On a recent post about empowering students, Gary Kern asked me a question in his comment:

What are your thoughts on the structures and changes needed for teachers, especially at the older grades, to be able to foster higher levels of participation in their learning?

What we really need are structures that both develop (and keep) GOOD TEACHERS! Teachers that are co-learners rather than information pushers.

Let’s just admit that the greatest influence in schools today are the quality of the teachers, and start doing things to make sure the right people are hired, and the wrong people are encouraged to find another calling.

Let’s make it too uncomfortable for the ‘unshifted‘ to continue doing what they have always done. And let’s also make it impossible for someone to enter teaching and model what they do from old mindsets and skill sets.

Let’s structurally design classrooms with an expectation of openness and thus be able to ‘peek in’ and offer critical feedback where it is needed.

Let’s change the way we fill a teacher’s day so that they have time to collaborate and co-teach, and actually learn from each other… so that they model what it means to ‘participate in learning’ for their students.

Let’s put “Responsibility before Accountability”.

Let’s make professional development about learning communities and not stand and deliver presentations. And let’s ‘foster high levels of participation’ in teacher learning.

Let’s actually learn from our successes rather than let them happen despite the system and on the fringes of the system. And let’s also learn from our failures rather than trying to hide them.

Let’s make LEARNING the focus of educators rather than teaching.

(Cross-posted on Connected Principals.)