The people in my neighbourhood

Recently, BC Educator Sarah Garr posted a good question on her blog:

"Who are the people in your neighbourhood, your school heroes who contribute to the success and well being of your students, and staff?"

Here's her full post: http://sarahgarr.blogspot.ca/2016/05/who-are-people-in-your-neighbourhood.html

This is actually a tough question. As a teacher, I work in an organization that requires a multitude of roles in order to function, and the system keeps functioning (at some level) even when those roles are not being fulfilled. Classes can survive without their teachers for a while (at least until another is found), likewise we've seen a school can function for a time without a principal and a district without a superintendent. I'm sure we could even carry on without an Education Minister... how long would it take to notice one was gone? We could survive without staff meetings -- in most school these have become information sessions to highlight email content from the previous month and anticipate the next month's emails. For that matter we could survive without 90% of the emails we receive. I digress. How long could we go without custodians, secretaries, support workers, maintenance staff, counsellors, and so on? Everyone plays a part -- some do it well and some do not, but almost all of them are necessary at some level. I must admit I’ve spent many of my years as a teacher shielding myself, my classroom, and my students from the parts of the system that are dysfunctional, unfair, or chaotic. I have thought of my teaching practice as it's own ecosystem and have never assumed that anyone else would build my curriculum and lessons for me, handle my discipline issues or technology needs, and so on. Of course this is not always possible or beneficial, but we teach who we are as they say.  For me, anyways, these were necessary steps in order to figure out what a safe and engaging place of learning could look like, could be like, and I’m quite certain I’m still figuring that out. So, the heroes for me are the ones that make the school and my practice more functional, fair, and calm. Who are the denizens of this forest? Colleagues, mentors, school advocates, sometimes parents and often students. Is it necessary to name names? I appreciate fellow Social Studies teachers in my personal learning network -- the Pacific Slope Consortium (Rob, Ian, JP, and many others) -- for indulging the curricular experiments and providing a context for collaborative practice. I appreciate colleagues at my school that have had the long term “health and wholth” of the students at heart like John Vogt (retired teacher), Joe Pereira (DP Todd), and Sandra Jandric (DP Todd). I appreciate mentors that worked alongside me, challenged me, and provided much-needed counterpoints such as Norm Booth (retired teacher CHSS). I appreciate tireless advocates for public education that helped create positive classroom, school, and district conditions such as Mike Duffey (retired teacher CHSS), Matt Pearce (recently deceased teacher CHSS), many colleagues from the PGDTA and BCTF, and my own partner Kate Cooke who served as a local school trustee for three years and fought for progressive changes, some of which succeeded and some of which bore fruit only after she was done. I appreciate my father Walt and all the other teachers in the family over multiple generations for ennobling the profession and leading by example. I appreciate the students who have shared their inquiry with me and their classes over the years -- the process and product of their efforts at storytelling are the clearest forms of motivation I have as a teacher.

collaboration models

Currently, our school uses an altered weekly schedule to free up time for voluntary staff collaboration. We've taken about 40 minutes off of most Wednesdays (providing an early dismissal) and added the minutes elsewhere in the year. The process by which we arrived at this model is explained in part on p. 22-26 of our 2010 School Plan for Student Success.

At the time, we were informed that a model for collaboration time would be coming, and given a choice between two models. We commited to the current model with a positive plan and desire to see what would come of it, and have been at it for two school years.

Many of the staff have used this "common time" for project work, school improvement (e.g. a Social Responsibility group), department discussions, and staff presentations (Drug & Alcohol, Demographic Change at our school, Autism Spectrum), some ed philosophy conversations, offsite pro-d, and even a couple of union meetings. Because it is voluntary, staff have also used it to catch up on marking, gripe & complain with others, spend time with their kids, or book appointments at places that shut down by 4 pm.  A few have harboured "contraband" students who were not ushered out of the school -- for tutorial, missed work, projects, etc.

This year's teacher job action and response to the B.C. government's Bill 22 has put a strain on collaborative systems at all schools, and complicates our position as we re-evaluate how we manipulate our schedule to create benefits for student learning and staff practice.

Our school staff was recently informed that one of the results of Bill 22 is that decisions altering the length of working days must now go through a process involving local boards and local District Teacher Asssociations. This may jeopardize our school's current collabaration model, and begs the question of what we might do next if our model is removed.

