Good Work and How It Happens: Reflections of a Teacher and Middle Manager

By Arlene Pang

… be true to the mission of bringing out the best in our students…
… be exemplary in the discharge of our duties…
… guide our students…
… continue to learn and pass on the love of learning…
… win the trust, support and cooperation of parents and the community…”

The Teachers’ Pledge is recited by every student teacher in Singapore on graduation day as a commitment to the hard and heart work of teaching. Five short statements together exemplify the spirit of teaching and the good work of a teacher—work that is ethical, excellent and engaging.

It is easy to define and recognize good work, but what are some of its enablers, the factors that allow it to happen? Reflecting on my experiences and observations as an educator, I have identified several key factors that have supported and sustained me in my attempts to fulfil my commitment to the profession. Other than the first, these did not exist in the beginning of my career—instead, they came into play as new developments and milestones emerged, and as the nature of my work, my roles, and my responsibilities evolved over time.

1. Personal Beliefs, Values, and Sense of Mission      

An orange starfish in the sand

A story is told of a man walking along a beach, its entire length strewn with starfish washed up from a recent storm. He encounters a boy picking up the starfish one by one and tossing them back into the ocean. When queried, the boy explains that he is helping the starfish who are unable to return to the ocean on their own. If they remain on the beach, the heat of the sun would dry them out and the starfish would perish. The man remarks that, given the multitude of starfish on the beach, the boy would not be able to save all of them to make much of a difference. Undeterred, the boy picks up another starfish, tosses it back into the ocean and replies, “It made a difference to that one.”

Many of us begin our careers with the Starfish Story in our minds, believing that we can “make a difference” by saving one student at a time. Driven by this sense of mission, I spared no effort to do what I believed would make a difference: persevered in teaching a class that was failing badly; organized after-school study sessions and conducted extra classes; wrote motivational cards to students; ran consecutive camps and overseas trips; and made house visits. I observed the positive outcomes of my efforts on the students and was spurred on to do more. I enjoyed the work and experienced flow. Overall, it was work that was definitely ethical, excellent and engaging.

However, as the number of competing commitments and the level of expectations on me as a teacher increased over time, it became harder and harder to rely on personal beliefs, values, and motivations alone to sustain good work. As a programme coordinator, I was more driven by targets and awards that the school could win rather than by a sense of mission and calling. I started to measure success based on the number of targets I achieved and exceeded, rather than on the impact of my work on my students. I was engaged and motivated to do excellent work but for the wrong reasons. At the same time, I was running short on my own resources to sustain the work—physical, psychological, emotional and social resources—and I would have given up, had the next factor not come into play.

2. Positive Mentorship

Amidst my frustrations, support came in the form of a mentor—a more experienced colleague who offered (sometimes unsolicited but appreciated) counsel and advice. More importantly, my mentor had no reservations in correcting me (sometimes harshly) to bring my focus back to my sense of purpose as an educator whenever I seemed to stray from the path. Both of us have moved on to different schools, but the mentoring continues. When my morale is low, or when situations at work arise and decisions need to be made, I know I have an encourager, sounding board, and moral compass to keep me moving in the right direction and to help me decide on the best possible course of action.

3. Sense of Belonging and Responsibility to the Profession

For a long time, teachers were confined to thinking about work only in our own classrooms, departments, and committees. A turning point for me as a teacher was when I received a binder from the Academy of Singapore Teachers six years ago with the words “Ethos of the Teaching Profession” embossed in silver on its white cover. A sense of delight passed through me as I read the documents inside, which articulated the shared beliefs and professional pride of Singaporean educators—placing the child at the center of what we do, honoring the profession, pursuing professional excellence, educating the child within our unique national context and valuing parents and the community as partners in education. The Ethos provided a common language and a shared point of reference for decision making, especially in the face of ethical dilemmas. No longer was teaching about “me and my beliefs”—it was now about “our beliefs as educators in Singapore.”

Coincidentally, before leaving for my post-graduate studies in HGSE, I was posted to do a short stint in the Ministry of Education and placed in a work team that focused on engaging educators in conversations on professionalism and on our shared Ethos. Good work had taken on a new dimension. I noticed in conversations how teachers frequently referred to the shared beliefs and used them to guide their decision-making processes. The attitude had shifted from “me as a teacher and the good work I do” to “us as a body of professionals and the good work we do.” My sense of responsibility to the profession heightened as I saw news stories about how the (un)professional misdeeds of a small group of educators (e.g. forgery of answer scripts, embezzlement of school funds and sexual misconduct by educators) could cause public disregard for the overall profession. In HGSE, I took Howard Gardner’s Good Work course, which provided me with the “3 Es of Good Work” framework (excellence, engagement, and ethics) to think about the work that is done in schools and how, upon completion of my studies, I could and would do good work as a teacher again.

