What Makes a Teacher Great? (School Reformers, Take Note)

WASHINGTON — The YouTube video shows an anonymous first-grade teacher trying, and failing, to get her students to discuss a book. You see kids yammering away, wandering off, squabbling. The teacher snaps her fingers at one child, sends another to the corner and tells a boy, "You're really bugging me."

My job was to study a roomful of would-be teachers as they watched — and gauge their reactions to determine if these candidates for a fellowship had what it takes to be "inspired teachers." But what could I really tell about a person's aptitude for teaching from how they responded to a few minutes of video?

When one candidate praised that first-grade teacher for her classroom management — then recommended using candy to get the kids to quiet down (Starbursts would be particularly effective, she said) — even I knew that was the wrong answer.

But that same aspiring teacher, a few hours later, was the only one to challenge a competitor who suggested that the way to teach geography to D.C. schoolchildren was to ask parents to talk to their kids about where their families lived before they came to Washington. "You can't assume they can help their kids," she said. "You have to focus not on giving the kids the facts, but on getting them to want to know the facts."

Now I was confused. Her ideas about discipline were flawed, but couldn't she become a teacher who opens up a child's world?

I'd been asked to serve on a panel that would choose teaching fellows for the Center for Inspired Teaching, a Washington nonprofit that trains people to become the kind of energetic, idealistic, effective teachers who might help turn around the D.C. school system. I've written about education for years, but my teaching experience is limited to colleges. Here was my chance to peek inside that wing of the national school-reform movement that maintains that, after decades of futile tinkering with curriculum, class size and a dozen other factors, the key to change is to focus on who is teaching. Get rid of bad teachers and bring in good ones, the reformers say.

But how do you know who's good — especially if they've never taught a kid in their lives?

I, along with retired teachers, professors, reformers and center staff would observe and question 15 candidates from all walks: college seniors looking for their first job, teachers trying to improve their skills, people in unrelated careers looking for a change. They were among 180 applicants seeking a slot in a 15-month program that starts with a summer-long boot camp and continues with a full year as a D.C. teacher, paired with an experienced mentor.

The goal is nothing less than to radically change children's classroom experience. Ideally, the Inspired Teaching fellows will treat children like the eager, curious and fascinating people they are, rather than prisoners in an institution. Even if a school has policies that the center's leaders find abhorrent — such as stoplights (yes, actual traffic lights) in classrooms to govern children's behavior — graduates are expected to run their classrooms with high standards, respect for children and a zeal to get students excited about learning. If that means contravening school policy, well, the center's staff said, a really inspired teacher will find a way to insert "tempered radicalism" into a stultifying school.

This is where many skeptics will roll their eyes. What works in some idealist's manifesto about children's natural desire to learn won't fly in these classrooms, with those kids they say.

And that, I quickly learned, is one sure-fire way not to get into the Inspired Teaching program: Call students (ital) "those kids."

The day starts with the candidates standing in a circle. Each person says his or her name and what it means, then makes a sound and a physical gesture that expresses that meaning, a warble of joy with a big, sweeping wave, or a knowing chuckle accompanied by a cute pivot. If this seems like some mind-numbing human resources management tool, it sure felt that way to some participants who could barely mouth their names when it was their turn.

But this and other such exercises turned out to be every bit as revealing as traditional interview and essay questions, also part of the selection process. As the day progressed, I was surprised by how easy it was to slot most candidates into lists of winners and losers. Most were clearly either the kind of person I could easily see kids remembering for the rest of their lives or the kind who makes kids loathe school.

You're either "curious," "contemplative," "flexible" and "adaptive" — among characteristics we were to watch for — or you're not. The guy who scoffed, frowned and repeatedly exhaled in frustration when asked to use a pile of art supplies to construct a nonverbal definition of intelligence was not going to inspire kids to think creatively about fractions, poetry or how we know the Earth isn't flat.

The woman who made it through a 35-minute interview without once mentioning kids was not going to score well in "empathy for children." Asked what qualities are important in a good relationship with children, her first words were "healthy boundaries." Well, thanks for coming in.

At the other end of the spectrum, a woman who offered a slew of reasons why it might be perfectly OK for a child to color his fingertips with markers won praise. "I'm usually not so excited by the fresh-outs," one staffer said, using the organization's slang for applicants just finishing college. "But she's terrific."

I worried that we were being swayed by subjective impressions: the candidates' energy, confidence, improvisational talent. But as we turned to the scoring rubric that would be the basis of our selections, those impressions turned into reasoned judgments about characteristics. Do candidates believe that all children can think and learn, or do they see kids as problems? Who has the personal strength and skills to persevere and connect with students? And who feels called to teach? (Probably not the guy who said teaching was a good way to learn about his community before running for a seat in Congress.)