For some perspective, I've asked about 14 teachers about the status of collaboration models at other SD57 high schools, and gathered input from our own staffroom table:

P.G.S.S.

• no model this year 
• previous years, variants on the scheduled tutorial/collab block model 
• last year was each Wednesday before lunch, half staff in collab, half staff with Gr. 8-10 students (Gr. 11-12 given extended lunch) 
• original model started with some staff input, same time as they discussed Attendance program, later changes were made directly by admin 
• problems around students and staff utilizing it well, led to frustration over the "TAG" effect (failed attempt in the 90s to have groups of students "check-in" with teachers each day) 
• these problems resulted in students not taking it seriously (skip, waste time, chaos) 
• attendance headaches or sense that attendance issues are being ignored 
• saw value in the idea of collaboration but weren't sure that was the best way to do it
• an organizational reality is that teachers that don't normally get along can't be expected to form functioning groups with common goals
• good for seniors (tutorial is needs-based, drop-in), bad for juniors (assigned, low expectations)
• no discussions for a model next year, just suggestions that the administration is considering a Wednesday early dismissal model 

College Heights Secondary

• no model this year 
• previous years used a scheduled tutorial/collab block model 
• previous model had major attendance problems or a sense that attendance issues are being ignored 
• each morning, mandatory for Gr. 8-9 students, 10-12s could be assigned but otherwise started later around 9:15 
• many staff preoccupied with upcoming lessons, might have been better placed at end of day 
• department groupings, week on, week off with collab worked for some, not for others
• challenges with incompatible goals within groups meant that groups fizzled
• highlighted the fundamental problem that just because teachers share a space or subject doesn't mean they will collaborate well 
• no discussions for a model next year, looks to be going back to a simple block rotation 

Duchess Park Secondary

• Wednesday early dismissal model this year 
• minutes added elsewhere in exchange for shortened days 
• voluntary participation, no tutorial blocks 
• difference in use often related to enthusiam within departments 
• many teachers would rather spend their time at work teaching students 
• collaboration is a form of Pro-D that they do on their own time anyways 

Kelly Road Secondary

• minutes are shuffled around to provide for a late start on Wednesdays (paid time, though) 
• one of the first schools to try a collab model (2005?), at the time related more closely to other PLC concepts than now 
• in the past staff "owned" the process and set its own goals and topics 
• currently get more direction on how the time is used, leading to intense frustration and lack of uptake 
• productivity is limited and colleagues have lost interest in the value of collaboration because of the prescriptive structure 
• no discussion yet as to the model next year 

D.P. Todd Secondary (my school)

• Wednesday early dismissal model for the last 2 years 
• time is voluntary (unpaid), so use of this time is highly varied 
• no direct value for students, value for staff depends on willingness to give up personal time
• leaving total instructional time unaffected has a high appeal for staff, as does the autonomous quality of contributions
• groups that have met express value in the results due to high level of participation when they have personally chosen to be there
• near consensus that no model would be better than an scheduled collab model with random tutorial & dismissal of senior students
• unsure of the value that any model can have if not designed and developed by staff, want a choice between a model and no model
• wondering about what tutorial could like if we could actually dial students into the help they've asked for or clearly need

Valemount Secondary

• same model for more than 7 years, voluntary PLC time
• monthly half wednesday model, adding minutes to other days
• problem with PLC not that is asks too much but tries to create too much conformity
• ed change as a focus for collaboration is fine, but then don't restrict access to technology
• less controlled collaboration might make it more about creativity than following trends

The anecdotal data from these schools leads me to believe that the local secondary tutorial/collab models are not working at other schools as intended and are creating confusion and attendance issues that outweigh the hypothetical benefit to students and teachers. If it takes using our own school as another test case to prove or disprove this, so be it, but I don't think it is necessary or productive without more work on design. The local evidence suggests that the various shades of "PLC" timetable changes have run their course with some pros and cons and now we need to rethink how and why we alter our schedule.

My personal preference would be to drop all models for three years and build a schedule around an hour-long lunch. I believe it would create natural opportunities for student help and informal tutorial, supervised formal tutorial that leaves time for students to recharge, school activities and student leadership, staff conversation and dialogue, SBT and department meetings, compensation for inconsistent prep-time, collaboration and discussion time, and simply a more relaxed, healthy, and enjoyable lunch. I think it would also provide a "cooling off" period as schools and districts figure out how to adapt to a shifting labour climate and changes in the education system. There a few ways to build such a schedule; I'd be happy to share if there is interest. There are also some supervision issues that would have to be acknowledged and dealt with.