4. Realization of Personal Influence

My appointment as a middle manager in recent years provided me with another perspective on good work. Adjusting to the demands of my portfolio and trying to keep school programmes afloat (note: not thriving, as I would have preferred as an indicator of excellence), I lamented the lack of support and resources given to me to do my work well. Then a realization hit me—while I wished for the outside support and resources to do good work, what was I doing in the capacity of my management appointment to support the efforts of others to do good work?

Hence, my understanding of doing good work as a middle manager was transformed: good work was not just about delivering strong school programmes but also about developing and supporting others so that good work becomes pervasive in schools. This realization added a new dimension to my conception of good work—in addition to bringing about personal satisfaction, good work could be spread and multiplied in others as well!

Good work does not happen by chance. Knowing that these are some factors that enable good work to happen, what can we do as educators to remain committed to the work on an individual level and as a community? As I begin what is hopefully my next decade as an educator, here are some things I will strive to do on a personal level and that fellow educators could consider undertaking as well:

1. Preserve my personal sense of mission by staying connected to the profession at multiple levels—other than within the school, through professional networks and professional learning communities where there is a shared sense of mission.

2. Continue to be mentored and intentionally mentor others, and in doing so, help others to plug in to the wider teaching community.

3. Take initiative not just in asking for support and resources but also in providing these for others.

The Professions: Can They Help Us Invigorate Non-Professional Education?

This post also appeared on Howard Gardner’s blog Life-Long Learning.

For many years, within the United States, the phrases “higher education” and “the professions” have evoked different associations. When you go to a four year college to pursue higher education, you are supposed to sample broadly across subject matters and disciplines; hone your speaking and writing abilities; and master critical (and perhaps creative) thinking.

In contrast, when you seek training for a profession or vocation, traditionally after you have graduated from a four year college, you master those skills and make those networking connections that will help you to succeed as a physician, lawyer, professor, social worker, or architect. Of course, in many other countries, you typically choose a profession after completing secondary school; and it is assumed (rightly or wrongly) that you have already accrued those skills and understandings that many Americans pursue in college.

Indeed, this “division of labor” has occurred in my own thinking and my own blogging. Until this past spring, I wrote a bi-weekly blog called “The Professional Ethicist.” In mid-2017, I suspended that blog so as to a launch a new one called “Life-Long Learning.” Ultimately, this new blog, which you are reading, will focus increasingly on higher education, and specifically higher education of the non-vocational variety—think Princeton, think Pomona.

Yet, nowadays, as I have detailed on both blogs, the educational and vocational landscapes are undergoing tremendous changes, at a very rapid pace. In the case of the professions, an ever increasing amount of the routine work is now being executed by smart apps or programs or by trained paraprofessionals; accordingly, the survival of “professions as we have known them” is by no means assured. With respect to higher education, the costs are so great, and the anxieties about finding work post-college are so acute, that the very phrase “liberal arts” is considered toxic. The search for vocational justifications of curricula (and even of extra-curricular activities) is ubiquitous.

Amidst this rapidly shifting domain, an understanding of professions may prove helpful to both sectors. On my definition, professionals are individuals who have acquired expertise in a practice valued by a society; are able to make complex and often vexing judgments in a fair and disinterested way; and, as a consequence of their expertise and their ethical fiber, are offered and merit trust, status, and reasonable compensation.

Though professions were at one time cordoned off from the rest of society, that situation no longer obtains. We can argue about whether that shift constitutes a desirable state of affairs. But I’ve come to realize that ultimately we would like expertise and ethics from every member of society, from every citizen. The phrases, “She is acting like a professional” and “How professionally done!” should be applicable to any worker, whether a plumber or waiter, a minister, musician, or mogul. Indeed, I would not want to live in a society where the notion of “behaving professionally” had lost its meaning.

