by Shelly Blake-Plock
A lot of talk recently about 'best practices'. Best practices for using the iPad in the classroom. Best practices for social media in schools. Best practices for dealing with kids more interested in Angry Birds than in schoolwork.
Trouble is: There are no 'best practices'.
In fact there is no 'best' anything when it comes to teaching. There is no 'best' in teaching any more than there is a 'best' way to win a football game.
Now, there will be those pundits who claim that one team's Super Bowl victory means less than another's. Pundits make a career of saying what is 'best' for someone else. But we all know that teams win games based on preparation; on the ability to adapt strategy -- often in the middle of a play; on the way their unique culture expresses itself as teamwork. Teams don't win because pundits say what's best.
And student's don't learn because of what the educational equivalent of pundits say is best.
Students learn based on the relationship that exists between themselves and their teacher; they learn because of the preparation, strategies, adaptations, and teamwork involved. And there is no standard way of producing success. That preparation, those strategies, those adaptations, and that teamwork will be different in each class -- or at least should.
Because no two kids are the same. No two teachers are the same. No two schools are the same. We're all working with what we've got. And what we've got -- to slice through all the murk on all sides of the Ed Reform debate -- are relationships.
Great coaches and great athletes know that it is relationships, not 'best practices' that win championships. Love of the game inspires kids. Love of passion and hard work and determination and grit and love of love itself.
No kid wants to grow up to be a pundit.
And no kid is inspired by 'best practices'.
In the end, 'best practices' are just another form of punditry. They inspire nothing but further standardization.
And standardization is the opposite of passion. It's the opposite of joy, motivation, love of being part of the struggle -- the pathos -- of sport and learning alike. Standardization tells you that making a mistake is a bad thing. Standardization suggests there is a clear cut measure. A process that works. No gray.
'Best practices' tell you that there is a 'Way'; and if you just follow that way, you'll find success.
This has never worked. There is no Way in teaching. There are only teachers looking for a way on one hand and those making their own way on the other.
If you really want to inspire learning, you don't need 'best practices', you just need practice best.
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