Guiding professionals
Michigan Professor of the Year: “I teach well because it’s the right thing to do.”
By Barbara Sutherland Chovanec
It’s 4 p.m. Monday afternoon, and chipper 60-something Norma Bailey bounces around her classroom, greeting students as they get settled in for a three-hour class.
A few minutes later Bailey is all business, talking about professionalism while returning papers she knows could have been better.
“I think in many ways you’re still thinking of yourselves as students and not professionals,” she tells the future teachers. “Now is the time to start developing that professional attitude.”
She asks them to revise their papers, this time paying close attention to grammar and punctuation.
“It’s OK that this isn’t easy for you, but it would be wrong if you didn’t take it seriously and make an effort to be a professional,” she says. “It’s critical that you have good communication skills for you to be the excellent teacher you want to be.”
Professionalism is a key value Bailey stresses to all her students enrolled in the middle level teaching program. But she doesn’t have to remind them often – she beams when talking about the quality of her students.
“All of these kids have made a decision to add the middle level minor as a third minor on top of their major and minor and on top of their elementary or secondary education program. They’re wonderful young people,” she says. “Think about their commitment.”
Bailey’s students describe her as warm, welcoming, tough, and inspiring.
“Even though I come into this class really tired, I always feel like I’ve learned something,” says Katherine Heiss of Clinton Township. “She treats us as people instead of just students.”
“On the first day of class, she had everybody’s name down pat,” says Aaron Shelle of Lansing. “I felt like I had walked into a community.”
Shelle commutes every day, juggling responsibilities of marriage and a new baby, so it’s important that his classes are worth the effort.
“She walks the walk, not just gives lip service,” he says. “Every time I leave the class I’m re-energized.”
Building a community
Bailey was named 2007 Michigan Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. She’s proud of the honor, though a little embarrassed by all the attention.
“I just want to teach,” Bailey says. “I don’t do this for the recognition. I teach well because it’s the right thing to do.
“I tell my students, ‘When you teach a lesson, nobody’s going to be sitting there grading it every day. You’ve got to say to yourself: Did this work, didn’t it work, and what might I do differently?’”
Bailey talks to her students about what to expect in the classroom, and she models teaching techniques and styles she wants the students to use when they’re middle school teachers.
Every class period begins with what Bailey calls “Good news, bad news, any news” – an adult version of show-and-tell for the students to talk about anything going on in their lives. She says this is important for her students to know each other as colleagues.
“We’re all in this together,” she says. “We’re all learners. There’s no competition in my classroom. It’s about, ‘Let’s help each other become the best teachers possible, because that’s what we all want.’ So you have to havethem caring about each other before they can do that.”
Bailey taught middle school students for 20 years in Plainwell, Michigan. She planned on teaching high school math, but she was offered a middle school job and took it – and then fell in love with the middle school age group. In 1996 Bailey came to CMU to inspire others about teaching this special age of students.
“They’re not children. They’re not jaded like some high schoolers. They’re able to be communicated with, and yet they’re incredibly spontaneous,” Bailey says. “I know how obnoxious they can be. They can be incredibly bad when not taught well. But when people teach them well, they’re incredible. They’ll laugh, they’ll cry, they’re real, and I love that realness.
“Then add to that, it is the most crucial time in the schooling experience. It is the time when they’re making an unconscious decision about, ‘Is learning important? Am I a learner?’
“So our job is to capture them with engaging, meaningful curriculum that’s important. If you think about the information age, why would kids have to memorize the presidents of the United States? They can go to a computer and have it in 15 seconds. So their attitude is, ‘Don’t give me that garbage – get me important stuff.’ So they want to talk about cloning or why people are treated unjustly in our society. If we tap that, it’s absolutely phenomenal.”
Positive teaching
Wearing her signature tennis shoes with a pen tucked behind her right ear, Bailey is quick to share a laugh or word of encouragement with her students. She seems to be always up – always positive. She describes herself as an optimistic visionary.
“I’ve been blessed with a lot of energy,” she says. “I have kind of a natural optimism about life. It’s a gift.
“I am passionate about teaching. I think it’s the most important work that we do, after parenting, and I want my students to feel the same way. And if I’m not up, they can’t be up.”
Outside of class, she takes students to conferences for professional development. And she helped them form a group for future middle school teachers: the Collegiate Middle Level Association at CMU. The 50-member group meets every other week to discuss professional teaching issues.
“You can’t see teaching as just in your classroom,” Bailey says. “For me it’s beyond that, because I’m trying to help my students find all aspects of what it means to be a professional. So part of it is professional development.
“I need to train and prepare people who are willing to be leaders, because that’s what professionals do, too. They don’t just teach well in their own classroom, they go beyond that. I’m preparing the future leaders of middle level education. In their 30s and 40s, they’re going to be the ones.”
Bailey gives star pins to her students at the end of their middle level program.
“One of the things they hear from me throughout the whole program is, ‘Our vision is like the stars, we may never reach them, but they guide us in our journey.’ Well, I want them to have that vision of why they’re teaching, so the pin is a lasting reminder to hold onto that vision,” Bailey says. “Because it’s not easy out there to hold onto your vision in education. What we have always done tends to drive us.
“But I know that things can happen. I know there are places that are changing and can make it better for kids.”
And Bailey is influencing the future, guiding one classroom at a time. •
