Learning to Connect - Victoria Theisen-Homer

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of the two different residency programs in this book, especially when presented in relief. Over the years, numerous similar teacher education programs have molded themselves off the example set by both these programs. Thus, while both NETR and PTR demonstrate idiosyncrasies, they are both largely reflective of the no excuses or progressive approach to relationships, teacher preparation, and education overall. And because both standpoints represent influential educational ideologies, vestiges of which continue to permeate a range of schools across the United States and abroad, it is worth exploring how these programs structure relationships at the fundamental level of teacher education. For readers unfamiliar with these educational approaches, I describe them briefly here, but will render each approach in much more depth throughout the chapters.

      Progressive Education

      In the early 20th century, John Dewey and a series of other prominent educators led a new movement in education toward the individualization of curricula and instruction to better suit the needs and interests of students, which became progressive education. Progressive education eschews traditional didactic modes of instruction in which the teacher dispenses predetermined lessons upon all children. Instead, progressive education is “student centered” in that it focuses on each child’s individual needs and attempts to respond to these through varied experiences in the classroom.[35]

      As Rugg and Shumaker—champions of progressive education in the 1900s—espoused in their 1928 text The Child-Centered School, progressive education “has coursing through it a unitary integrating theme: individuality, personality, experience.”[36] While it rose to prominence over 120 years ago, progressive education is still practiced in many schools and classrooms across the world, particularly independent, charter, and magnet schools. Some prominent examples include Theodore Sizer’s “Essential schools,” Expeditionary Learning schools, High Tech High and its network, and many Montessori, Waldorf, and Reggio Emilia schools.

      In action, progressive education favors a constructivist approach to learning that involves cooperative assignments, inquiry-based projects, “hands-on” activity, and real-life application.[37] Different students may be concurrently working on different activities and moving forward at different paces, depending on what each child needs. Students not only have a great deal of agency over what they are learning, but also how they want to approach it.

      No Excuses Education

      In contrast, the no excuses approach to education is a fairly recent phenomenon, geared around “closing the achievement gap.”[38] It expanded prolifically after the enactment of the federal No Child Left Behind Law of 2002, which attached rewards and penalties to school performance on state standardized exams. No excuses schools represent approximately 25% of urban charter schools (which are publicly funded and do not charge tuition but often hold a lottery for entrance) and a scattering of public turnaround schools; these schools often implement longer school days and extended test preparation and have subsequently had more success than many other models in advancing the standardized exam scores of students from historically marginalized backgrounds.

      As a result, many no excuses models have expanded into wide networks including KIPP, Relay, Uncommon Schools, Yes Prep, Success Academy, Achievement First, and others. In these schools, teachers and administrators “sweat the small stuff,” closely monitoring students’ attire, posture, behavior, and academic work, and enforcing strict discipline policies (through demerits, “sendouts,” in-class suspensions, etc.) when any of these fall below expectations.[39] Every detail matters, everything must be controlled, so that students can direct all their attention to academic achievement.

      In the process, no excuses schools maintain that forces like poverty, racism, and hunger are no excuse for falling below these expectations, hence the moniker “no excuses.” Rituals, mantras, and timers often characterize daily activities, as students work in unison. Classrooms feature efficient instruction in a preestablished canonical curriculum that closely aligns with state standardized tests. Students learn what the teacher, school, and state designate is important.[40]

      Overview of the Book

      This book explores the complex, textured, and human side of relationship formation in teacher education programs and schools. It is primarily organized in three parts, each featuring three chapters. Parts I and II offer multifaceted portraits of NETR and PTR, respectively. Considering these programs holistically illuminates the intricate fabric that informs relational learning and the way each program makes consequential trade-offs in pursuit of its coherent mission. Because racial competence is critical for forming relationships with students across racial differences, I devote a chapter in each of these two parts to exploring how each program addresses issues of race and racism. The profound contrasts between these two programs are made more explicit in Part III, which considers how residents carry learning into the field from each program and the implications of each approach.

      Part I of the book (Chapters 1–3) explores relationship development in a no excuses setting. Chapter 1 provides background on NETR and explores its strikingly instrumental vision of relationships and the discrete coursework that supports this; in the process, it considers the tensions that emerge between maintaining personal authenticity while establishing authority and the call for efficiency in messy human interactions.

      Chapter 2 describes NETR’s coursework on race and inequality, addressing its heavy emphasis on “the culture of power,” and the ways that teaching students to “navigate” this system in schools could possibly perpetuate it. And Chapter 3 focuses on the residents: the explicit expectations they must follow, their aligned student teaching experiences, and their less structured tutorial experiences with a small group of students; while this latter experience feels more salient to residents, its application for no excuses teaching is uncertain.

      Part II (Chapters 4–6) depicts relationship-building in a very different educational environment, PTR and the unique school it inhabits, which I call Xanadu. Chapter 4 depicts the immersive experience of learning to teach at Xanadu, where teaching and relationships are student centered and reciprocal, focused on critical thinking and self-advocacy; however, learning in this unique space may not sufficiently prepare residents for the range of schools the program intends to serve. Chapter 5 explores the challenges of confronting issues of race and racism in this sheltered and privileged space. The PTR director seeks to challenge oppression through curriculum and pedagogy, but the white homogeneity of the resident cohort, the privileged group of students residents serve in fieldwork, and the lack of an explicit mission or framework around this work limits how far the director can push residents to challenge racism.

      Chapter 6 centers around PTR residents’ fieldwork experiences and how they absorb profound lessons about teaching and classroom management from their teaching placements at Xanadu, but struggle in their spring public school placements because education in these sites is not coherent with PTR’s philosophy; this has the ironic effect of dissuading most residents from teaching in public schools.

      Finally, Part III (Chapters 7–9) explores how residents carry their distinct lessons on teaching and relationship development from their preparation program into the field. Chapter 7 serves to transition from the portraits of programs to the cases of teachers in the field: it compares the different educational and relational approaches in each program outlines ten relational competencies for teachers, reviews research on the impact of teacher education in beginning practice, and introduces interactional culture as a framework for studying relationships in school contexts.

      Chapter 8 features cases of the four focal residents (two from each program) and how they attempt to connect with students in contexts that are both similar to and different from their programs; across contexts, residents display program learning in all aspects of their teaching, but the teachers in schools with less coherent cultures end up feeling less able or willing to implement all of their relational tools. In the final chapter, Chapter 9, I consider the implications of each program’s approach to relationships and how this played out in the classroom, and conceptualize how teacher education programs, schools, and teachers themselves might better support

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