Teaching is Entrepreneurial
“Teaching is difficult. Teaching really well is profoundly difficult” - Carol Ann Tomlinson
Teaching is Entrepreneurial
I have noticed during my time spent on the M.Ed program, how classroom management in the U.S can resemble an entrepreneurial endeavor. The myriad ways in which teachers in a learner-centric environment must strive to ensure all students with different learning needs are engaged, reminds me of the juggling act that entrepreneurs must perform, to acquire and keep their customers’ loyalty. The essential personal traits that both effective educators and entrepreneurs have in common are the need to balance calculation and creativity. They must both connect authentically on a personal level, in order to convince their students or customers of the importance of the service being offered.
Having an effective classroom management plan is the equivalent of an entrepreneur’s business map. It is the core of the operation in which each element impacts the system as a whole. The critical elements of success in any enterprise are found in how purposefully and realistically expectations are set, and how they are incentivized.
How instruction methods affected my thoughts on education.
In the current system, there are thirty students in one class, each of them is having different advantages and disadvantages in learning. It is extremely hard for one teacher to assist those that need the most individualized attention. Even with proper training, and a well-managed system in place, to respond quickly enough that other students are not left waiting may often be impossible. And so I believe when a student asks a question during a lecture period, the most efficacious solution in many cases is to answer with a response that characterizes the subject from a different perspective, rather than more slowly repeating what has already been saying. Leading hopefully to clarity for the confused student, and lending a more multifaceted understanding to the onlooking students.
But this is an improvisational skill that takes expensive practice to perform smoothly and without interrupting the train of student’s thought. It leads me to believe that in order to become a responsive, creative teacher, we need new training for preservice teachers that would allow for more room to experiment, fail, and try again. Any serial entrepreneur will tell you this is an essential part of the expectations required to find success in business. And I think it could be good for students to witness this, and give constructive feedback. This would create empathy and understanding for the teachers who work hard to help them; as well as reiterate the truth that learning is a never-ending journey.
In considering these training opportunities, a compelling question comes to mind that Linda Darling-Hammond (n.d) rhetorically asked during an interview “Do you prepare teachers for schools as they are, or do you prepare them for schools as they need to become?” (as cited in Spector, 2019, para. 9). There are so many new interactive, responsive tools that will enable more students to find success in learning, such as augmented and virtual reality, and artificial intelligence guided lesson feedback. Inevitably private market software will be playing a greater role in the classroom. I believe that this injection of entrepreneurial thought may address many of the concerns that I’ve heard during my tenure in the public school system, regarding standardized testing as a primary evidence-based way of indicating school performance.
CoVid-19 has accelerated the adoption of new technologies, and as such, the future of education is perhaps at its most unforeseeable point in history. But if we continue operating K-12 schools in the more or less one-size-fits-all system; there will be no guarantees that a kindergartener in 2020 will be ready in the mid-21st-century higher education and labor market upon graduation. From the time of John Dewey, we as teachers have understood a codified path for evolving the system. But for reasons I am still perplexed by, there has been too much hesitation in experimentation. Is this not the very basis of rigorous scientific inquiry? We must constantly be exploring new ways to improve the educational discipline.
The following statement that Tomlinson (2017) makes truly resonated with me: “Teaching is difficult. Teaching really well is profoundly difficult” (p.5). I found this statement as a justifiably insistent reflection upon the challenge I have observed in the traditional U.S education system when trying to address each student as an individual while cultivating a whole-class community ethic and identity. Teaching requires constant innovation and constant patience for the reality that educational success, as in business, often takes years of accumulated effort to bear fruit.
References
Spector, C. (2019, July 29). “If you don’t have a strong supply of well-prepared teachers, nothing else in education can work”. Stanford Graduate School of Education.
https://ed.stanford.edu/news/if-you-don-t-have-strong-supply-well-prepared-teachers-nothing-else-education-can-work
Tomlinson, C.A. (2017). How to differentiate instruction in academically diverse classrooms. Third edition. ASCD. Alexandria, VA.