Glasser's "The Quality School"

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My Response to the book 3The Quality School2 by William Glasser. The concept of a school where there is no failure because all students are doing competent work and many are doing quality work is an ideal situation which we all wish could be easily achieved. Mr. Glasser9s views and concepts of how this can be achieved are quite in depth and interesting. The two concepts which I like best are lead managers and self evaluation. Throughout the book, lead managers are continually compared to boss managers. A lead manager gives a sense of control and input to the students whom he or she is working with. The lead manager also involves the students in determining how best to do various tasks. As Glasser states, 3If students view the teacher as an adversary they will be less likely to do quality work.2 I definitely agree with this statement. Teachers who may follow the boss manager mentality may sometimes run across students resistance and not get as much out of students as those who follow the lead manager approach. This is especially true in the secondary level where it is quite a natural tendency for teenagers to rebel against authority figures. By switching to a lead manager style, Glasser believes that many of today9s problems in education would be greatly reduced. The school I work in faces a problem that Glasser does not seem to consider in his book. That problem is the 3catch 222 situation of enforcing attendance policies to hold students accountable for their actions and keeping students in school to avoid a loss of funding. In Glasser9s point of view, all students are capable of doing competent work. It is my experience that there are so many things out there for adolescents to overcome that there is no way to avoid a select few falling through the cracks. Drugs and alcohol use, dysfunctional families, students working to support themselves, etc. are just the tip of the iceberg of issues which some students will, either by choice or not, be involved with. Students who become involved in these and other situations will most likely be faced with academic hardships somewhere in their careers. Some of whom will fail, and deservedly so. My school is in a constant battle for funding and with each student that drops out they lose a good chunk of funding from the state. This brings about the quandary of whether to enforce policies to the extent that Glasser suggests in order to run 3 a quality school,2 or keep prodding kids through their education to maintain funding and school programs. It is in my opinion that this may be more easily followed in an elementary setting where students aren9t exposed to as much as they are when they grow older. Self evaluation is an idea which will make students aware of what quality work is. Some students may think they are turning in quality work because their work is the only work they may see. Giving students various samples of work and showing them exactly what is expected of them will lead to a much clearer picture for each student. They then have a basis to go by. I plan to implement this concept into my teaching as much as possible in the future. I feel this leaves no gray area for all students involved. Glasser9s discussion of coercion and motivation in Chapter 4 also interested me. I often talk about attitude and motivation to my students and to the players I coach. Glasser9s statement that motivation comes from within not from external sources is one that I use daily with both my classes and the teams I coach. I dislike the approach of putting material things out in front of people to help motivate them. As an educator and coach , I feel that coercion will make your students and athletes lose respect for you as a professional in the long run. Every successful class and team I have been involved with has excelled at self motivation. I strongly feel that this is one of the most important qualities you can develop in an individual. This book sparked a renewed interest in how I both teach and coach. It will also change some of the methods I use. I doubt that I will achieve 3the quality school,2 but I do feel I will become a better teacher and coach by implementing some of the things which were talked about in this book.

-- Anonymous, June 16, 1999

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