I was absolutely devastated by a conversation that I overheard recently.  I was in a professional development room setting up for an Outrageous Teaching seminar that I would be delivering to 2nd year teachers the next day and I was eavesdropping on a meeting between a 1st year teacher and her support provider.  The teacher was frustrated, confused, and beginning to get emotional.  Here’s the gist of it: She said, “I have so many great ideas racing around in my head and so many things that I want to experiment with and try out in my class but my team has every day all mapped for each unit and they insist that I do exactly what they do.  They have way more experience than me and there is no way that I will be able to convince them to try these things with me so basically I’m stuck.”

Are you kidding me?  Is that what this has come to?  Here is an enthusiastic and creative new educator who wants to be experimental in the classroom and go out on the edge a little to dare for greatness and she is being held back by some misconstrued notion of what a team is all about.  I know that teams, PLC’s, etc are the current buzz in education and I’m definitely not saying they aren’t without merit, but the last time I checked Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, and Kevin Durant aren’t exactly taking the same shots and playing the same way as their teammates do.  All three are a part of highly functioning teams that work well together but yet don’t stifle the individual creativity of their stars.  I’ve learned plenty from the members of my subject area team and, in fact, I just learned a new addition to review games from a team member that I will begin to use immediately.  At the same time, just because they don’t want to participate in some of my wilder and crazier lesson ideas I will NEVER let that stop me from doing just exactly what I think is right for my students and my style of teaching.  By the way, I will also NEVER insist that my team members do it my way if it doesn’t fit their style.

One size fits all lesson plans are a recipe for mediocrity at best.  Sure, maybe taking a new teacher and insisting that they use the “team lesson” will help bring struggling and low-performing teachers up to the middle, but it will also take the potential superstars and drag them back to the middle.  New teachers are an incredible resource of fresh ideas, new energy, and creativity and the fact that their willingness to step outside of the box is being limited makes me incredibly sad.  One of the greatest rewards of teaching is being able to develop an individual style and voice that best fits your unique personality and the unique strengths and gifts that you bring to a classroom.  Doing anything less is not only a disservice to yourself but also a disservice to your students because you will never reach your full potential unless you fully develop and capitalize on all of those things that are special about YOU.

I wish I could tell that new teacher to run with her new ideas and try her experiments and dust herself off when some of them inevitably fail.  I would tell her to not let anyone stop her from becoming a superstar in the classroom.  Don’t let anyone drag you back to the middle of the pack of mediocrity and sameness.  Leave the cloning to science fiction…not the classroom.