Moving Beyond the "Shame Game"

Shame.  A topic that make everyone squirm in their seats.  It is this educators belief that shame has governed the public education system for the past decade, and possibly since its beginnings.  Dr. Brene Brown is a professor and her qualitative research has focused on shame and vulnerability.  She states that our "shame gremlins" hijack us when we feel shame and we are unable to make conscious decisions due to these "gremlins".

Let's put this idea of the brain being hijacked in context.  We will work from a broad base and begin to drill down.

To begin with, the State of North Carolina has increased the demands on educators, yet has not increased wages nor support for professional development.  Educators constantly hear how they are valued and do the most important job, but do not receive the compensation for this work that is important.  Instead, they watch the North Carolina General Assembly (NCGA) continuing to strip rights from a contract that was believed to be a sacred cow agreement.  The most recent rights that have been stripped are a raise in pay for having an advanced degree and career status, more commonly known as tenure.  Stripping tenure essentially means an educator can be removed with little to no documentation: due process.  The NCGA has created a new contract that will increase compensation for on 25% of the best teachers, an idea left up to the local school boards to determine who is considered the "best".  This idea creates competition and not collaboration.  The idea of who is the best has been centered highly around educator's EVAAS score.  If students do not score well on standardized tests the teacher may not be eligible to be a part of the 25% and his/her evaluation score is greatly affected.  Basing an a person's self-worth on his/her students' scores on given test day most certainly is a way of shaming that educator.

Secondly, most professional development is centered around the Achievement Gap and delivered through a top-down model.  Educators should be working and researching collaboratively to create interventions and best practices instead of sitting in a large room having the administration run down the top thirty best practices practices that should be utilized in the classroom.  This type of professional development devalues the teacher's knowledge and craft.  This is once again shaming teachers and continuing to reinforce the hidden curriculum that "those who can do and those who can't teach".  A statement that should never be allowed to be uttered due to the immense shame behind it!

Dufour, Dufour and Eaker believe that the best way to create a thriving educational environment is to first trust teachers to collaborate and create robust lessons based on action research.  Teachers will identify an issue facing the students in their classrooms and through analyzing the data create PLC model relies on teachers being leaders in the school and the district.  It also places value on the teachers' collective knowledge and skill sets.  This in turn lets the teachers know that they are "good enough"(as Brown states) and trusted to be leaders.
interventions to remedy the problem.  If the intervention is successful, it then should be shared throughout the school; teacher-to-teacher.

It seems that the "shame game" has reached its peak in education.  It is time for all educators to take back their classrooms because they are "enough", despite current political sentiment.  The one
underlying subtext in a teacher's makeup is altruism.  They do it because they know it is the right thing to do.  They have been belittled, devalued and undermined yet still continue to work for the results on high-stakes tests and beyond.  Have educators been so shamed that they are unwilling to stand up for what they know is right, not just because their instincts tell them, rather the fact research has stated individuality in education has failed and collaboration is a necessity!  Some groups have vehemently spoken up and spoken out for what is right in education, teachers are leaving the profession daily, but still educators have yet to unite collectively for what they know is right and just; they live... we live shamed and buy into that shame!  It is time to break out of the shame, own the research and stand up because as educators we are "good enough" and have value!