“Come see me in the office.” Uh oh. I probably got caught teaching again.
I got in trouble more often as a teacher than as a student. That happens when you advocate for those furthest from the norm in schools, especially advanced students. Richard Rusczyk, my CEO at Art of Problem Solving, has said that when he talks with the best classroom teachers about what they’re doing, “I hear a lot of rulebreaking.” You shouldn’t have to sneak around to do right by your kids, but I found it happens consistently in K–12 education.
Before I taught in this school, I served as the Assistant Director of the American Psychological Association’s Center for Gifted Education Policy. I was well aware of the philosophical and logistical challenges to meeting such students’ needs in typical public schools. As a classroom teacher, however, I directly experienced administrative pushback for my efforts to address those needs.
The setting was a seventh grade algebra program for high-achieving students in a large suburban district in the mid-Atlantic region. I took a seat in the office of an administrator who had just emailed her concerns that our curricular extensions were “too advanced” and “elitist.” (I still keep that email.)
“Is this yours?” she inquired. It was from one of the other two teachers of the course, but it aligned with material I was teaching. The document in question was a math quiz accidentally left at a copier. The school year was nearly over, but as in many schools when state testing was completed, the school year essentially was over…except in math. We kept teaching.
“We’ve had a parent complain,” she intoned gravely.
I was confused. “About what?”
“One of your parents thinks what you’re doing is too hard.” Alarm bells went off. Definitely, we Algebra 7 teachers ran a uniquely accelerated and enriched course out of step with the precious county pacing guide. However, my students’ parents and I communicated very comfortably, frequently, and openly. I made myself widely available to meet in person about any concerns. The issue being raised was possibly legitimate, but my Spidey sense was activated.
We had an unusually large, willing, and able Algebra 7 group, and we excitedly fulfilled our moral obligation to challenge each student fully. As essential as Shulman’s pedagogical content knowledge is to learning, still more important is the simple awareness that teachers teach people more than anything else. Knowing our kids needed appropriately different experiences than some of their same-age peers directed our curriculum. Their grateful parents played a vital role, giving cover to us teachers to (Heaven forbid) meet their children’s needs in the face of system administrators whose limited age-grade expectations and benighted interpretations of equity put them in direct opposition to our daily endeavors.
The highest-level decision makers in education typically ensure through administrators that schools are suffused with an exclusive obsession about potential differences among demographic subgroups on annual minimum competency testing. In that mindset, teachers like us who facilitate each student’s peak performance are seen, at best, as squandering supposedly fixed resources better focused only on kids who might not “pass the test.” Our country’s complicated relationship with expertise is evident through these top-level demonstrations of anti-intellectual, willful neglect of the needs of the many students beyond low-level benchmarks. And I was still sitting in the office of one such administrator.
I pointed to the upper left of the quiz. “The kids love this, and you can see it’s all extra credit. It can only help their final grades.”
She paused before remaining on point. “What are you guys doing anyway?” Now my suspicion was validated. The quiz wasn’t even mine, but she was trying to pick off the gazelle from our teaching group.
I tried to mask my anger. “Teaching. Parents complain to me that their kids are watching movies all day.” It was true…and it went over poorly. Maybe it was my delivery, or maybe it hit close to home. Though I’m sure some of our parents registered additional complaints about teachers who were not teaching, I was the one being called on the carpet on my prep period. Teaching beyond a certain threshold is often not a safe space for teachers, even in schools that talk a good game.
I continued, in case she actually had told the truth. “But just tell me who the parent is, and I’ll call today.” She stared blankly for several seconds. Yep.
“Unless there’s no parent to call,” I quietly added. I got caught teaching; she got caught lying.
It’s quite simple to be a mediocre adult in a “good” school where kids generally behave and show up largely knowing enough curriculum to pass state tests without significant adult help. You show up, roll out the balls, do no harm, avoid lawsuits, and voila—modest organizational goals are met. Administrators remain in comfortable positions, advancing through the salary schedule, maybe receiving promotions. Teachers can spend more time angling for favorite courses or grade levels.
Meanwhile, legitimately concerned parents—commonly slurred as “helicopter parents” by system adults who resent perceived challenges to their authority—are left to hope that teachers assigned to their children, as well as their administrators, won’t be satisfied with minimum competency. It’s all too easy for even well-intentioned teachers to be intimidated or bullied by administrators who view a class with high achievers as an opportunity to redirect resources and take one’s foot off the gas, instead of a chance to do something unusually significant. It would have been immoral for us Algebra 7 teachers to use state tests as markers of any sufficient learning in that course.
The irresponsible, cruise-control version of that Algebra 7 course would have been easy to teach, since everyone would pass the year-end minimum competency test. Instead, teaching those students the right way was incredibly demanding, time-consuming, and rewarding. I adored them. My students learned extremely well, representing nearly half of the school’s enrollment in that year’s course. The following year, two of my Algebra 7 students would become the top eighth-grade Mathcounts students in the entire state. I would go on to earn that state’s Governor’s School Outstanding Educator Award in Mathematics, Science, and Technology.
Yet, when the school year ended, only days after I got caught teaching and defended my kids’ needs, I was removed from teaching the course. Over my three remaining years there, I never was assigned a single section of that course again. Make no mistake—there can be reprisals for standing up for advanced kids and work. Adults bully, too. It wasn’t so long ago, but no one who taught those advanced classes in that formerly amazing setting remains anymore. Decision makers throughout the system have the luxury of playing the long game until much of their equal-outcome philosophy is realized.
A few suggestions when navigating education, especially regarding potentially high-performing students: Consider how goals and practice align in educational environments if you are deciding where to send your children or where to work. Be ready to advocate, particularly for your atypical kids. And ask questions to ensure that administrators throughout the system actively meet the needs of the students and teachers under their charge.
The most absurd aspect of education is how you may need to help students beyond a common achievement threshold surreptitiously to avoid professional difficulty. In no reasonable setting should you have to break rules to create success, but education is sometimes not a reasonable setting. Optimal learning for students may need to occur in spite of some of the adults.
