Ultimate Teacher Empowerment

At the bottom of the educational pecking order in many institutions (they should be at the very top!), classroom teachers are institutionally controlled by all the other players: administrators, curriculum specialists, committees, parents, and students.   Many feel that their professional organizations (unions) may be their only friends, even though those in charge of such groups often have their own agendas that have little or nothing to do with a teacher's freedom to teach effectively.

Good teachers yearn for the freedom to teach as well as they possibly can, unhindered by unruly and indifferent students, bureaucratic and administrative red tape, or doctrinaire parents.  This freedom to teach effectively is often called empowerment.

If curricula are designed to convey a defined body of knowledge to students in a specified time frame, with defined performance criteria to measure the level of attainment of such knowledge, then teachers could, and should, have the freedom to manage the details of that process accountably in their own ways.  And that includes the choice of teaching materials and the class syllabus, or lesson plan.  That would be empowerment!

Where curricula are so designed, teachers can employ interactive online multimedia learning materials with all the pedagogically necessary features to suit the learner and the subject.  Teachers who choose to build their own interactive materials should be prepared to spend a lot of time in front of their computers, particularly until they have built a working first-draft.  Those who choose to divide up the work and collaborate online with other teachers to build such tutorials will be spared much effort, because "many hands make light work".

Many teachers are increasingly dissatisfied with commercially prepared textbooks.  To make textbooks marketable, publishers usually expunge anything and everything that might give the slightest offense to any political group.  Often this makes such materials lifeless and unfaithful to the historical record.  By contrast, the work product of collaborative authoring is usually far more lively "teaching material".  And the progression through that material is a concrete "lesson plan."  The big difference is, teacher-prepared materials are all of one's own making; fresh, truthful, and interesting!   The teacher has to think about his choices and take ownership of the work product, for better or for worse.  

And that is where the special genius of each teacher comes to life.  That is "ultimate teacher empowerment!".  The respect and gratitude this generates in students and parents is crucial political support for raises and benefits, as well as the other educational goals teachers strive to achieve.

© 1994, Joseph L. Scott, Ph.D., Germanic Languages & Literatures: josephlscott@hotmail.com

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