Accountability

“You have to turn in your lesson plans on Monday for the whole week.”

That was the rule, the expectation from the high school office.

So, I dutifully subscribed to the practice in my first year.

I created a grid of daily assignments, practices, book pages, movie clips, questions to ask for each of the classes for which I was to prepare. Each Monday morning these lesson plans were placed in the principal’s mail cubicle. My job complete, I went to teach.

Two semesters came and went. One summer day, after the first year was complete, I was in the high school office. Something caught my attention. Out of the corner of my eye, I spied what seemed to be a stack of papers I had seen before.

Upon closer inspection, I looked over the office desk to see my lesson plans, along with others, in a huge stack on the floor. It was obvious from their arrangement and the latent dust around the pile that the papers had been setting there, unmoved, for some time.

“Wait a minute!” I exclaimed in my own mind, “I turned in this work, but no one looked at it?!”

I know what you’re thinking. “You were made to be accountable. That is enough.”

But that’s not what I was thinking! “If you’re not going to look at my work, I’ll find a new work look.”

And that’s exactly what I did.

From that point on, I turned in the same lesson plans year after year.

No one noticed.

The snapshot of that moment still lingers in my collective memory as one of the greatest lessons I ever learned about accountability:

“We do what’s inspected, not what’s expected.”

Here is an example of what I learned.

If I assign reading for students, I better come up with questions for student response. And I better make sure that students respond in some verbal or visual way to show me their thinking. And I better read or watch those responses. And I better make comments on the student’s work. And I better accept feedback from students. And I better establish rapport within the class so that my students know their work matters to me.

And this lesson doesn’t just relate to teachers. Here are a few principles that helped me.

1. Someone has to be in charge. Being in charge, brings with it a charge, a responsibility. If I have expectations of others, I better follow through to make sure the work is done.
2. There is a job to do. If I have been hired to do something, I better do it. And I should decide with my boss how it is best to get that job done.
3. Deadlines are important. None of us works well with “Someday I need to ___.” All of education – all of life – is a matter of getting work in on time.
4. Response to the work is important. If someone does a job and I don’t respond to the job, I am saying to the person who did the job, “You don’t matter too much to me.”
5. Working together is better than working alone. Yes, I need time to think, research, create, and write. But having someone looking over my shoulder, for both our goods, is good for us both.

So, you know what I did after that first-year teaching at that school? Yes, I turned in the same lesson plans over the coming years. But I added to those plans every year, in fact, every week, sometimes every day. I would scribble new approaches, new content on those plans. I would Xerox those pages for the office, but they continued to be my guide in class.

I still write lesson plans as a professor. And I’m a better teacher for it.

I have the honor of teaching and bear the load of responsibility with care, nurturing young minds to own their beliefs through their words. I respect my students, the lives they live, the dedication they bring to their studies, and the whole educational enterprise to which we give ourselves. An occasional writing by Dr. Mark Eckel

Picture credits: Luke Renoe, Snappy Goat