NCAE | Time to Teach Position Paper

North Carolina, while receiving national acclaim for the ABC’s plan and heightened accountability for schools, must now take a stand in providing educators the necessary time to collaborate, plan, and implement strategies to meet the needs of all children. NCAE’s belief is that even skilled, veteran teachers would be more effective if given the necessary time. Certainly new teachers who are often immediately overwhelmed and likely to leave the profession would benefit from increased time to plan, to set goals for their students as well as for themselves professionally, and to collaborate with other educators who can share what has worked in their classrooms. By offering and/or increasing planning time for teachers, student achievement is more likely to rise and teachers are more apt to remain in the profession.

Historically, the work of teachers has been and continues to be defined as time spent “in front of the classroom.” This definition of teaching emphasizes the notion that teachers are primarily deliverers of content and that curricular planning and decision making are for those at higher levels of authority. It also promotes the implication that professional development is unrelated to improving instruction. This would, in part, serve to explain the feelings of guilt and divided loyalties that occur when professional development opportunities take teachers away from their classrooms, even for a day. Meanwhile, reports from around the nation as well as from around the world indicate that the best professional development activity for educators is the meaningful reflection, dialogue, and collaboration that takes place among colleagues. Under our current system, this kind of sharing takes place in the hallways between classes, during a lunch break (provided the teacher does not have the responsibility of direct supervision of students during this time), or at the end of an already grueling workday. A RAND study showed that new teaching strategies can require as much as fifty hours of instruction, practice, and coaching before teachers become comfortable with them. With additional planning time built into the school day, teachers could engage in the kind of collaboration and professional development that leads to enhanced instruction and greater student achievement.

Under the ABC’s of Accountability, student achievement and teacher performance are more closely scrutinized than ever before. The “bar” as well as the stakes have been raised for all, yet educators are given no additional support in terms of the additional time it takes to interpret results of testing and make necessary accommodations. A survey conducted by NCAE indicated that eighty percent of teachers had increased levels of stress, accompanied by a decline in morale, as a direct result of the ABC program. While eighty-nine percent of administrators and sixty-four percent of teachers felt that the ABC’s plan has increased student achievement, should we do so at the risk of pushing qualified professionals out of the classroom and into less stressful, more financially rewarding fields? When surveyed on the issue of what it would take to entice teachers into working in a low performing school, the top three responses were: smaller class size, strong support from administrators, and planning time. An increase in salary did not even make the top ten list, a strong indication of what really drives teachers. They WANT to be effective in the classroom. In order to reach all students and get the achievement results that our public demands and that our students deserve, we must give teachers the time to plan sound strategies.

It has been said that school employees’ working conditions are also children’s learning conditions. Is there anyone who would take the view that teachers in NC have optimal working conditions? If so, why is there such a critical shortage of teachers? Why must we spend public money to recruit people into the teaching profession and specifically into our North Carolina schools? Working conditions simply must be improved if we are to sustain our teaching force. Unlike the solitary emphasis of teaching in this country, Asian educators approach learning as a group effort. In Japan and Taiwan, for example, teachers are in charge of classes only about 60% of the time they are in school. The remaining time is dedicated to collaboration with colleagues, planning and assessing, or participating in a variety of professional growth opportunities. Any assumption by the public or by any policy makers that teachers in NC would somehow “waste” their additional planning time would only serve to reinforce the traditionally low status of teachers and imply that they, as professionals, cannot be entrusted when given time without students.

The first step in providing the crucial time teachers need to plan is the recognition that an educator’s work involves far more than standing in front of a classroom. Failure to acknowledge this places the responsibility of any school and/or pedagogical reform on the backs of the teachers’ own time. Meanwhile, the papers still need to be graded and the phone calls home to parents still need to be made, just to name a few of the duties teachers perform outside the traditional workday.

Obviously the most costly approach to providing planning time is to hire more teachers, reduce class size and provide enrichment activities for students that will free teachers.

Realizing that the teacher shortage is likely to continue until systemic changes such as better working conditions occur, it is unlikely that hiring more teachers would be a feasibility at this time. “More teachers” simply do not exist. Instead, we must look at creative scheduling and ways that individual schools can more effectively provide time for teachers. We can hope, with good reason, that improving the working conditions of teachers would ultimately lead to attracting and keeping qualified personnel in the schools. At that point we would be better equipped to turn our priorities to the issue of reducing class size.

Until that day when we have an adequate supply of qualified teachers who can be hired to reduce class sizes, the following are examples of strategies that could be implemented in order to free up time for teachers. These are by no means the only solutions. In fact, we believe that this issue can be best addressed at the individual school level when possible. However, the state of North Carolina must be on the forefront in supporting the right of teachers to have the necessary time to plan for the students they teach and for whom they are held accountable.