To ensure that the commission did not approach its task as some public-utility commissions seem to approach theirs--that is, as apologists for the utility being regulated--legislators could require that the commission file biennial “audit” reports, in which the operations of each service provider would be made a matter of public record.
“You can’t depend on a Toyota when you get cold and wet weather like this. I told you before that you need a new car. Let’s hail a cab and go home. I’ll give you some time tomorrow, and we’ll go buy a Taurus.”
But the second has a different message:
“Let’s not get excited. This car is O.K. I’ll bet you left your lights on, maybe a door was ajar a little bit and your interior light never went off. All we need to do is find someone with cables and a good battery. New car? Don’t be silly.”
There seem to be two similar but competing metaphors these days related to reform and renewal in American public education. The reformers are selling new cars, and the renewers are talking about jump starts. On one hand, educators are told they are broken, in need of major repair or replacement; on the other hand, they are told that with a little help from their friends, they will be as good as new. The contrast is puzzling to the educators who are the targets of reform and renewal.
Here are some examples of the confusion.
- Reform is for institutions; renewal is for individuals. Linking reform to individuals reminds us of reform school, a place to change the character and behavior of a miscreant. But reform is applied best to salary schedules, to governance structures, to accountability measures, to flexibility waivers.
In contrast, renewal focuses on the eclectic, idiosyncratic, and unique personality that a teacher or principal or superintendent brings to work in the morning. Is the intellect tuned and challenged? Is a sense of collaboration firmly in place? Are creative juices flowing? Is a personal agenda (within a professional setting) legitimized?
Renewal, on the other hand, asks the individual to remember rather than to invent. What talents have been placed in storage? Which understandings or conditions have been gathering dust? Which dreams have been deferred? An effective renewal program helps an individual recall what is known, revive what exists, repair (not replace) what has been broken, and restore what has once been dependable.
Renewal, however, places emphasis more on encouragement than accusation. It assumes that most (though not all) educators are competent and committed to their profession and their clients. What is needed is the sustenance of praise and confidence. In short, if reform is the stick, renewal is the carrot.
The reformer defines problem and solution for someone else. The educator searching for renewal defines his or her own problem and then has at least a modest range of solutions from which to choose. Reform is characterized by compliance; renewal is characterized by search.
For almost five years, under the auspices of the University of North Carolina and with the support of the General Assembly of the state, the North Carolina Center for the Advancement of Teaching has been offering week-long renewal seminars to superior K-12 teachers from public schools (and now, under a grant from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, to those from independent schools as well). Some 165 seminars and 2,700 teachers have taught us several important lessons about reform and renewal and their relationship. Here are two of them.
The first involves learning for the sake of learning. I chatted with an Orange County, N.C., teacher and NCCAT alumna a year or so ago, as we sat next to each other over lunch, part of a larger group. The conversation went something like this:
“What have you been doing lately, Pat?”
“I’m back in graduate school, Bruce, working on a doctorate in music education at UNC-Greensboro.”
“That’s wonderful. When did all that begin?”
“The week after I came back from NCCAT” A pause ensued as she was reading the somewhat flabbergasted look on my face.
“You see, Bruce, I realized I wasn’t taking good care of my intellectual life. It has felt so good to be back in class at least once a week.”
A second pause as I assumed Pat was interested in a supervisory position of some kind. I probed gently:
“What are you going to do after you finish your doctoral work, Pat?’'
“Oh, I’m not sure ... maybe take a post doc?”
Oh, ye of little faith. Learning for the sake of learning; were it a snake, it would have bitten me. And it lies at the heart of renewal.
Exposing teachers to learning for the sake of learning more regularly has some other distinct (even practical) payoffs. A sense of the learner (rather than teacher) as responsible for learning is fostered. The usual accouterments of higher education are avoided--tests, papers, credits, degrees, diplomas, and so on. The North Carolina center does not offer even renewal credit as an incentive. The collegium of learners that is formed gives the teacher a sense of being in a class, but in this instance one that can be cooperative rather than competitive, and interactive rather than didactic. Finally, such learning encourages teachers to study outside their fields, to become more interdisciplinary.
In a second lesson, we have learned that effective reform can occur best when and where renewal has done its work. There is something of a sequence to the two improvement strategies. It goes like this.
Begin with the people in schools and school systems, rather than policies and organization charts and long-range plans. Provide them with a wide range of renewal activities, including those in which learning is simply for the sake of learning. Increase renewal programs to bring them into a better balance with reform initiatives. And then ask educators to start to take reform seriously.
We have learned that especially for the outstanding North Carolina teachers who came to the center, renewal leads to reform. They tell us that their abilities to provide leadership in school-based reform are undergirded by a week in the Blue Ridge Mountains, recharging their batteries and learning playfully once again.
Renewal before reform. A strange and unsettling idea. It seems designed to gratify some of the critics of education and astonish the rest. My apologies to Mark Twain.
