Motivated Teachers

Carrie Huff has vivid memories of her first year teaching at Carolina Friends School. “When I started here, they asked me what I wanted to teach. It was a total breath of fresh air. All teachers want to teach to their passions,” said Huff, who is Head Teacher at CFS. It is a story told over and over again by faculty at ICG schools.  They love their jobs because they get to teach advanced courses of their own creation.

In contrast, teachers in test-driven schools often feel the stress of having to cover material necessary for the exam while pursuing the separate task of keeping students active and engaged.  Unexpected field trips or other lost days can add to the anxiety, and rivalries simmer between departments over the amount of time allotted in the schedule when the bottom line is a standardized test near the end of the school year.  Schools are dynamic, but the exam date is immovable. When life happens spontaneously, whether in the school community or the wider world, ICG schools eagerly embrace the chance to move in new directions.  In test-driven schools, the here-and-now is generally a detour from exam preparation.

“When I started here, they asked me what I wanted to teach. It was a total breath of fresh air. All teachers want to teach to their passions.”

Freedom from teaching to a test allows teachers to be entrepreneurs rather than custodians, and to design advanced courses that make the best use of resources in the school community and the wider world. They are people like Torey McMillan, who collaborated with her students to measure the carbon footprint of The White Mountain School and then produce a report, with recommendations for action, to the school’s board of trustees.

McMillan and teachers like her offer a compelling model of life-long learning. Rather than be keepers of knowledge, they model how to be active learners who draw upon community resources to create new opportunities. In so doing, they contradict the unspoken premise of standardized testing that an authority outside school can best determine what should be taught, and that knowledge on the test is more valuable than what students and teachers can create.  Is covering World War II in a textbook more essential than an oral history project devoted to Japanese-Americans who survived our nation’s World War II internment camps? Conventional schools make a passive choice for the former; ICG schools plan activities like the latter.

Independent curriculum allows teachers to model true scholarship.  “Anyone who has a lively mind is not going to settle for teaching things the way somebody else says you should. If my life is richer because I’ve been immersed in jazz and the blues, how could I not teach a history class using that as a perspective?’ said Steve Nelson of Calhoun School.

When teachers bring their interests to the classroom, both sides benefit. “If I am teaching the things that I am passionate about, my chances are greater of reeling in the kids and making them love what I am teaching,” said Celeste Shibata of St. Andrews-Sewanee School.  At ICG schools, better teaching and better learning go hand in hand.