Teachers helping teachers create that classroom buzz

by Alesha Jackson

Alongside pictures of African-American heroes and photos of great writers, Christina Puntel, a Spanish teacher at the 200-student Parkway Northwest High School, talks about student achievement.

But she never mentions test scores. Instead, she describes the day her students careened through the halls labeling all the doors in the building, in a race designed to build up their Spanish vocabulary – all to motivate them and generate a “buzz” about learning.

“I think that is what’s missing from this discussion about the achievement gap,” she said. “What is the motivation for achievement? And when [they] achieve, so what? Test prep doesn’t do it.”

Puntel is one of an untold number of teachers in Philadelphia who are finding ways to have conversations about achievement gaps – through formal and informal networks. These teachers are thinking about how to generate excitement about learning, examining new ways to teach, and exploring how their identities affect their approach to teaching.

Largely due to her avid participation in several teacher networks, including the Philadelphia Writing Project, Puntel has learned to completely reframe the “achievement gap” issue – away from student deficiencies and toward fulfilling the education “debt” that is owed students.

She says that testing had “put my students in the gap, not the achieving part” – especially when she taught special education.

For 22 years, the Philadelphia Writing Project has been using literacy to help teachers understand issues of social justice, language, and race. A local site of the National Writing Project, PhilWP is a teacher-led organization of more than 2,100 members who support and are supported in all phases of their careers.

Director Vanessa Brown, a 33-year veteran of the Philadelphia school system, says that teachers write to create community.

“The writing serves lots of purposes – to reinforce skills, but also to help us share who we are and give us insight into ourselves and to the people that we’re working with,” Brown says. “We transfer what we’ve learned about those things to our classrooms.”

Gill Maimon, a first-grade teacher at Powel Elementary, finds that her involvement in professional networks fuels her as she digs into the challenging work of teaching in an urban school system. She credits the Teachers Learning Cooperative for helping to keep her thinking about the work.

TLC, established after funding for a teacher center was withdrawn by the School District, has met every Thursday for 30 years to provide support and offer feedback to its members. Teachers from all sections of the city gather to address current classroom issues, discuss local educational initiatives, and spend hours discussing the needs and the work of individual students in what are called “descriptive reviews.”