The book, The Quality School, by William Glasser, M.D. supports the idea of managing students without coercion. It describes a basic plan for design and implementation of a quality school. A quality school is one where "all student should achieve a level of competence in all courses they attempt that both they and their teacher agree is quality education." Some key components of a quality school are lead managers, self evaluation, and choice theory.

Continuously, throughout the book, lead managers and boss managers are contrasted. The lead manager is the teacher who runs the system in a way that every body produces quality work. They do this by delegating responsibilities and providing the tools necessary to complete them in an appropriate amount of time. In contrast, the boss manager controls by keeping hold of the power and decides on his/her own what is best without say from his/her students. According to Glasser, it is the lead manager in the end who is the most successful. While I agree with Glasser that lead management would be ideal it is not always feasible because different students require different management styles.

While it takes some training to become a lead manager, it takes no training to help students self evaluate their work. More time is needed talking about quality and how it might look in work and in people. Most students only see their own work and do not have the opportunity to see how other student's work is done. Therefore, they may think they are doing quality work because they have not seen what quality work looks like. On the contrast a student may be doing quality work but may not think so for the same reason. I plan to bring this method of self evaluation into my own classroom. I want to be able to give students samples of work and let them decide what they think is quality. I'm hoping that this will help raise not only my standards, but the standards students will set for themselves.

In addition to self evaluation, Glasser suggests to try using choice theory. The basis of choice theory is that we try to control our own behavior so that what we choose to do is the most need-satisfying thing we can do at the time. As teachers, we need to help steer and motivate students in the right direction while taking their needs into account. "Although everything we do in school cannot be immediately satisfying, it has to lead to later satisfaction, and students need to know when and where that satisfaction will come." This is something I need to work on more in my own classroom. Often in mathematics the question, "Where will I ever use this?" is asked, and I am not able to give students a need-satisfying answer. In part that is because we have reached a point in our curriculum that needs to be rethought. The career options that today's students have are much different than what we had and our current curriculum is failing to meet these new areas. I want to be able to a provide more need-satisfying content for my students.

The Quality School has offered many suggestions towards the improvement of our current school system. While the suggestions appear to be effective, they may not always by realistic. The best we can do is attempt to use some of these key components like lead managers, self evaluation, and choice theory in ways that are not only need satisfying to the student, but to the teachers.

Glasser, William, The Quality School (New York: HarperCollins 1998).

-- Anonymous, January 19, 1999

Answers

I read your response to William Glassers, Quality Schools. I feel that reading Glasser made us question the way things are presently being done in education and the ways we teach our students. I agree with you that good self evaluation skills and a relevant curriculum are important for the students we teach. He gives us a lot to think about.

-- Anonymous, January 23, 1999