Review

What makes for excellence or motivates a teacher to do a great job? This book, based on new research from Stanford University, reports on a four year study conducted in twelve schools in California and Michigan and concludes that it is primarily the work environment, referred to as professional communities, in which teachers work together to improve their classroom practice. (p. 2) California was chosen for this qualitative study because of its standards-based reforms in the 1980s, and Michigan because it was highly decentralized. The survey was designed to look at two contexts of teaching—the students and the subject disciplines. The next step was to discover whether teachers were inspired and successful due to individual motivation or because of the support they received within their professional communities. Finally, the survey looked within the schools to further determine if there was a stronger bond or network of support within a department or discipline, or just a generally positive collegial feeling within a building that encouraged successful or inspirational teaching. In order to assess this, all subjects in all of the sample schools had to be studied independently and the overall school atmosphere or environment had to be examined.	1
The survey looked at a plethora of unique facts, such as heterogeneous versus homogeneous groupings, block scheduling versus daily meetings, content emphasis versus skill mastery, and the ethnic and racial components within a school that contributed to a teacher's "comfort zone." Schools that shared responsibility for students' mastery of content and progress in the curriculum seemed to produce more innovative techniques collectively and had a higher rate of student success and teacher satisfaction overall. The study showed that many students needed to see the relevance of the content that they studied and how it paralleled their everyday lives. To make students respond positively to the material to which they were exposed daily usually required using an engaging dynamic presentation. The "learning triable" of teacher, student, and content that appears on page 18 became a critical focal point for many public school teachers who claimed that sixty-five percent of their students arrived inadequately prepared and eighty-five percent had serious social and family problems. If teachers could not catch their attention, they probably would not stay in school.	2
When teachers know that innovative techniques are necessary to inspire students to learn, what methods will help teachers develop these creative lessons? Success seemed to depend on a school's mission statement that emphasizes a shared respect for nontraditional learners. To accomplish this mission, the faculty must feel collegial toward one another and especially within each subject department. Perceived inequalities of teaching assignments, class size issues, and levels of expertise within a discipline work against this collegiality. Some teachers feel that they do all the work in their departments, get all of the lower functioning students, and have to deal with the students with all of the social problems, while no one ever volunteers to help them. The key to the nature of a teacher's community feeling appears to be the character of the school's leadership. (p. 94) Teachers need strong department leaders, as well as exemplary principals, to guide them and help assuage their anxiety over the myriad classroom issues they have to deal with daily. Without this inspirational leadership, teacher job satisfaction is low. Teachers who are unhappy in their jobs communicate this in their classrooms.	3
The increasing state and district emphasis on teacher accountability for student performance on standardized tests is an added component in an already challenging daily struggle. Not only do teachers have to get students to come to school and stay in school, but they have to prepare them well enough to pass levels or benchmarks that measure minimum competency in a variety of subjects. The tests can also be problematic if they are content-oriented, instead of skills-based, or are skewed for native-English speakers. The authors of the study conclude that the real challenge for teachers today is be innovative so that opportunities are created for all students to achieve standards of higher-order content knowledge and problem solving (p. 129) In order to accomplish this, they must develop professional communities. Successful schools are defined as places where the entire faculty, not just one teacher or one department, practice peer coaching, and work together to develop curriculum, design useful training workshops, and divide the work load fairly so that teachers can achieve professional pride and satisfaction in their jobs. Satisfied teachers are then motivated to be innovative, and innovative teachers inspire students. Schools will only be successful if they develop inspirational professional communities. Team effort, not individual effort, is the most important element.	4
Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake Senior High School Karen Ferris-Fearnside

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