More than tweaking a schedule, I think the larger issue is that there are competing and often incompatable visions of what scheduled collaboration time or tutorial models are meant to accomplish. The communication and discussion of these philosophies has also been problematic at the school and district level. For example, is a collab/tutorial model supposed to bring about a PLC? better teachers? closer alignment to goals? increased use of formative assessment? Dylan Wiliam, (who with Paul Black is known as a "father of AFL") spoke in December 2011 about how making a real difference involves something more personalized than a PLC, that PLC is not an effective way to improve teacher quality and support AFL even if it benefits in other ways. His research also claims that teachers sharing best practices in short sessions actually distracts us from the task of improving teaching; what we need is something more sustained and individual. Within this milieu (and Wiliam's thinking), the value of collaborative groupings would be to provide the collective responsibility for change while insisting on individual accountability -- interdependence and a means to consolidate and embed what teachers already know. Do teachers see this as a purpose behind a collaboration model? Would some argue that the groupings mask individual accountability? Are some indifferent because the they do not associate the model with their own development?  I chose to reference Wiliam's ideas because they highlights the need for further discussion and because Black & Wiliam's work are popular among district leaders.

So what do we want collaboration for? With no regular, legitimate, agreed-upon means of reviewing designs and goals, it is obvious that the level of support for collaboration models will dissipate among staff, and thus among students when teacher-led tutorial is involved. In this way the question of collaborative models is similar to the consideration of how to engage 21st century education, blended learning, problem-based learning, focused inquiry models, and other ideas that come and go in education. There are ways to achieve collective support for new programs and models, but this requires a dialogue-based culture that is largely absent from our school system as we experience it locally. I think this is a long-term trend that pre-dates job action and will only improve when both teachers and management put a higher value on dialogue.

It has been fascinating to see how schools in other districts have managed to embrace change and work with leadership despite the labour situation. I've followed the twitter conversation of about 100 teachers, administrators, and district staff around the province and it seems quite clear that there is a "dialogue spectrum" at play. The exchange on the purpose of education is vibrant (though not always congruent) and takes place with very few strings attached between educational leaders from teaching and management and many on the side (e.g. parents, ministry staff, business). We could learn great deal from other districts; ours has been very slow to join this conversation! Being slow isn't a crime, but we're missing out on what I see happening in other districts via twitter (and elsewhere) -- teachers and leaders at all levels holding each other accountable on educational issues and praxis. West Van superintendent Chris Kennedy often writes about how twitter is a powerful pro-d tool that flattens hierarchies and focuses on teaching & learning and the need for change. Other educators use social media to share, provoke, question all expressions of relevance, self-promote, define contexts, and delve into the politics and possibilities of education. In common, they share a feeling of importance (for both the work they do and the impact on students). Maybe if we had the same sense of urgency, not just for change but for meaningful dialogue, solving a collaboration problem would not be so wearisome.

The issue of student tutorials raises additional questions, the most sensitive of which appears to be the cynicism and regret expressed at other schools about how this time is often wasted. Knowing these issues in spring of 2010 was one of the factors that tipped staff towards our collaboration-only model. This fit with our perception of the school's strengths -- I think one of the things that has made our school appealing to parents in the past is the no-nonsense approach to scheduling and student responsibility. We shied away from a tutorial model (for better or worse) in large part because we thought it would not be a good use of students time and it would lead students to think of tutorial as a filler block where they could disengage with learning unless something was pressing upon them. My own department had a functioning tutorial program running for one year (in lieu of other supervision) but this was yanked in favour of a "classroom support program" that appears to have died.

I think a creative and caring staff could make tutorial something more than a chance to "catch-up" and erase mistakes, and might start to integrate cross-curricular learning, student-owned research and school-wide project work, or true subject and task-oriented tutorial personalized to each student's academic needs.  We might also use this time to advance a social agenda or develop study skills or employment profiles. Again, this creativity requires a culture and process for dialogue that is quite foreign to our school and district at the moment, but I suppose we have to start somewhere, and that somewhere would be the very basic conversation about what kind of collaboration and/or tutorial model we want for ourselves and our students.


