This document summarizes a presentation about tensions teachers experience regarding literacy instruction in high-needs districts with high-stakes testing. It discusses how districts often mandate scripted programs to improve scores, leaving teachers feeling a lack of autonomy. The presentation examines how this course helped teachers process these tensions by discussing their experiences and questions in a supportive environment. It concludes by emphasizing the importance of understanding district history and culture, making space for teacher discernment, and pushing boundaries in constructive ways.

1. High Needs,
High Stakes
Teachers’ Tensions
Within Learning
Susanna M. Steeg, Ph.D.
George Fox University

2. An invitation…
“Thought flows in terms of stories – stories about
events, stories about people, and stories about
intentions and achievements. The best teachers
are the best story tellers. We learn in the form of
stories.” ~ Frank Smith

3. Why narrative?
“Researchers in education who gravitate towards
narrative inquiry are inherently interested in details,
complexities, contexts, and stories of human experiences
of learning and teaching. [Narrative] resists easy
answers…often reveals what has remained unsaid, what
has been unspeakable. It [shows] the importance of
context, reflexivity, difference, and multiple identities….
It compels us to care about people’s lives in all their
complexity and often moves us to action
(Schaafsma & Vinz, 2001, p. 1)”

4. Some background
 Me
 District
 This course experience

5. District snapshot
District State
Grade 3
2010 70.7% 82.8%
2009 63% 82.8%
Grade 6
2010 46.6% 76.6%
2009 52.7% 76.5%
Grade 10
2010 52.9% 71.3%
2009 38.9% 66.1%
*percentage of students at or above proficiency in reading, based on state
assessment

6. District Context
04-05 05-06 06-07
 White 36.2% 34.1% 33.1%
 Hispanic 29.7% 31.9% 33.3%
 American Indian 32.1% 32.4% 32.0%
District’s reaction to low scores:
Programs!
Expert vs. teachers
Direct instruction

7. The course
 Theoretical Foundations to Literacy
 Textbook: Lenses on Reading, Mandel &
Morrow
 Major assignments
 Initial Theory Paper
 Final Theory Paper

8. My questions
 What factors deserve consideration for teachers in
high-needs, high-stakes, heavily-programmed
districts regarding the structure, content, and
emphases of their learning?
 What did it mean to teach the learner in this
particular course? What tensions emerged?
 What happens when teachers experience
tension/cognitive dissonance between their
thinking and the “doing” mandated by their district?

9. “Knowledge about teaching develops in the
interaction between the individual’s hopes, ideals,
and desires on the one hand, and the feedback, or
‘backtalk’ from the other participants in…concrete
educational settings…” (Korthagen, 1996, p. 102).

10. Findings
“There’s no room to
breathe, here”

11. Where students were
“We have been given a program to follow “with
fidelity,” and even given “lesson maps” so we
know which instructional strategies to use when
and what examples to use. This way no teachers
will leave out any skills or strategies, or focus on
unnecessary ones. By taking away teacher choice,
our district hopes that all students will be
learning what the publisher (and a consultant
who created the lesson maps) has deemed
important for that particular grade level.”

12. “I am feeling a lot of tensions in teaching reading
especially from the district mandates, the reading
guidelines and non-negotiables that they (the district)
has strenuously mandated us to follow. Having XXXX as
“the chosen one” who knows everything we should and
better be doing to teach kids to read feels stifling and
takes the joy out of feeling ownership over my own
teaching. I really dislike the way our district is
mandating our way of teaching reading, and the
restrictions placed upon us with a heavy hand. Who
makes these rules and regulations and based up what? It
is frustrating to be treated like reading robots based
upon other’s beliefs. Have I or am I being brainwashed to
believe certain things about reading by administration
and their beliefs? It is something I am thinking about.”

13. “What I have discovered is that I have a large
quantity of defiance theory for the idea that a
person is only smart if they can prove themselves
through a specialized evaluation. (Maybe this
should go to the state; better yet they could take
their own endorsement assessments and prove
their worth as an instructor.) I am an effective
teacher because I can teach not because I can spurt
theories.”
“Right now I am glad we have direct instruction for
our reading program because I do not see all the
steps needed to be successful as a reader.”

14. “Most of the time, I feel wishy-washy when it comes to
what is best for our students. After spending a day or two
with our consultants, I feel myself having been “swayed”
to their position; then I have to present it to the staff, and
I hear the comments that three years ago I would have
been making: “Our students need be to exposed to grade-
level materials, a variety of genres, and building capacity
to read a whole book, not just an excerpt in a basal.”
Sometimes I feel like I finally get it…and then I realize I
don’t.”

15. “I am ready for the magic pill that cures all
problems. I know it won’t happen, but I still wish
for it. This course did not give me a clear cut
answer to my problem; instead it muddied the
waters more.”

16. Teachers’ attitudes/dispositions as shaped
by these forces
Within this course, teachers indicated a clear sense
of the “high-stakes” nature of literacy assessment
and its influence on district policy and practice.
 Passive resistance
 Lots of questions
 Why is it important to know this?
 This can’t change the way I teach…why should I
learn it?
 This won’t work for “our kids”
 Desire for easy answers or ONE right answer

17. My response
“OK, how can I take the
next step?”

18. Things I did
 Created pre/post opportunities
 Renegotiated rubrics/assignments
 Asked lots of questions
 Created time for them to talk, discern shared
ideas, identify tensions
 Response strategies
Something Something I Something Something I
that wonder I’ll share disagreed
surprised with
me

19. Factors deserving consideration in high
stakes districts
 History and culture
 District
 Schools
 Cohort
 Personal priorities—conversations that lead to shared
interests
 Students
 Teacher
 Coming to peace with not having it “right”
 Making space for teachers not to know
 Acknowledging the impossibility of big changes
 Pushing boundaries

20. “That which was from the beginning, which we
have heard, which we have seen with our eyes,
which we looked upon and have touched with our
hands, concerning the word of life…that which we
have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so
that you too may have fellowship with us.”
I John 1:3

21. Thank you!
Susanna M. Steeg
ssteeg@georgefox.edu

22. “I will no longer just adopt someone else’s way of
thinking as my own without much reflection and
inner thinking of my own beliefs. I know I need to
always continue to step outside my world to learn
more in order to grow and justify my beliefs. This
is one of the highest and best goals for those we
teach.”