On Wednesday, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and his team wrapped up their trip through the American south in Memphis, Tennessee to see more of the amazing work being done by students, teachers and school leaders throughout the city.

I won’t add to the stories that have already been told. Instead, I want to spotlight something that flew under the radar of most media outlets –  a round table discussion with two of the Department of Education’s Teacher Fellows held on Wednesday to hear teachers speak about their experiences with education policy here in Tennessee.

The session saw about 30 people from a wide variety of backgrounds and job titles in attendance. We had early and mid-career teachers, education policy analysts, heads of major teacher training programs, staff for high-level elected officials and many other individuals with ties directly to the teaching profession.

To facilitate, the Department of Education sent two of their Teacher Policy Fellows. I’d tweeted back and forth with them before the meeting and learned a bit about them, but I was surprised to learn that both of them were still in the classroom part time. Moreover, they didn’t fit the mold of what someone might be led to expect from DOE teacher fellows. One of the teachers, an self described union member named Maddie who has been working in the classroom for over twenty years, flew in that morning for the session and was flying back the next day to teach and hold parent teacher conferences. Talk about commitment!

The round table kicked off with introductions. The fellows then asked us a series of questions (which I tweeted under my twitter handle, @jwalnuth) and spent the majority of the time listening to and recording our answers. The teaching fellows rarely talked, except to ask a follow up questions. The majority of the session was dominated by Memphis teaching experiences.

I was very impressed by the great stories shared throughout the discussion. One teacher expounded on his belief (very rational as it turns out) that recess plays and important role in his middle school’s instructional success. Multiple teachers highlighted the belief that we need to offer teachers much higher levels of compensation to foster an increase in teacher leaders. Personally, I shared how my supportive school administration has been essential to my ability to take on roles as a teacher leader outside the walls of my school.

Throughout the conversation I was also impressed by the willingness of the teachers in the room to share their honest and sometimes controversial experiences with testing. We pushed back on using tests to evaluate teachers. We made the case for reduced test time and outlined alternatives to traditional testing like Memphis’ arts and music portfolio. Nobody shied away from difficult topics or from speaking their mind, nor were we contradicted or put down at any point in time.

The meeting concluded promptly at 6:00 with the policy fellows thanking us for our time and giving us their personal contact information if we had any follow up questions (which I felt was a great gesture). They stayed around for a while afterward to continue speaking with several participants who remained.

Overall I was very impressed by the experience, especially the fellows’ openness to our constructive criticism. I was also impressed by the willingness of Memphis educators to speak their mind. Nobody sugarcoated their answers. We were honest and forthright and I personally left the meeting felling that our concerns had been heard.  We were never preached at or told we were wrong. The fellows remained interested and engaged in what we had to say throughout and to me it felt absolutely felt genuine because, after all, the people listening to us were active classroom teachers themselves.

I’ll be looking forward to seeing if/how these perspectives make their way into the national education dialogue, but with teachers like the department sent to us, I’m confident that they will be.

Thanks to the department of education for holding this session, and to the two teacher fellows who made it possible through their great facilitation.

By Jon Alfuth

Like this piece? Check our Casie Jones’ voice on the need for alternative evaluations for alternative teachers  and my piece in the commercial appeal on the need to reform the teaching profession to attract younger teachers.

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