This brilliant short video was created by Esther Quintero at the Albert Shanker Institute. I have never seen or read anything that so succinctly and accurately identifies what matters most in schools. She shows that relationships matter; trust matters. Yet school reform focuses on the individual: the teacher as a solitary individual who must be trained, evaluated, given a reward or a punishment for his or her solitary activity: teaching.
The video shows that schools are complex institutions, made up of interactions among many individuals and external groups, who influence one another: administrators, teachers, students, parents, community organizations, and others.
If you see the video, you will understand how simple-minded it is to give a school a letter grade. The school is a social enterprise, in which many people work together. See the school as the complex social hub that it is, rather than as a place in which individuals…
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