What are the pros/cons of the collaboration or tutorial models used at your schools? Feel free to comment!

Premier Campbell's Vision for Education

I've just read through the Premier's Technology Council (PTC) vision for education: http://www.gov.bc.ca/premier/attachments/PTC_vision%20for_education.pdf

I think it is safe to say that the core of ideas come from John Abbott. This work appears to be the well from which the PTC has drawn most of its educational design theory.

Beyond that, the PTC vision has mashed up a few parallel (and not necessarily compatible) ideas from the Assessment for Learning "shift in global learning," charter/voucher school movements, technology-driven online learning as the future ("brick & mortar" is passé), and a right-wing privatization orientation.  It fits neatly at the conservative end of the growing body of "21st Century Education" research, near-research, and commentary. The PTC itself, the group that commissioned the vision, is comprised entirely of business leaders, corporate execs, and a few lawyers (see p. 40)s and handful of academics. The actual vision was written mainly by educators, albeit drawn from government, administration of various rank, and academia. There appeared to be a single practicing teacher on the team.

A lot of it is stuff our district has already seen. Some of it, in perfect world, appears positive (I am a fan of Ivan Illich's "Deschooling Society" after all). Some of it will be ugly, teacher-strike ugly, if it ever actually comes to be. A lot of it seems open for local interpretation. The technology part is, of course, offensive in our School District 57 as we've left virtually every one of the "advances" mentioned in the report out by the curb. The "teachers don't need to know more than their students" part is bizarre... will we be like gov't service agents at a help desk? I don't get that part, sounds like decertification. The parent involvement part is very weak, too. It almost suggest that parents who are not able to get involved can count on the school system to provide the parenting for them.

Get ready for another round of "moving forward." We're very used to having something whole and interesting broken down to something lacking and ineffective, so learn to recognize the PTC vision as it flows towards us. If you don't believe me, here's the pattern:

PLCs started as an attempt to revive staff culture by improving structures and focusing on student achievement but ends up as forumlaic pro-d model that assumes group adhesion without examining how collaboration actually works. The buzzwords remain, but the thrust of what DuFour was doing in his American context is pretty much opaque to most teachers. The most offensive use of "PLC" occurs when schools announce they are PLCs when many of the teachers (and students) don't even now what this means, haven't been baptized at a PLC conference, haven't studied the PLC literature, or haven't substantially changed the school structures to move in a new direction. At some schools, just rearranging the timetable to allow for a collaboration/tutorial block was enough for the schools to be rebranded as PLCs. It didn't matter if collaboration meetings continued to be dysfucntional department meetings or the student tutorial was mandatory with random students supervised by random teachers simply to fulfill contractual instruction time.

AFL starts out being about discarding some of the "sorting" that teachers do and making assessment about accountability for learning outcomes. Instead the emphasis shifts accountability away from students by finding a hundred ways for everyone to pass. I've seen some notable exceptions to this among colleagues who have managed to walk the line between meaningful assessment and no child left behind. The NPBS, drawing off of the AFL namely the work of Halpert and Kaser, and locally by caring educators like Francis Roch, aims at putting dynamic, flexible instruction and interactive learning at the heart of the classroom. What we often end up with are educators that have used this as a portmanteau for education change in general, and think that if teachers have seen a powerpoint about the stategies and principles of AFL they are now accountable for a new paradigm, or that using a rubric somehow solves all the problems with sorting-based marking.

Collaboration and Inquiry models pushed from the board office as a model for school staff to follow, but there is resistance and structural design to prevent collaboration or inquiry with the board office on issues like technology paradigms or district sustainability. Collaboration, them, is not a leadership model, only a curriculum and student support model. this is not compatible with the vision articulated in the PLC literature, nor does it show fidelity to any mainstream definition of inquiry-based education articulated in the last 41 years (since Postman and Weingartner). Even as a model for staff within schools, it breaks down -- inquiry is not about asking big questions with open-ended answers, but about completing the School Plan for Student Success.

