There Are No Shortcuts

Just the craft of teaching

If I had to pick a thesis for my blogging that's what it would be. There are no shortcuts. There's no "if only schools would..." that will solve all the challenges teachers face every day. Teaching is hard. There's no easy way out. There's no substitute for the grind of humble, everyday teaching.

To be a little dramatic for a moment: we are primates who made our way out of the savannah. We evolved to communicate with a small group of people about finding food and shelter and staying safe. Then we built a culture that requires literacy and numeracy and knowledge of all sorts of things. It turns out passing all of that on to the next generation is a lot of work.

Lots of teachers enter education because they have a bit of romantic optimism about what education could be. I have that too! But sometimes that optimism leads us astray when we start thinking there are shortcuts. If only students had more choice in what they learned, if only students really understood math, if only discipline, if only block schedules, if only grade retention, if only real world applications, if only parents this, if only principals that, if only...

I’m not saying there's no way to get better at teaching and running schools. This isn't cynicism. I'm not saying nothing works. I'm saying lots of things work but each thing only works a little bit. Teaching is an endless grind, adding something to your toolbox, getting good at it, then on to the next thing. It’s figuring out which things work, and which things work ok but aren't worth the effort. It’s recognizing schools will never be perfect. It’s trying something you’re excited about, seeing it flop, and moving on.

There’s a narrative the last few years that we need to reinvent education or blow up the way schools run or something. I think that narrative is unhelpful. We don’t need big promises and dramatic change. We need patience and deliberate work that makes steady, incremental progress. We need more appreciation for the craft of teaching, the small teacher moves that won’t transform a classroom but add something. Get good at that, then add something else, and sustain that over time. That’s the type of work I’m interested in writing about.