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The Holy Grail of Teaching

If I ever had some doubts about the existence of a single most important ingredient in successful education reform, this NYT article might just change my mind. Teaching skills have long been thought of as something rather elusive, much like a secret art. An art that included personality, content knowledge and body language to name just a few components. Well, we might just live to see this mystery clarified, dissected and taxonomised; and much to Ken Knox’s delight, a data driven approach will lead the way.

Relevant to our (for me soon to be „their“) specific situation in the Abu Dhabi PPP Project, Greene’s article is a great springboard to create a new and far more incisive approach to teacher training than ever before.

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The Key to Change

According to the National, there is an urgent need for qualified teachers as well as retraining of current teachers in UAE schools. There is certainly a list of valid arguments for this and supporting evidence such as a 2007 McKinsey study concluding „that all outstanding school systems share one characteristic: high-quality teachers“ (see link above for reference).

Money is in fact pouring into education reform projects in the UAE, but is reform taking place at a more fundamental level needed? Unless parents provide children with a framework at home that supports learning, respect for education and hard work, even the best efforts at school will always be limited at best. What seems sorely missing in this whole debate is the role and responsibility of the primary stakeholders in the process: parents, children and the society they live in.

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Who are the Superstars?

A crucial component of the PPP project in the UAE is teacher training and improving the quality of teaching. Yet, where is the data to empirically demonstrate what exactly distinguishes the extraordinary from the good or the merely average teacher? It’s fairly easy to spot glaring omissions or problematic behavior by teachers in the classroom. It’s an entirely different (and perhaps controversial) matter, however, to document exceptional teacher strategies with hard data. So the question remains: “ What Makes a Great Teacher?„

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Supersize Me

While the headline „U.S. Schools‘ War Against Chocolate Milk“ sounds like, well, an attention grabbing headline, the underlying issue is just the tip of an iceberg. Morgan Spurlock in „Supersize Me“ had already started to stir up a debate about school lunches, the costs of nutritional shortcomings and big business with the little ones. It may not be a war yet, but we as educators should start thinking about which side we stand on: do we want scientific fact and nutritional balance to prevail in the cafeteria or big business and the convenience of looking the other way?

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TEFL Qualified

One of my pet hates – seeing „TEFL qualified“ on people’s CV’s. To me, that translates into: you have an art history degree and some dodgy online 3 week teaching certificate. People, those kinds of qualifications should land you a job in the fast food industry, not the English Language Department.

If you want to teach a language, you should have studied at least one foreign language at a tertiary institution and reached an upper-intermediate level. Add a CELTA/DELTA and/or postgraduate degree in linguistics or TESOL to that, mix in the right kind of personality and stir with integrity, humor, intelligence, good social skills. That’s just for starters.