This essay and sequence has really helped me put into words why I love the current school I teach at, even though it objectivly should be a mess in a lot of ways. (Students with a low socioeconomic status, high violence rate in the neighborhood, underfunded, physical school building that is literally falling apart, etc). Nonetheless it has a much better culture than most other schools I’ve taught at, in ways that both students and teachers are aware of, and it’s a lot more effective at actually teaching students than even much more well-off schools.
-The principal and school culture strongly selects for people who don’t have the kind of political behavior.
-Instead, this school heavily selects for hiring quirky people with unusual styles who have “soul in the game” (IE: who actually care about what they’re doing and about their students and have a deep belief that it’s important, people who would continue to teach even if there was no pressure to do so and if it was easier to not teach).
-Unusual or unique classroom management and teaching styles are strongly encouraged, so long as they appear to be successful. People who are both personally and professionally non-conformist in appearance, lifestyle, and dress are rewarded for it.
-While this isn’t immune to Goodhart’s Law (nothing is), this type of behaviors seems unusually hard and expensive to fake compared to actually being a quirky individual with their own philosophy of teaching and soul in the game, and tends to be mostly incompatible with most maze-like behavior.
-The school principal and administration fairly regularly makes a show of defying the irrational maze-behavior of higher levels of the school district bureaucracy in order to do what’s right for the students, to such a degree that much of the staff is worried he’s going to get himself fired and even tries to encourage him to play the game a little more so he doesn’t. Nonetheless that attitude really sets the tone for the school.
This essay and sequence has really helped me put into words why I love the current school I teach at, even though it objectivly should be a mess in a lot of ways. (Students with a low socioeconomic status, high violence rate in the neighborhood, underfunded, physical school building that is literally falling apart, etc). Nonetheless it has a much better culture than most other schools I’ve taught at, in ways that both students and teachers are aware of, and it’s a lot more effective at actually teaching students than even much more well-off schools.
-The principal and school culture strongly selects for people who don’t have the kind of political behavior.
-Instead, this school heavily selects for hiring quirky people with unusual styles who have “soul in the game” (IE: who actually care about what they’re doing and about their students and have a deep belief that it’s important, people who would continue to teach even if there was no pressure to do so and if it was easier to not teach).
-Unusual or unique classroom management and teaching styles are strongly encouraged, so long as they appear to be successful. People who are both personally and professionally non-conformist in appearance, lifestyle, and dress are rewarded for it.
-While this isn’t immune to Goodhart’s Law (nothing is), this type of behaviors seems unusually hard and expensive to fake compared to actually being a quirky individual with their own philosophy of teaching and soul in the game, and tends to be mostly incompatible with most maze-like behavior.
-The school principal and administration fairly regularly makes a show of defying the irrational maze-behavior of higher levels of the school district bureaucracy in order to do what’s right for the students, to such a degree that much of the staff is worried he’s going to get himself fired and even tries to encourage him to play the game a little more so he doesn’t. Nonetheless that attitude really sets the tone for the school.