Data-based decision making was supposed to change everything and give us the direction we needed and the tools to get there. Unfortunately there were no mechanisms developed to assess qualitative data or educational context, so we exchanged this for quantitative data that rarely fits the study subject (real, individual students in classrooms with a specific teacher). The SPSS became the dumping point for all this data, and was touted as a school growth plan when most of it is compiled after the fact and almost universally ignored by staff and the school district. My favorite quote from the board office (in 2007) was that after 5 years of growth plans, district goal-setting, and coordinated planning for student success, there had no measurable improvement of student acheivement, but the DPSS/SPSS process was still important as it showed we were still committed to change. The district's plan contains some of these very data and change issues that are hard to reconcile. For example, on the same page that emphasizes the importance of personalized learning and assessment specific to strategies, the district admits it can't find any specific assessment indicators to measure progress and so falls back to completion rates and FSA results. There is no way of knowing, not even an attempt at knowing whether completion rates and FSA results have anything to do with the school and district-approved strategies for student success. Some teachers may actually know what their department agreed to, or invented, as a yearly goal. Few could tell you what their school set as a goal, and fewer still have even look at the district's plan for stuent success.

DPA was intended to get kids healthy but devolved into a record-keeping game, reminicent of TAG, Grad Portfolio, and School Planning Councils (do we still have these?).

We can take these half-hearted implementation back quite a while. I was not yet a teacher during the "Year 2000" push, but from what I gather it fit the pattern, too -- the message seems to be that the bigger the plan, the better the chance it will get really messed up before it gets to the classroom. This new one may fall into the same groove, but in one fundamental way, it will prove to be different -- because of money. I don't think the government will take no for an answer with the PTC vision, and I fully expect it will form the basis of any new Ministry of Education plan and a bargaining condition for our next teacher collective agreement. This sounds a bit much, but, unlike Year 2000 and all the other trends I mentioned, this one represents huge cost savings and thus will be natural fit with deficit-reduction strategies, user-fees and private options attached to what used to be universal social services in Canada, and a way to shift funding from Education to Health Care as our province ages. This isn't just an Education vision, it is also a Political and Financial vision. Looks to be a corporate strategy, too, with plenty of business leaders lined up in support and no doubt privatized services ready to take up the slack in a leaner public education system. When the vision turns into the next Education Contract, expect the Ministers of Education, Finance, Labour, and Social Development to be there for the photo-op with the premier.

A message for my personal learning network...

Anyways, a progressive thing that caring, intelligent teachers could do is to actually stay ahead of the banal curve that our district and province will inevitably throw at us as the vision takes root. Imagine the renewed pleasure of sitting through another staff meeting presentation about a 10-yr-old idea that we must all embrace (with half the room saying "whaaaat" and the other half saying "been there done that").  I can't wait to be told, in 2011, that we should get ready for 21st century learning. Read up on the John Abbott & Co. stuff and think about how we could provide avenues for parents to co-develop the kind of citizenship and sustainability education we try to build as Socials teachers. The model has already been set in place this spring with the activism we helped awaken. Figure out what it is about technology that we need more of, and definitely less of. Reaffirm why story-telling is at the heart of your classroom -- your stories, the students' stories, the stories you build as you travel. Realize that the narrative requires more than just passion, that the need for skill and knowledge among educators has never been stronger. I'm not sure we'll need to refute the PTC vision, but need to upgrade our "crap detectors" (as Hemingway put it).

some thoughts on PLCs

Having recently attended a two-day workshop on instructional leadership (featuring/promoting the Professional Learning Community concept), I have a few thoughts and questions...

This is a bit of a long post, so... you can read it here as a pdf file on a white background or you can go bug-eyed reading below... Also, this is my first crack at a response; I will take any feedback I get to offer a revised look at PLCs -- my opinion, so far, is easily influenced by what others may know that I do not. If you are new to blogging, just click on "comments" below the post in order to leave a comment.

First, briefly, my interpretation of the PLC concept:
-School system organized into hierarchies of learning communities, each roughly accountable to themselves and the next higher order
-Communities are distinguished by structures which focus on student achievement (asking questions like "what do we want our students to learn"); some of these structures follow...
-Time is sought for staff to meet regularly to collaborate on practices and results, study issues & questions, conduct & respond to casual research
-Problems with student achievement are met with timely, consistent, and structured interventions
-Student learning and classroom practice are valued over isolated teaching & professional development
-Supporting the development of a well-rounded, healthy student is balanced (or off-set) with the need to improve academic results
-Leadership is shared; administrators devote more time to instructional support and less on discipline and monitoring

