Buzz Off

A friend of mine wrote me this morning and asked if he could use a quote from something I had said on a teacher leadership list to which we both belong for a column that he is writing for NSDC this month on instructional leadership. He had ask the listserv to share educational buzzwords or phrases:  Terms that started out with important meaning, but have been watered down due to overuse.

He also asked....What are those phrases in your schools or districts?!  What kinds of terms are pushed---to a fault?  What kinds of ideas have become so watered down that they are almost meaningless and impossible to accurately define?

He then shared a few that he had:

"Using Data to Drive Instruction" "Professional Learning Communities" "Rigor, Relevance and Relationships"

That is where he got my interest as I use those words and they have rich meaning for me.

Another friend on the list responded with:

The metaphor of data driving decision-making,
for example, is still an extremely powerful metaphor for teachers
adjusting their way of thinking about the roles of assessment in
learning.  "Paradigm shift" used to be popular, though it seems to be
waning these days, but it's also useful to many of us who needed to see
the big picture of foundational change.

I had to agree with my friend. For me, words define us and help others to immediately know where we stand and what we believe. When I meet teachers who are already using certain words in describing their practice, it helps me to get an idea of where they are on a developmental continuum. I am in my last semester of course work toward my PhD and taking an advance statistics course.

The prof has equated mastery of the content with learning a new language. The terms are very familiar and worn out to those who live and breathe assessment-- but for most of us in the class, they are relatively new terms. However, next year when the dissertation is done, they will have become a natural part of our vocabulary.

This is when I said what my friend resonated with and asked to quote:

I guess I see some educational buzz words as culture building. Just like school colors, team mascots, and other unifying symbols the terms we use to describe our practice help to build a culture of  educational thought and >values between those that use them. They can seem worn for those of us who have been using them for awhile. I guess that is the price of being well read.

I am reminded of seeing a 1st or 2nd grader delight in a joke that I have heard told over and over since I was a child. I find no humor in the joke having heard it so many, many times. But for them-- it is new and delightful. One of my preservice teachers yesterday responded to a male classmate that said... "I resemble that remark." She responded you mean "resent." The class explained the come back to her. It was amusing watching her make sense of the term since she was unfamiliar with it. But for many of us it would have gone in the buzz word column for sure.