Stop Expecting Teachers to Build the Airplane While Flying It
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder uses the vivid metaphor of building a plane while flying it to describe what schools ask of teachers — and why it's unsustainable.
Key Takeaways
- Give teachers what they need upfront - Curriculum, materials, and training should be provided before the school year starts, not developed on the fly
- This metaphor is painfully accurate - Teachers are constantly asked to implement programs they haven't been trained on with materials they haven't received
- Plan before you launch - Schools that invest in preparation before implementation get dramatically better results
Transcript
So I've been watching the sky to see if I can spot any planes that are being built while they're flying through the sky and so far I haven't spotted any and that's not a surprise to me and yet constantly we expect teachers to build the airplane while they're flying it when it comes to curriculum.
I don't know where we got this idea that it was feasible to have people write curriculum and teach it in real time Because I think we've always known that those are both full-time jobs, right?
Writing curriculum is a full-time job.
If you look at professional curriculum writers, my wife is a professional curriculum writer, it takes more time to write a curriculum than it does to teach it.
So the idea that we would not only ask people to write curriculum at an unrealistic pace, but also teach it at the same time, is pretty bizarre and i think we're starting to come around on this as a profession i think we're starting to realize that it's not reasonable to ask people to come up with everything from scratch in any profession and certainly not in education where we want all of our students to get a high quality curriculum we want them to be successful from day one and that means not trying to launch the airplane before it's been built that means giving people curriculum that is actually teachable and we've we've slandered this idea historically we've called that teacher proof we've called that scripted we've had all these words that we use to downplay that idea of giving teachers quality curriculum and I think people are now at the point where they're starting to realize you know what I can write curriculum but it's a whole other job it's a separate job that takes time that I don't have and if you want me to do a good job teaching I can do that but I can't do multiple jobs at once And I think when it comes to hiring in particular, I said something like this on Twitter the other day that so often people are judged for the quality of their teaching without being given a curriculum.
Like people are put all the time on pips and teaching classes that there's no curriculum for.
And I feel like that's like hiring a pilot.
and not giving them a plane and marking them as unsatisfactory in their flying skills because they don't have a plane.
Like you have to give people the basic tools to do their jobs.
And that's not to say that teachers can't revise curriculum, that teachers can't write curriculum when they're given time.
But this idea that people should do multiple jobs at once, I think is just now transparently unsustainable.
We've got to give people high quality curriculum.
We have got to set them up for success.
And yes, maybe there's some room for you know, for revisions, for tweaks, for making it your own.
But the bottom line is people need time to do all of that.
Let me know what you think.