Background on the PLC concept:
-The concept, with its attendant philosophies and terminology, is a product of Richard DuFour and others at the American National Education Service, a for-profit foundation which offers books, tapes, study guides, etc.
-Their system has much in common with other current educational theory (Dufour's is maybe less theoretical or inquiry-based and more "let's get to it") with varying levels of acknowledgement. Lave & Wenger's work on communities of practice is a good starting point for comparing similar theory.
-The PLC lingo and ideas have parallels in current business philosophies and government (USA to BC) emphasis on accountability and decentralization

PLCs in our district -- positive
-Following the conversion of a number of individuals in our district to the PLC concept over recent years, senior administration is encouraging the application of the concept at district schools. The PLC concept provides one way of meeting accountability requirements and School Plan for Student Success goals, and may also remind educators of what they are called to and help them ask if they are doing it well.
-The underlying concepts of focused collaboration, aiming at greater overall student success & educating the whole person, community-based approach, and shared leadership are well rooted in respected theory and are a natural evolution for conscientious schools and school systems.

PLCs in our district -- problems
-The collaborative model is being "tasked" out to schools. When dealing with a shift in guiding ideas which is ultimately meant to impact classroom practice, a top-down approach is probably not the way to go. With any change, the "buy-in" window is narrow and, if those heralding the change haven't covered all the angles, can turn what could be a groundswell movement into a perceived mandate or imposition. If the ideas have merit in the classroom, they need to be field tested in the classroom by volunteers with support.
-The DuFour model is a "total package" system. As such, it has the potential to exclude those who don't understand it, accept it, or have differing views. This is not the same as resisting change, this is simply that change of "governing" ideas often involves dispensing with the old order and marginalizing alternate voices. If the old order was yesterday's "good news," there can be justifiable scepticism about rapid cycles of change.
-Shared leadership, in the business world, often involves pushing decision-making to the lowest acceptable level... While this is not necessarily a feature of the PLC concept, our district is reluctant to let go of centralized decision-making (not saying this is good or bad, simply that it creates a philosophic tension with shared leadership ideas)
-An important emphasis on diversity, site-specific transformation of PLC lingo & practices, and student responsibility for learning appears to be missing or of secondary concern. The PLC concept, as it has been passed on, has the danger of being a "one size fits all" solution to problems which have not been very well articulated.
-The depth to which new ideas enter the educational scene will be a good test of the PLC concept's merit. Will it just involve use of new lingo (out with department meetings, in with collaborative team meetings), or will a new attitude about teaching & learning sink in on the front line (classrooms)? What makes the difference? Where does hoop-jumping turn to meaningful change? Much of it has to do with meaningful questions and data. If the questions asked by staff are arbitrary or determined in 3-minute think & paste activities, the results will be limited engagement and cynicism. Similarly, if the data (on which to build goals or examine practice) is not relevant to the daily classroom experience and broad questions pursued by teachers and students, it will be ignored.
-Formalizing the mentor relationships that occur spontaneously throughout schools, and formalizing the collaboration
-Time, energy, and will... what is it that individual classroom teachers need to improve their practice and affect student success? What barriers exist in supplying these needs? Starting by asking these questions could create problems for PLCs because the results will reflect tremendous diversity and will reflect a variety of philosophies. One teacher may need more collaboration time with others, one might need access to technology, one might need specific training, etc. This could all fit within the PLC concept, but it might not, therefore it is problematic to ask these questions unless we are ready to see the PLC concept as a set of ideas to evaluate, deconstruct, and allow to re-emerge where it makes sense to do so.
-These problems, I think, are worth the trouble of examination and response because the PLC concept has enough merit that it should be taken seriously. If it didn't, it wouldn't be worth evaluating (i.e. extract value).

What I plan to take away from the PLC concept:
- some powerful questions... I really like the one "what do we want our students to learn?" -- follow this one through and it has the potential to transform practice -- it is at once practical and highly philosophic. For me, it pushes me back to another question "what characteristics do I want members of society to exhibit?" and "how does what I teach show of my view of human nature?"
- some tools for collaboration... I have higher expectations for department and staff meetings now; I want to move past business and information and get to issues and beliefs.
- some renewed focus on theory & practice & identity... where is my classroom centered? teacher/student/subject? how does this affect student success? who is the self that imagines this reality and what do I want to learn by being a teacher?