Do-We-Build-the-Teaching-Profession

Two dreams come together....

Yesterday I was in Memphis, TN at a venue just 1.7 miles away from where Dr. Martin Luther King gave his final speech. I was there to participate in a conference on compensation and career lattice reform for America's teachers. Since the Foundation (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) was sponsoring the event, I was asked to give the opening. The following are my outlined notes. I trust they convey the enormous sense of irony and opportunity that I felt being in that place at that time.

My notes from opening:

Good Evening, Everyone!

My name is Irvin Scott, and I am the Deputy Director of Education for the Foundation and I want to take the next few minutes to do two things:

1.       First, I want express appreciation to specific individuals and groups for this gathering.

2.       Second, I want to set the stage for our conversations and learnings

Recognition

1.       To begin, I want recognize the District Superintendents, CEOs of the Charter Management Organizations along with your Teams including Union leadership, you are all doing trailblazing work, not only on behalf of the children and teachers in your communities, but also on behalf of the children and teachers in America. Also, Special Thank you for Dr. Kriner Cash for hosting us here in Memphis.

2.       Secondly, Education Resource Strategies and the other thought leaders that you will be interacting with during our time together. It’s important that this conversation is facilitated by leaders in the field, and we are fortunate to have you helping us. 

3.       Finally, want to recognize and thank, the Gates team, particularly Patricia Lorea, who is leading up our Knowledge Development in the compensation reform area; as well as Mike Copland, who oversees all the program officers.

Why we are here? When I thought about that question, I could not help but think about another question, where are we?

-          1.7 Miles from our location is a place that holds special significance in the annals of American history?

-          It’s place that remains a spiritual Mecca for millions of Americans today.

-          And, it’s a place where one of America’s greatest advocates for justice and equity planted what would become his final “Mountaintop Speech” into the rocky soil of the American consciousness.

-          The time? April 3,1968 (Almost 44 years ago)

-          The place? Mason Temple: Headquarters of the Church of God in Christ

-          The Occasion? A rally on behalf of workers in Memphis

-          The person? Martin Luther King, Jr.

-          Now some may argue it’s a stretch to make a connection between our gathering and that 1968 rally. I would beg to differ.  

-          While America has made enormous progress in the area of racial equity, persistent challenges of poverty plague not only Memphis, but many urban and rural communities across this country.

-          And many of us – like many teachers – got into this work of ensuring a quality education for every child, in an effort to serve communities that have not fully realized the dreams that Dr. King and others fought and died for.

-          And in many ways, our work of rethinking traditional compensation systems for America’s teachers can be connected to yet a new dream.

-          It’s a dream of revitalizing and elevating the profession of teaching so that America’s brightest, most caring, and most skillful practitioners learn, grow  and lead together; while teaching those children who need them the most.

-          So, as we begin our work together; I would request three things of you:

-          1. Suspend your disbelief about what is possible, dream a little together….

-          2. Keep in mind that our competing interests intersect at this goal:

o   Elevating a profession to better serve America’s children, especially Low Income Minority children

-          3. And finally, Remember, we have an opportunity to build on what happened nearly 44 years ago only 1.7 miles from here….

-          Thank you, and again welcome to this convening.

In Response to Shaun Johnson's Blog: "What if We Treat Doctors the Way We Treat Teachers"

The central argument of the blog: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shaun-johnson/treating-doctors-like-teachers_b_812096.html can be summed up in the following statement from the writer, who predicts the doctors' retort to being treated with the same accountability measures as teachers: "We can't control what our patients do or eat outside of our offices to maintain minimum levels of health. Also, these variables -- BMI, cholesterol, blood pressure -- are limited and don't adequately measure a healthy person. And one other thing, you can't expect us to be evaluated based on all patients equally, regardless of family history, poverty, and other complications." I have one basic response to this article, and it involves a deeper look at the comparison between the teaching and medical profession.

Although I am no expert on this matter, I believe that if you made automobiles a metaphor for the two professions (teaching / physician); one profession would be closer to a Model T Ford (teaching) and the other – by comparison – a Lexus (physician). To be clear, I am not talking about the people in the profession, I am talking about the profession itself.  There was a time when the medical profession and those who graduated from medical schools were held to very low standards. However in 1910, Abraham Flexner, an educator by trade, published a report that shared his findings on the medical profession. His conclusion? The medical profession (in large part due to low standards in medical schools) was operating in the dark ages, and lives were being lost as a result. Here is a summary of Flexner’s five findings in exact wording (yes, I tracked down and read portions of the 1910 report).

1.       For twenty-five years past there has been an enormous over-production of uneducated and ill trained medical practitioners. This has been an absolute disregard of the public welfare and without any serious thought of the interests of the public….

2.       Over-production of ill-trained men is due in the main to the existence of a very large number of commercial schools, sustained in many cases by advertising methods through which a mass of unprepared youth is drawn out of industrial occupations into the study of medicine.

3.       Until recently the conduct of a medical school was a profitable business, for the methods of instruction where mainly didactic….

4.       The existence of many of the unnecessary and inadequate medical schools has been defended by the argument that a poo medical school is justified in the interest of the poor boy. It is clear that the poor boy has no right to go into any profession for which he is not willing to obtain adequate preparation; but the facts set forth in this report make it evident that this argument is insincere, and that the excuse which has hitherto been put forward in the name of the poor boy is in reality an argument in behalf of the poor medical school.

