developmental lesson. Great! The students are not seeing this in every
class, so it may be working very well.
As long as the lesson is effective, as long as the students are engaged,
as long as learning is taking place, does it really matter what method a
teacher uses? In fact, when students are exposed to different methods of
instruction their school day becomes more varied and interesting. They
are also better prepared for the less-student-oriented type of instruction
they will experience in college.
Superintendent Clemens visited Mr. Chen’s school for his yearly visit
and together, they toured the school and looked into several classes. After
he spent about ten minutes in one social studies class, the superintendent
noted, “The teacher is lecturing. There is no student-oriented instruction
in this class.” Mr. Chen’s response was that this teacher’s students had a
90 percent passing rate on the required state examination. Mr. Clemens
thought a second and then said, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Putting the right people in charge of the right activities makes it easier
to let them fly. Ms. Niles-Perry’s publication advisor at her Los Angeles
school was Ms. Violet. Ms. Violet worked with the students who pro-
duced both the school newspaper and the school literary magazine. Be-
cause she knew instinctively how to work with students, there were never
any issues about anything that was published. She was the right person for
these activities and so was always free to fly. The importance of having
good publications advisors is further explored in chapter 10.
Mr. Thelen’s training as a teacher at a large inner-city high school
taught him a great deal about freeing professionals to do what they were
hired to do. In 1971, this school was one of the largest high schools in the
country, with nearly seven thousand students. Most were on a back-to-
back session in the main building; the incoming ninth-year students were
housed in the Annex three-quarters of a mile away, on a site that today is
part of Lincoln Center.
Principal White spent over forty years at the helm of this school. She
and her supervisory staff tried to hire talented teachers and then allow
them to use their creativity. Mr. Thelen remembers several occasions
when he asked Ms. White if he could try a certain method or topic and
she would always respond with “Go ahead. Give it a try. Let me know
how it goes.”
76 Chapter 6