Troy was caught up in the “No Child Left Behind” legislation in the early 2000s when the State of Michigan and GVSU were trying to figure out if highly qualified changed the way teacher candidates were certified.  Grand Valley State, and many other universities in the United States, had Social Studies majors, for the same reason that they had Math majors instead of Calculus majors, and Science majors instead of Chemistry majors, when it came to teaching certification.  A broad major made staffing teaching positions much easier for administrators and there was an assumption that with those majors a person would be able to teach any subject within that major area. Thus, a Social Studies major would be certified to teach U.S. History, World History, Geography, Political Science and Economics.  “No Child Left Behind” brought that premise into question and the first interpretation after the law was passed was that only a History major would be certified to teach history, Econ major Economics and Geography major Geography and a Political Science major.  The interpretation was not all wrong.  Every teacher should be well-grounded in their subject matter. The question that still remains is how much coursework makes a person qualified to teach a subject.  New York’s answer when I went through my undergraduate work was that within 5 years a teacher had to have at least 30 hours of graduate work in order to maintain their teaching certificate. That changed soon after I left for Kansas and then New York required a Master’s degree within 5 years.  Kansas was much more lenient and, in fact, during my doctoral research I found that many high school and middle school Social Studies teachers had only 15 hours total of content coursework.  I encountered at least one teacher who was teaching Western Civilization and was discontented with the new Kansas Social Studies Standards in the late 1990s.  He wanted to know who Pericles was and why anyone should learn about that person.  He did not know the man was Greek nor that he delivered a funeral oration.

The impact of this situation on Troy as he neared the end of his program at GVSU was the number of hours he had within his Social Studies major versus the number of hours he would have to take to be qualified to teach History. Would he have to change majors to History in order to be certified as “highly qualified”? Troy decided to pursue a double-major in Social Studies and History, which meant he enrolled in an extra 26 hours of history coursework. The school districts weighed in on this question in short order. There was no way they would have the flexibility in staffing, based on changing course offerings and change in student population if they were required to hire distinct subject majors to teach courses.

In 2008 I visited Troy’s classroom in the Freshmen Center at East Kentwood. That district in the southern part of Grand Rapids is the most diverse school district in the state. The community was plagued with gang activity, and there was some concern in the district about school security, although my entry into the building was as easy as any of the schools I visited.

As I entered his room, I saw that the classroom walls were filled with posters and maps of all kinds. There were 20th Century newspapers with banner headlines of the important happenings. He also had a computer projector mounted on the ceiling, a computer on his desk and a wall-mounted tv. There were boards with the daily agenda and with the weekly plans.  About 80% of the free space in the classroom, including the ceiling, was covered in posters, maps or newspapers. Troy had the desks arranged in twos for partner sharing and he changed the seating arrangement from time to time by random selection of partners. Troy shared the students’ grades with them often, through an online gradebook, so they had a constant reminder of where they stood in the class.

Troy’s first period class started out like a few other classes I had visited this year, with “Good News”. The students were encouraged to cite an event that constituted good news in their lives and then the class affirmed the nature of the news by a loud clap of their hands. After several students shared their news Troy turned them to their daily journal entries. Those entries varied in length and purpose from day to day.

After the students finished their journal entry, Troy launched into a slide presentation on World War II, which he built using textbook material and other information he found on the Web. He used photos and illustrations, sound and video clips and the whole presentation was heavy with graphics. The students were given note sheets that had areas to fill in. These sheets had the purpose of allowing the students to process what they were learning for the day. Throughout the lesson, Troy used the Socratic method in questioning the students about what they were learning. He reviewed the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I and how that treaty helped set the conditions for the cause of the next war. He reminded the students that their comments and questions on the lesson required facts or evidence in order to affirm their point. Through the whole class period Troy exhibited a good sense of humor and a great working relationship with his students. He also provided connections to the students’ own life experiences so that they would find some sense of relevancy between the early 21st Century and the 1940s. Throughout the class period Troy used multiple activities in presenting the content, as well as provoking student questioning.

