Talent Is Overrated, Part Two

To continue the thinking from last week's blog, I made a list today of all the jobs I've ever had.  Quite an interesting path that led me to being a secondary school principal today:

1. picked rocks
2. sprayed and walked beans
3. paper route
4. summer childcare
5. nursing home laundry aide
6. short order cook
7. computer parts assembler
8. cookie manufacturing
9. nut processing (yep, we bagged peanuts, cashews, etc. 50 lbs at a time; graveyard shift)
10. press helper
11. fast food cook
12. custodian
13. library aide
14. toy store shelves stocker
15. proofreader
16. office cleaning
17. photographer
18. county conservation worker
19. soup factory worker
20. teacher
21. adjunct professor
22. principal

Yes, they're listed in chronological order, starting at the age of 13.  No one I worked for or with would have ever said that I performed excellently at any of these jobs.  I did OK at most, and well at some, but was I a world class short order cook?  A prize-winning photographer?  No.

Why not?  As Colvin states in his book Talent Is Overrated, I did well enough to get by, maybe get some praise now and then from clients or supervisors, but never did I engage in the serious deliberate practice it takes to perform excellently.  This is how most of us spend our entire lives:  doing well enough to keep doing things at the same level of performance.  I was simply OK at the things I did.

Actually, I take that back:  as a proofreader, I excelled.  I worked in college for a company that produced wedding announcements, wedding programs, and other special-occasion products.  My job, and the job of others in my department, was to compare what the customer told us they wanted to see printed with what our typists actually created.  I spotted mistakes for a living.  And I was the best in my department, according to the indicators the company used to define success, for the two years I was there.

Why?  First, a rigorous training program.  It only lasted a week or so, but through failure after failure, I learned what it took to accurately and quickly (speed mattered, too) spot mistakes in spelling, font, point size, etcetera.  Second, constant feedback.  We knew every week how many items we had proofed, how many "send-backs" we received (when another department spotted an error I missed), and how many customer complaints we had.  Do we see this happening in our teacher preparation programs?  Is this how our teacher and principal performance evaluations are designed?

This continuous flow of achievement data allowed me to see how I was performing, from outside observers.  I could easily measure and track the quality of my work--this factored directly into periodic pay raises (or reprimands).  Progress could be monitored, and I knew the rewards of my hard work and deliberate practice.  How do we provide this for students?  And in much more profound ways than in giving them lots of tests--this is NOT meaningful achievement data.  As educators we need to take much more into account than end-of-unit tests. 

In teaching, we are able to push ourselves to greater levels of performance by continually examining how our instructional practices influence our students' achievement.   In school leadership, the results of our work can be difficult to measure, but every two years I ask my staff to evaluate my performance.  Using this data to think hard about my own effectiveness can be difficult:  no one likes to read anonymous evaluations that may be unflattering.  But that's what produces results--revealing our weaknesses and engaging in deliberate practice to improve on those habits and methods that aren't working.  In what ways could this principle be applied in our work in education? 

Next week, we'll be provide specific examples of how these concepts can impact student achievement by influencing our own effectiveness as educators.