How does this formulation link to higher education? Under reasonable conditions, any young person who has succeeded in secondary school and is attending college should be on her way to disciplined thinking—that is, being able to analyze issues and think in the way of a scientist (e.g. a biologist, a chemist), a social scientist (e.g. an economist, a psychologist), a thinker in the humanities (e.g. a historian, a literary or artistic connoisseur). Mastering a particular discipline is not nearly as important as apprehending the ways in which various spheres of scholarship make sense of the world. College should be the time at which—and the place in which—students acquire ways of thinking that are elusive for most individuals until later adolescence. As possible candidates for these modes, I would suggest philosophical thinking (what are the enduring conundra that humans have struggled with, how have we done so, and how have we fared), interdisciplinary and synthetic thinking (how do we combine insights from, say, history and physics, in thinking about the concept of time); and an understanding of semiotics (what are the different symbol systems, ranging from written language to computer codes, by which individuals have captured and communicated their knowledge and how do those symbol systems work). In future writings, I’ll flesh out these requirements.

By the completion of such a secondary (high school) and tertiary (college) education, students should know what these forms of expertise are like and also know, if not have mastered, the sector(s) where they would like to be employed, at least for a while. They are on the way to achieving one leg of professionalism—call it relevant knowledge and skills.

Which leaves the second facet: being aware of vexing problems, having the motivation to tackle them, and being committed to doing so in a disinterested and ethical manner. One established way of gaining this expertise is to work as an intern or apprentice in an office or company that exemplifies and transmits an impressive professionalism. (Conversely, an internship or apprenticeship where professionalism is routinely flouted portends future failure in thoughtful tackling of tricky dilemmas.)

My “modest proposal” is that the college itself should serve as a model of professionalism. Teachers, administrators, and other adult members of the institution should hold themselves to high standards, expect those standards to be observed by others, and hold accountable members of the community who disregard or undermine the standards. And going beyond specific individuals, the rules, structures, practices, and—an important word—the norms of the college community should capture and embody the values of a profession. In this case, the profession happens to be education and/or scholarly research. But colleges are inhabited by a range of professionals (from lawyers to engineers to ministers to nurses and physicians); accordingly, the community should model the stances of professions in general, and, equally important, what it means to behave in a professional manner.

This last paragraph may sound idealistic, if not “holier than thou”; but I mean it, seriously and literally. I have observed enough workers in numerous institutions over many years to feel confident in saying that some embody professionalism, while others flout it, knowingly or unknowingly. Moreover, ill-chosen leadership can rapidly undermine the professionalism of an institution (and if you think I have in mind the current executive branch of the federal government, I won’t dissuade you), and it’s much more difficult to resurrect professionalism than to wreck it.

The very fragility of many of our professions and many of our colleges may harbor a rare opportunity. If we were to take (as a primary mission) crafting our institutions of higher education as laboratories for the professions, we might end up strengthening both. And, indeed, if we look at the earliest years of our colleges in the United States, the picture I’ve presented here would be quite familiar. It’s perhaps worth noting that in the 17th century, it was the ministry for which college students in the American colonies were being prepared.

High School Students Converge for Global Citizenship Summit

By Daniel Mucinskas

From July 28-August 5, 2017, the Global Citizens Youth Summit returned to the Harvard Faculty Club for its fourth year, bringing together a group of 28 students from all over the world for nine days of cross-cultural exchange, civic-minded learning, and service project design.

image of the globe

The Summit is a program of the Global Citizens Initiative, founded by Yumi Kuwana with the mission of empowering diverse groups of young people to become lifelong ethical leaders of positive change. The Harkness method of discussion-based pedagogy and the principles of design thinking are cornerstones of the experience.

This year’s attendees were drawn from 21 different countries and 35 cultural heritages. Over the course of the week, the scholars spoke with experts in leadership and entrepreneurship, debated various topics with one another around classroom tables, and explored Harvard and Boston. Each student also created a “glocal” (think global, act local) project to address a social problem.

The Good Project’s own frameworks were also present across sessions that covered the “three Es” of Good Work: engagement, ethics, and excellence. Lecturers illustrated these themes by discussing:

• the engagement of Patrick Lydon of the Camphill Community for the disabled in Ballytobin, Ireland;

• the myriad of current ethical problems posed by advances in scientific knowledge; and

• the meaning of excellence as a parent.