Well into the class period, the principal came into the room and asked for five students. School security was doing a locker search using a drug dog and the dog hit on the area where these five students had their lockers. One female student said the dog hit on her Advil and Midol pills and two of the males were visibly shaken when the dog sniffed their lockers. Only one of the five students failed to come back to class. I did not find out what happened to him. Troy tried to alleviate some of the fear in the classroom by handing out candy and that seemed to quiet some of the anxiety. Troy told the class that the search as just a random one and not a general crackdown on drugs in the school. News passed quickly through the grapevine and Troy had to deal with the news of a random drug search at the beginning of his Second Period class. After fielding a few questions and reinforcing the idea that the search was just a random one, the class settled down to work. In an aside, Troy told me that last year he had two classes filled with students who had not passed one of the trimesters. That was not a pleasant experience. These students were not highly motivated to learn what they failed to learn the first time and Troy was glad that this experience was not repeated this year.

The class ended with a short discussion of the Berlin Airlift so basically in an hour or so, Troy started with the lead-up to the War and ended in 1947 with the Airlift and the beginning of the Cold War. Quite a bit of ground to cover!  Later, he told me that he actually spent three and a half weeks on the lead-up to the war and war itself so his classes this day were basically a review of what they had learned over the last few weeks.

Troy’s second eriod class picked up where his First Period Class left off. He told me that none of his classes were at the same point in the unit. He handled that scheduling problem well and explained that difference in progress was based on student questions and engagement in the material.  He was perfectly fine with that.

In the process of discussing the development of the Cold War and fervent anti-communist feeling in the United States in the late 1940s, Troy turned to a student who was wearing a red t-shirt and in a threatening tone of voice, accused him and the students sitting around him of being communists. The class took Troy’s attack seriously. There wasn’t any laughter or kidding, partially based on the tone of Troy’s voice. Even with his obvious sense of humor, his students knew when his voice sounded that way, it was no laughing matter. Dropping out of that tone and with that manner, Troy broke the tension in the room and started an earnest discussion on what it meant for someone to be accused of being a communist, even if they were not.  Just the accusation meant trouble for their jobs and lives.

Troy’s third period class was further along in the unit than his first two classes. This class lesson started in the late 1940s. Troy used very little pure lecture. He constantly posed questions, followed by discussion.  Troy had index cards with the students’ names on them to help him try to involve as many students as possible in the class. Many of his questions were on the lower level of Bloom’s taxonomy, checking the students’ background knowledge, but peppered in were upper-level questions which probed the class’s analysis of what they were learning. At one point, Troy asked a predictor question about how the Cold War and increased defense spending might impact life in the United States. While this class proved to be more “chatty” than his previous classes, the students offered more possible answers to brainstorming questions.

The fourth period class had not progressed in the unit as far as 2nd and 3rd Period classes, but was ahead of the First Period class.  Troy had to be well-organized in order to keep track of where all his classes were in their studies. In the process of discussing the Marshall Plan in post-World War II Europe, Troy had the students examine the several motivations for the U.S. in rebuilding the war damage. At one point he asked the students if the U.S. was “buying” the love of the Europeans and what the economic and political impact of the Marshall Plan was on the world and the U.S. relations with the U.S.S.R.  The students were engaged in the discussion, as were all of Troy’s classes, even if some of that engagement was prompted by the reward of a Jolly Rancher thrown their way.

Troy did a good job injecting geography into the Cold War discussion by using several maps, both in his classroom and in his slide show and depicting the political hold the U.S. and Western European allies had on areas in Germany and the rest of Europe versus the areas controlled by the Soviets. In fact, throughout this history lesson, he was able to interject economics, politics and geography in a way that connected with the present-day affairs of the world and connected with the students’ lives.

Interview, 2008

Defining Success, 2008

Troy quickly threw out theory when it came to defining success in teaching. He thought it boiled down to what happened on a day-to-day basis in the classroom. “Success” meant seating ideas in students’ minds in a way that those facts and ideas impacted them, and in the case of East Kentwood, making connections to students from many different cultures, who had multiple perspectives on the world.

As for his college experience preparing him for success, Troy echoed many of the other teachers in this study. College gave him the tools, but the real test came when he had his own classroom. 2008 was Troy’s second year in teaching and he said that he was still learning. He knew he learned much in his first year, but he also knew he needed to continue to learn. Troy thought college students should begin experiencing what it meant to be a teacher in their first year of college, even though they were fresh out of high school, theirs was the experience of a student and not a teacher.  The more quickly and more often future teachers found out what the work and responsibilities of teaching were, the better.

