Peter Drucker, Albert Shanker, and Learning Responsibility

When people observe the students of Bios, they usually notice how well behaved they are, their positive attitude toward work, and the respect shown by teacher and students towards each other. But I would guess less than half the visiting families notice that the learning responsibility is put on the student instead of the usual expectation of the teaching responsibility on the teacher. It is a large reason the students at Bios learn and retain their learning so well.

One of the books I am reading this summer is "Managing the Nonprofit Organization" by Peter F. Drucker. Peter Drucker is a management legend, having written more than 35 books and is a professor at at the school of management at Claremont Graduate University. This is an excellent book filled with ideas, engaging examples, and interviews with leaders of the nonprofit sector. One of those leaders interviewed was Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers AFL-CIO.

In the following excerpt between Peter Drucker and Albert Shanker, the two are in the middle of a discussion following this comment by Drucker on his educational experience in school after Shanker comments on small learning gains made each semester, the trivial things learned, and how quick those meaningless things are forgotten.

Drucker: I think I'm a living example of this. My school grades were always excellent. I learned very little and studied less, but I knew how to take exams.

After Shanker comments on an excellent learning experience in the Boy Scouts, the two comment with this discourse.

Drucker: The implication of this is, first, that you put the learning responsibility on the student rather than the teaching responsibility on the teacher. Is that central to the way you see performance?

Shanker: Essentially, the way schools are organized is to get a lot of activity and work on the part of teachers while the students sit and, you hope listen. You hope that they are remembering something. And you create a few punishments or rewards in terms of grades or leaving students back. Without that responsibility and without that engagement by students, the results are very, very meager.

Drucker: For hundreds of years , then, our emphasis has been on how well the teachers teach rather on how well the student learns?

There is more, but I will stop and comment on these amazingly accurate comments on the present day American education system and how Bios is quite different.

Bios is built on a few foundational ideas. One is every day a student attends our academy, he or she will master or continue mastering a new skill under the guidance of a trained teacher, an instructor, mentor, and coach, all wrapped into the adult called teacher in front of them. Each day, every student at Bios has new daily, individual goals developed by the school and teacher for the student. Everyday. These individual goals have been developed over hundreds of hours and sixteen years of constant revision by myself and trained instructors. No one claims boredom at Bios.

And in this highly structured learning environment centered on individual mastery, there is room for every teacher at Bios to break the learning structure and say to the student,"Today we will leave the structure so that I may individualize your instruction even more so you will understand this goal and achieve mastery."

The nuts and bolts of the daily workings involve clear daily goals for each student, clear goals for the teacher's instruction of her students, plentiful instructional materials, and constant one-on-one teacher student contact.

Daily goals are provided through school-designed check sheets possessed by each student in all subjects. Each subject's check sheets contain varying amounts of information, depending on how we want the student's mastery outcomes expressed. In science, history, and Spanish the students goals are written on the check sheet while in grammar and math, the check sheet only records the completion of general skills. In specific areas, the check sheets are much broader because of the increased need for teachers to improvise if students stumble in their mastery.

Bios Christian Academy does not hand a pile of textbooks to a teacher, close the teacher behind a classroom door, and wish them luck. First, we pray for them. Second, we spend three days on Bios learning theory and classroom expectations, and lastly, each teacher has at least two well trained or master teachers in their classroom periodically throughout the year observing, modeling, and encouraging them as they instruct our students.

When it all comes down to it, the quality of the people God brings our way and he gives us wisdom to hire, make a key component successful or not; the component of constant one-on-one teacher/ student interaction throughout the day. Every subject. Every day. Students coming to their teacher for instruction, encouragement, correction, and some times even admonishment. Three to ten times per subject. This creates a very intense instructional day for our teachers.

Towards the end of our afternoon interview, two years ago by the accreditation leader from ACSI, his last question asked of me was, " How are you going to find teachers that are willing to work as hard and as intense as the teachers you possess now?" I told him I pray a lot for God's grace in bringing future teachers to Bios such as we now have.