Teacher as Surgeon

Thoughts on Educating

Please contact the author, Jennifer Morrison (j.morrison@artofeducating.com), with questions, comments, or requests to reproduce this material.

2/20/2008 - Teacher as Surgeon

While working with the other CTQ consultants on our national performance pay report, we often asked what profession teaching is most like. We needed a standard of comparison to both think about the work and consider fair compensation. The work of teaching is difficult to pin down, in part because everyone talking or thinking about it has gone to school and experienced what they consider to be good teachers and bad teachers. That makes everyone you talk to an expert about your job. But the public's experience is limited; when people tell me stories about their teachers, they generally share anecdotes about discipline or remembered activities. They never witnessed the unseen design work of teaching or the intangible thinking, professional demeanor, or vision and approach to people and the classroom, the things that truly make a great educator. This public ownership of the profession is also a little dangerous. People with little insight into the work of teaching or experience from the front of the classroom, like many politicians and policy makers, feel fine laying down mandates and requirements that more often than not inhibit good work.

When I read Atul Gawande's first book, Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science, almost every line spoke to me about my own work in schools. After all, teachers are a kind of surgeon to students' minds and, like medicine, our work is complicated and imperfect, equal parts art, science, and intuition. Like surgeons, in these days of misunderstood data, we are expected to produce perfect results and blamed when things go wrong, even when it is obvious that there are many variables outside our control. Comparisons continued with Gawande's second book, Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance, in which he outlines "three core requirements for success in medicine - or in any endeavor that involves risk and responsibility." Education definitely involves risk and responsibility and Gawande's three requirements - diligence, doing right, and ingenuity - speak clearly to our work in schools.

One of his main points in Better is that greater strides in medical care and results will be made in improving performance than can be made with new technologies, technologies, and pharmaceuticals combined. I agree, and again say the situation is similar in my profession. Research is very clear that the main factor impacting a student's learning is the teacher, all 3.3 million of us. A great textbook doesn't make for great learning. Neither does an amazing workbook or district standards or a Smartboard or even a good lesson plan. These are tools. What makes great learning is a diligent, ingenious teacher focused on doing right for her students. Our best bet for improving the experience of students in schools is to focus on helping teachers improve their performance. How to do that effectively is the question.

Gawande, A. (2007). Better: A surgeon's notes on performance. New York: Picador.
Gawande, A. (2003). Complications: A surgeon's notes on an imperfect science. New York: Picador.

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