5.       A hospital under the complete educational control is as necessary to a medical school as is a laboratory of chemistry is to pathology. High grade teaching within a hospital introduces a most wholesome and beneficial influence into its routine.

At the time of the report (1910), I can imagine that there was a range of responses from those within the medical profession. In one camp you probably heard the following responses:

            The nerve of that Flexner guy! What does he know; he’s not even a physician.

How does he expect us to produce better results with the terrible conditions that
people are subject to in 1910? The economy is tanking, living conditions are atrocious, and I can hardly feed my family on what I make.

In another camp you might have heard something like this:

Finally! Someone is talking about creating some unified standards for what it means to be an effective physician.

At last, someone is exposing the complexity of this job! Not just anyone can be a physician; I have been saying this for years!

Wow!! It’s exciting to hear someone talk about elevating this profession to the place where I believe it should be. Perhaps one day I will encourage my own children to become a physician and stop discouraging them as I currently do.

In response to the Flexner report, major changes were made to the medical profession over time. At that time, the medical profession was like that Model T. However, the profession underwent a major overhaul, and it’s never been the same again.

One hundred years later, the same type of overhaul is being called for with the teaching profession. Yes, we’re hearing voices from both camps. In one camp there are those saying things like, Finally! Someone is talking about creating unified standards for what it means to be an effective teacher. Others, in a different camp are saying things like, What If We Treated Physicians the Way We Treat Teachers?”  My answer to that question is that 100 years ago, physicians did get similar treatment. And their profession has not been the same since. We can only hope for the same with the teaching profession.

Gotham Gazette

Gotham Gazette

Why Teacher Voice / Professionalism

While most Americans – if not all – can name a teacher that had a significant impact on their lives, the current, national perception towards teachers does not appear to reflect that personal affinity towards a great teacher.  Why is that? Why is it that most of us can name a great teacher (or several) who pushed us, nurtured us, encouraged us; but when we talk about the profession, we conclude there is a lot to be desired. I would contend that the answer is simple: there are far too many teachers who do not have a significant impact on the lives of students, at least not in a positive way. Furthermore, this country has not developed credible and efficient systems – federal, state, district, or school-based – that develop struggling teachers or evaluate them out at the scale needed. So, you may ask what does teacher voice / professionalism have to do with addressing these challenges. I argue it has everything to do with it.  

As with any profession, those in the profession (teachers and school leaders) must play a significant role in making the necessary changes to improve teaching and learning in classrooms. This is critical if the changes in the profession are going to be sustained over time. This is not to suggest that those in the profession must be the catalyst for those significant changes. Sometimes it takes someone from outside the profession to shed light on what needs to change within.  Such was the case with the medical profession back in 1910.  Abraham Flexner – who was not a trained physician but an educator – published the Flexner Report. In the report he criticized the way that medical schools operated. According to Flexner, the standards for acceptance to medical schools were too low, the courses were not rigorous enough, and graduation was too easy. Sound familiar? This report catalyzed the Nation’s medical schools to change, and they have not been the same ever since. Yet, despite Flexner’s outsider perspective, I am sure it took the voices and actions of many insiders to ensure that those higher standards persist today. A similar argument can be made with the teaching profession today.

I think it is safe to say that most of the recent, proposed reforms to the teaching profession have come from outside the profession. The Flexner example would suggest that this is not necessarily a bad thing. However, as these proposals take shape, it is important to lift up the voices of teachers. Doing so could have three major benefits. First, as we give teachers an opportunity to engage and help shape the reform, I am sure that we will find that there are many teachers who are and have been advocates of these reforms all along. We are already seeing this in the numbers of partner, teacher organizations that are on the rise like TeachPlus and Educators for Excellence. These groups are made up of teachers who simply did not have the voice to push for change from within. But now they do. This leads to the second possible benefit: teachers as leaders of the reform.  This may not be a complicated as it might seem. Think about all the teachers who are currently involved in the MET project, or the teachers who are involved in developing and using new rubrics in the IPS/APS sites, or the teachers involved in shaping and using the College Ready literacy and math tools.  What if we found a way for them to be as versed as we are in those tools, and then allowed them to message alongside us to their peers…the Nation?  I know it is idealistic, but this would not be the first time that I was accused of being an idealist.

                                                                                                                                                

The final benefit has to do with feedback. The more we engage teachers in these conversations, the more likely we will create a feedback loop for learning how these reforms play out in the classroom on a day-to-day basis.  Going back to the Flexner Report; it would have been ludicrous for Flexner to believe that he did not need to hear back from practicing physicians regarding his suggestions and recommendations. This feedback from the practicing physicians most likely provided guidance for where more support and push were needed during the change process. At the same time, hearing back did not mean lowering Flexner’s standards or recommendations. As those reforms played-out and more lives were saved, Flexner made believers out of those within and outside the profession. I believe the same thing can happen with the teacher profession. As the teacher reform efforts play-out in collaboration with teachers, and these efforts result in significant increases in students achieving college and career readiness; then teachers will become true believers and leaders in the work. Perhaps then Americans will revere the teaching profession beyond the individual teacher who impacted them personally.