As the Summit provided us with the chance to directly observe The Good Project’s framework in action, we were eager to speak with students about their experiences and curious to know how they had reacted to the “three Es.” We were also interested in how these young people conceptualized Good Work and global citizenship. To learn more, we sat down with three students for a conversation on these topics, guided by a few questions.

The scholars’ answers demonstrate nuanced ideas about “good work,” influenced by the Summit. Of course, the story does not stop here, as these young people hope to become leaders in their respective communities. We hope that they go on to do Good Work in the wider world in the future.

Below, we have included selected responses to our questions, which have been edited for clarity.

Q: Thinking about the three talks you heard on engagement, ethics, and excellence, what did you find compelling?

“I enjoyed the content of each of the lectures on excellence, engagement, and ethics. However, the actual content has stuck with me less than the overarching topics themselves. I will think more about excellence, engagement, and ethics, as well as the different perspectives on these topics I have heard from my peers.”

“A big takeaway for me was that every action we take and every decision we make has ethical consequences. Ethics and morality permeate all aspects of life, and the ‘right choice’ in many situations is often not apparent. In the lecture about the ethics of science, I enjoyed debating the line between the benefits of progress and areas where we need to step back and make sure not to cross a moral line.”

Q: Did anything in the three talks challenge your views or assumptions?

“My mindset hasn’t changed so much as it has grown. I have taken the time to listen to my peers and to interrogate their perspectives and my own.”

“I really enjoyed the discussion we had after the lecture about ethics, grappling with whether animals and humans have the same rights, which is an issue I have not thought about before. On a wider note, I have noticed that the students at my high school have the same thoughts about most issues; even though I attend an international school with a diverse student body, our ideas and convictions are not as dissimilar as one might think. The Summit has allowed me to hear multiple opinions to which I am not often exposed.”

“This program has put my own mentality and feelings into a global context. I can see how people from other cultures think about particular issues and empathize with them.”

Q: What does “good work” mean to you?

“I believe in a balance between the selfish and the selfless, both satisfying yourself and benefiting society. At the end of the day, you are the ultimate local space through which change happens.”

“Good intentions don’t necessarily have good results. Doing good is difficult, and it is hard to always take actions that don’t have any associated negativity whatsoever. However, work should be personally engaging and ethical at once. I’m still learning how to do good in the world, and it is crucial to give young people time to develop their understandings of good work.”

“Some people have great opportunity, due to their resources or positions, to do good for others. Those who can help communities need to take the opportunity to do so.”

Q: What values guide your life and your goals?

“My values might vary, but the constant throughout my life is to do something that will result in positive change.”

“My family instilled in me a strong sense of hard work. My grandparents came to their country as immigrants with nothing, but they persevered and provided a better life for their children by working hard. Through education, I can follow in their footsteps.”

“I want to serve others and be part of a community. I try not to worry about external motivations like money and instead focus on putting effort into my passions.”

Q: What does it mean to be a global citizen?

“A global citizen is a member of the world community, with the willingness to go beyond the local level and explore further. I will return home with a commitment to benefit society.”

“We are all human, and we need to be compassionate and sympathetic to others despite our differences. I made friends easily at this Summit, and even though we are all from different countries, my time here has helped me see that we are similar in so many ways.”

“This experience both brought me out of my comfort zone and took me closer to home. A global view allows you to put local problems in context. To me, a global citizen is someone who is not afraid to see a little of themselves in everyone.”

Helping Children Think About Goodness and Caring

By Luigina Mortari

In a previous blog post in February, Luigina Mortari, Scientific Director of the Center of Educational and Didactic Research at the University of Verona, Italy, described the “Melarete” curriculum that she and her colleagues developed to expose elementary school students to concepts of ethics, virtue, and care. In this second post, we hear more about this program’s activities, theoretical basis, and student outcomes.

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“MelArete” is an educative program and research project aiming at enhancing and exploring children’s ethical thinking. Over the past eight years, we have worked with classes of Italian primary school students on two central topics: care and virtue. This program is rooted in two main theses:

• acting “good” means to take care of others and understand the impact of our actions (Noddings, 1984; Mayeroff, 1990; Tronto, 1993; Held, 2006; Mortari, 2015);

• taking care of others means to act virtuously (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics).

During the past year, the project involved six 4th grade classes of primary schoolers (106 nine and ten y.o. children) and eight kindergarten classes (57 five and six y.o. children).

