A Better Way to Train Teachers

I want to talk about teacher training. This is a big issue, and what with the sudden discovery that teachers are the single most important factor (besides the students themselves) determining a school’s effectiveness (shocking, really), there’s a good deal of hullabaloo about it—but compared the knotty problems I usually address in this blog, this one looks pretty straightforward to me.

Discussions of how to improve teacher training tend to center around what we teach teachers. The pedagogical theories on which we train our teachers, critics argue, are wrong headed. Structural problems within graduate departments of education are blamed for the production of invalid theories of learning and the promulgation of ineffective teaching practices. For once I’ll take a stand: I don’t think that’s true. The problem has more to do with how we teach teachers than with what we teach them.

More on Mensch Prep: "Shave and a Haircut" Like You've Never Seen It Before

[On September 27^th, I posted a description and analysis of the first hour of the first day of school at Mensch Prep Charter School (the name, like all other identifying details, is invented.) This post picks up where that one left off.]

After breakfast is cleaned up at each table, there are a series of coordinated bathroom visits. Then, Mensch Prep's principal^[1], Nonyameko Pertinax (if I have to invent names, I'm not going to invent boring ones), announces that they're going to learn a song. The teaching of the song, which turns out to be "Shave and a Haircut" (sung without lyrics) provides another opportunity to reinforce habits of when to speak and when not to speak in class, and it is a rigorous exercise in that most fundamental component of discipline and maturity—self-control.

The song is taught as a call and response: Ms. Pertinax sings the "shave and a haircut" part, and everyone else sings the "two bits;" but first the kindergartners have to listen to the song with "teachers only," i.e. Ms. Pertinax sings the call and the rest of the faculty sings the response. That's harder than it sounds, because like any well-constructed song "Shave and a Haircut" begs for its resolution. When Ms. Pertinax sings "dum da da-dum dum," many children are compelled to sing "dum dum!" along with the teachers.