Content, 2008

Troy was able to take small excerpts from some of his college texts and use them with his middle school students during his placements while a student-teacher.  He wanted his students to be exposed to a higher level of thinking and writing and he was careful to keep the selections short so as to not make comprehension too difficult for these younger students.  He also took  advantage of the notes he saved from his college lectures and applied those notes to his lesson plans. Overall, he thought the added coursework with his two majors helped his content background, but ultimately it was not worth the extra time and money.  He did not blame the university for the problems caused by NCLB.

Strategies and Methods, 2008

Troy did his teacher-assisting at Grandville Middle School and his student-teaching at East Kentwood High School. The middle school placement helped him in understanding and dealing with 9th graders at the Freshmen Center.  He called them glorified middle schoolers until they reached the third trimester of their Freshmen year.  A little more maturity started to kick in by that point. Troy was critical in his comments about some his coursework in the College of Education and a few other courses.  He thought a buffet course might have been a better choice, combining the important points of three separate classes and that would have saved him time and money. As with other teachers in this study, he saved his most negative comments about the course, “Teaching Reading in the Content Area”.  Along with the other teachers, he saw a disconnect between the age level and content he was teaching with the college course. The general criticism amongst my students was that the course was taught and aimed at elementary level students so the methods, strategies and reading resources were not directly applicable to the classroom.  Only one person in this study, Ben in Summerville, South Carolina, saw direct application to his middle school classroom. Troy’s basic contention was that the program could eliminate some courses, become a four-year course of study and eliminate some of the expense and still be a successful program. I would temper that judgement by saying that most of the administrators I talked to during my research were highly complimentary concerning Grand Valley’s program because they thought our graduates were much better prepared than graduates from other universities’ four-year programs.

I next asked Troy if he thought his college work prepared him to teach historical thinking and writing. He pointed to a particular course and professor, History 300 and Dr. James Smither. Troy remarked that Dr. Smither was a stringent grader, but that the feedback from that course made Troy a better writer and better able to grade and offer critical, positive comment to his current students’ writing assignments. Troy also thought he was well-prepared in terms of helping his students think historically.  He did not require memorization of a mountain of facts and through discussion and other types of assignments he had students apply what they were learning in history to present-day parallels.

I asked Troy if he felt there was content not included in his college preparation that he needed in order to be successful.  He thought it was more important to have the context surrounding the facts than the facts themselves. Some dates and names were important in order to provide evidence in supporting an argument, but he did not view his job as making his students historical encyclopedias.

Troy thought he left college with a good toolkit of methods and teaching strategies and that was evident in his lesson plans that day. He varied his approaches, making changes in how he taught about every 15 minutes for the 70-minute class period. There was a small amount of passive lecture, but Troy used questioning and discussion, as well as individual and group work in varying ways which engaged his students in their study of World War II and its aftermath.

Troy’s biggest criticism was, despite the multiple courses which dealt with lesson and unit planning, he did not feel he was prepared for the day-to-day preparation and how those daily plans built into a trimester, semester or year-long course.  He was not sure if the university could replicate that experience, but he still thought his college preparation should have done a better job in helping him realize how much planning had to take place day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month. I do not think any teacher preparation program, even with two placements in two different semesters in two different schools and with different grade levels can prepare someone for that daily grind. Troy, himself, pointed out that experience is the only thing that really shows a person what teaching is all about.

Pearls of Wisdom, 2008

Troy’s first pearl was realistic, if not a little gross. He advised future teachers to have a change of clothes at school in case a student vomited on them. This situation actually happened to me.  The 7th grade teachers at Southern Cayuga Central Junior High took the students on a field trip to the Farmers’ Museum in Cooperstown, New York.  It was a great trip and the students had the opportunity in witnessing 19th Century life in rural America. The trip back to the school started off great.  The weather was cooperative and the students had lunch before they got back on the bus for the long ride back home. Not too long after leaving the museum, and still more than an hour from the school, one of the students sitting directly in front of me turned around  and said, “Mr. Cooley, I don’t feel good” and proceeded to dump his lunch onto my shirt and pants. At first, I was more concerned with his sickness and embarrassment and then I realized, even after cleaning myself off as best as I could, that the ride home would be aromatic, to say the least. Accidents do happen, but I don’t think a teacher can always be prepared for them.

Troy’s next piece of advice was not as smelly.

