Hilton: Helping good teachers become great teachers
By Peter Hilton Guest Commentary May 31, 2012 10:34PM
Peter Hilton is an associate professor in the School of Education at St. Xavier University in Chicago.
Updated: July 6, 2012 10:09AM
Approximately 100 teachers a year attend my classes, eager to learn about new and improved instructional materials as well as alternate strategies to increase student learning in their classrooms.
On this particular day, 20 teachers sit in a circle in the library at Rockridge High School in Edgington, Ill., a community on the Iowa border in Rock Island County.
The teacher-students are eager, excited and talkative. They are enrolled in St. Xavier University’s Master of Arts in Teaching and Leadership Program, which is designed to improve their individual classroom practice.
The program holds classes not only at the university but throughout Illinois, occasionally taking me on road trips to as many as three locations in a week. I share with my teacher-students the required tasks, and they move through the lessons efficiently and effectively.
They are tough critics of the instruction they receive. It must be appropriate, applicable to their situation and meaningfully relevant. Teachers, trained in efficacy, do not like to waste time.
When they participate in classes that challenge them to think about their teaching, to improve their practice or to demonstrate their knowledge, they raise the bar on their work and challenge their peers to do the same.
They’ve sought out this graduate program because they believe it will improve their performance. In case you didn’t know, most teachers desire to be better teachers.
When they’re together among their peers, they are both competitive and cooperative because they understand that collaboration builds their skills and will help their students.
Discussions are wide-ranging and include student motivation and ownership, improving skills in reading and/or math, designing hands-on lessons in science or helping kids become better citizens of their schools.
In my 18 years of teaching graduate programs in education, I have seen fewer than five teachers who might fall into the category of “dead wood” — not effective or energized.
Nowhere across the state, from McHenry to Petersburg or from Chicago to Moline, do I see a teaching corps so often negatively described in the media. On the contrary, I see many exceptional teachers willingly working extra hours on behalf of their students.
Their continuing challenge is to find more ways to fully engage their students and to reach the ones who seem to be dropping behind. They want every child to be the best he or she can be.
I stand amazed by how hard my teachers work to improve their practice. They set high goals for themselves and stretch and pull their peers along with them.
These teachers work around the incredible demands of test preparation and data gathering to find pathways to learning for children. They are concerned about the demise of art and music in the schools because they know that those subjects often captivate kids.
They lament the test preps that have replaced stories and novels because they know that reading is an essential, lifelong skill that opens new worlds and challenges children to live more fully. They look for ways to engage their students in immeasurable acts of imagination and in meaningful, soul-enriching work.
I feel privileged to help guide these gifted and giving teachers in the creation of a research project that will help them become better teachers. Throughout all of the years that I’ve worked in this field, I continue to come away from my experience in awe of my teacher-students.
Peter Hilton is an associate professor in the School of Education at St. Xavier University in Chicago.