For each of these classes, twelve sessions took place, during which different activities were promoted with the aim of encouraging children to reflect on age-appropriate ethical concepts and experiences. For example, the first meeting focused on the meaning of the words “good” and “care.” The researcher introduced the story of “Puc and Pec,” two jaguars, one of whom takes care of the other through acts of kindness. The narrative models practices of good friendship and care for others, stimulating the children to think about how to act with care as a fundamental building block of goodness.

In the primary school classrooms, the story was presented through pictures, while with the kindergarten students, it was animated with puppets. After the story was presented by the researcher, children were involved in a basic Socratic conversation, during which they were asked to answer to the following questions:

• The word “good” is a beautiful word. What comes to your mind when you hear this word?

• The word “care” is another beautiful word. What comes to your mind when you hear this word?

These types of Socratic conversations have a long history and follow the “maieutic method” to bring children’s ideas of ethical concepts into full view and are therefore useful as an educational and research tool. As in “Socratic Circles” (Copeland, 2005), open conversations are used to promote the exchange of ideas in order to develop critical abilities like listening, thinking, and discussing. Socratic conversations start from an eidetic question, that is, a question about the essence of a phenomenon. After having formulated the question, the researcher guides the discussion by listening to the participants’ ideas and encouraging them to further examine their thoughts, in order to individuate their points of clarity and shadow.

We can find this method in the Platonic dialogues (for example, in the Charmides, when Socrates tells his interlocutor, “Say what, in your opinion, temperance is” (159a); or in the Gorgias, we find Socrates asking his interlocutor to precisely indicate the object of the rhetoric: “Consider yourself questioned by both these men and myself, and give us your answer. What is this thing that you claim is the greatest good for humankind, a thing you claim to be a producer of?” (452d)). Analogously, in an elementary or kindergarten class, we encourage children to examine their ideas about concepts such as virtue, justice, respect, etc. The researcher acts as a facilitator, guiding the conversation in order to stimulate children to reflect deeply with their own experience as a starting point. Children’s contributions to the conversation were not evaluated as right or wrong; instead, the researcher expressed gratefulness for the children’s willingness to share their thoughts.

The discussions of good and care were audio-recorded and transcribed. In kindergarten, after the conversation, children were required to draw the moment of the story that most impacted them and then to explain to the researcher what they drew and what the word “good” meant to them (these definitions were transcribed by the researcher under each drawing). Collected data demonstrates the richness of children’s thinking. In the table below, we present a selection of children’s thoughts collected in primary school and kindergarten.

We hope that these responses show the various ways that students of a young age are already beginning to conceptualize their ideas of goodness and caring. These ideas should be explored further and nurtured in positive directions.

References

Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics (2nd ed.). Translated by T. Irwin. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1999.

Copeland, M. (2005). Socratic Circles. Portland, Maine: Stenhouse Publishers.

Held, V. (2006). The Ethics of Care. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mayeroff, M. (1990). On Caring. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.

Mortari, L. (2015). Filosofia della cura. Milano: Raffaello Cortina Editore.

Noddings, N. (1984). Caring. A Feminine Approach to Ethics and Moral Education. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Plato. Complete works. Edited by J. M. Cooper. Associate editor D. S. Hutchinson. Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997.

Tronto, J. (1993). Moral Boundaries. London: Routledge.

The Wisdom of John Bogle

Nowadays, when one thinks of professions, the role of “investor” does not leap to mind. Nor, for that matter, does banker or financial analyst or other roles that entail the accumulation, deployment, or investment of funds or other forms of capital.

The situation used to be different. Indeed, in the middle of the 20th century, the local banker or investment counselor was seen as an individual—indeed, usually the representative of a small bank in the community or an individual practitioner. And it was generally assumed that this investor’s primary obligations were to the individual over whose funds he or she had stewardship.

One of my heroes—and the hero of millions of investors worldwide—is John Bogle, founder of The Vanguard Group and creator of the first index mutual fund that was available to the general public. In his essay “Balancing Professional Values and Business Values,” Bogle cites the examples of Adam Smith, the 18th century polymath, and Benjamin Graham, the 20th century scholar of economics and investment, to remind us of the ethical precepts that should guide the thought and action of investors today. And he draws on an article about the professions, published a dozen years ago by Lee Shulman and me.

Writers rarely know whether their writings are noticed, and, if so, by whom and with what effect. I was deeply honored when John Bogle, vigorous at 89, sent me his fine essay, along with a personal note.