Don’t get into this job unless you really want to do it because it’s an amazing job, it’s awesome, it’s incredible, the stuff you do, you really do touch lives, you impact people, and they impact you. Parents, administration, community members, students themselves, people, even if they have bad days, they really do care about you…you may not think that so you really have to have it in your heart first and foremost because you won’t last.  Not that if you don’t last, big deal, because then it really isn’t for you, you’re not in the right job, and with “pearls of wisdom” I guess is always… make sure that you are prepared, preparation, because if you lose preparation, you lose everything (Vanderlaan, v.t., 2008, p. 11).

Along with preparation, Troy cautioned teachers to always have a back-up plan in case something happens with the original plans, like the tech breaks down or, for some reason, you cannot find the copies you made for the day.

Troy’s last bit of advice was to treat everyone on the staff well…administrative assistants, custodians, other teachers, administrators…and they will treat you well. If a teacher gets caught up in lounge or hallway gossip, the impact of a few negative, and often incorrect, comments about you make about someone else will always get back to you. Concentrate on what you are doing in your own classroom and do not get caught up in hallway or teachers’ lounge politics.

2015

Troy was still in the Freshmen Center at East Kentwood.  He was now the chief negotiator for the teachers’ union and they had just settled on a three-year contract. The teachers regained some lost items in their contract and a small bump in pay. Troy employed the district’s educational philosophy in helping the atmosphere during the negotiations. In other words, “Do you just talk or do you walk the talk?”  I had the opportunity in attending a school-wide “beginning of the year” assembly in the gym. All the staff members were wearing red t-shirts, the school colors, with the mission statement on the back of their shirts.  The Freshmen Cheerleading squad led the student body in cheers and impressed their classmates with their dismounts after they were standing on the shoulders of the teammates. The high school band played and overall the assembly was upbeat and a great way to start the year. The students seemed to be attentive and motivated by what their teachers and administrators were saying about their expectations for the year.

The mission statement was also a part of Troy’s lesson plan for the day. The students had to incorporate the words of the mission statement into their writing assignment for the day and show how they would apply the words to their expectations for the school year. All of the 9th grade teachers were working on lesson plans incorporating the mission statement for this first week of school so there was an optimal level of engagement on what the statement meant and how it applied to the student body’s education.

Beyond the work on the mission statement Troy’s lesson for day had his students interpreting pictures and illustrations through the eyes of historians and artists. Troy gave his students some idea on how they might interpret some of the images and then led the students to the idea of finding evidence within the images in describing their own particular historical interpretation of what they were seeing.

Troy worked very hard in his First Hour class trying to get a special needs student involved in the class. All of his classes appeared to be mixed with English Language Learners, English as a Second Language and Special Needs students.  The mix was not the same all day long, meaning that Troy had to micromanage his lesson plan and its implementation throughout the day in order to meet the needs of the various kinds of learners. Multiple times during the day Troy got down his students’ eye level (Troy is tall) in an effort to personalize his relationship to their learning.

His classroom décor had not changed much since my last visit. There was some sports memorabilia, historical posters, learning targets, the agenda for the week, the daily schedule, newspaper front pages throughout the 20th Century, thematic timelines, posters of African-American contributions in the arts and sciences, the United States’ Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the list of behavior consequences and, last, but not least, a photo of Troy and his fiancée.

By this time in his career Troy’s classroom management skills were finely honed. His “command” voice was a clear signal when to re-focus when the class grew a little chatty and unfocused, which did not happen very often. He used the peace sign when the chatter increased a little and the students immediately responded with quiet.

Troy used his classroom technology effectively during the day. In the process of having students explain their interpretations of the images set before them, Troy had them come to the front of the classroom and circle parts of the images in their discussion of how they viewed the images. Troy promoted positive, constructive discussion of each student’s interpretation and he encouraged his students to learn from each other.  He also asked good follow-up questions concerning the students’ ideas about the images and allowed for different interpretations of the pictures as long as the students provided evidence for their thoughts. Troy used metacognition in his lesson as well, as he had his students explain what they thought they were learning from this lesson.

Troy explained that his school shifted from a trimester schedule, back to a semester schedule. All the teachers preferred the semester arrangement because they thought they were establishing more meaningful relationships with the students. On top of that, the school developed cohort teams so that all the subject teachers had the same students. Troy said that teaming and cohort-grouping allowed the teachers in better coordinating and collaborating their lessons, as well as using the Response To Intervention^[1] strategies.