“Everything will be alright in the end, so if it is not alright, it is not the end.”
— Deborah Moggach, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Teaching is a weird profession.

It is one of the few professions where the more experience you accumulate, the more likely somebody is to treat that experience as an obstacle that needs to be overcome.

You would think that after teaching for 15 years—and earning a Level 3, 4, or 5 evaluation along the way—you might receive a little professional deference. Not immunity from criticism. Not permission to stop growing. Just the basic presumption that you probably know something about children, instruction, and the complicated choreography required to keep a classroom moving.

Not so much.

Administrators with an iota of your classroom experience and none of your documented success will still speak to you like it is your first day. They will discount what you know, explain your own students to you, and attribute your successes to whichever district initiative happens to be featured in this month’s PowerPoint.

Personally, I think some of this is connected to the fact that teaching remains a profession dominated by women. There is some baked-in misogyny at play—the old “the broads can’t get it right, so somebody needs to explain it to them” mentality wearing a lanyard and carrying a clipboard.

I’ll leave that alone for now. People like Julian Vasquez Heilig and Diane Ravitch have explored the subject more thoroughly than I ever could. But if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and schedules a mandatory professional-development session to explain quacking to ducks, it is probably a duck.

Some of what gets heaped on teachers—and yes, I believe some of it qualifies as abuse—comes from leadership’s continued attachment to outdated management techniques.

You cannot browbeat people into excellence. You have to lead them. Effective leadership requires clarity, consistency, expertise, and authentic relationships.

Try the opposite approach at home. The next time you disagree with your teenager, pull out the old “because I said so” card. Let me know how that works out for you.

Ironically, the people responsible for preparing children for the future remain among those most committed to preserving leadership models from the past. Figure that one out.

A Voice in the Ear

This year, Metro Nashville Public Schools leadership has introduced a new approach to teacher improvement.

According to district spokesperson Sean Braisted:

“MNPS has partnered with CT3 Education to provide coaching and professional development for teachers and school leaders, particularly in schools receiving additional academic support, as part of a menu of options for improving academic outcomes.”

CT3 Education was founded by Dr. Kristyn Klei Borrero and Lee Canter. Both have classroom experience, though both eventually moved beyond the classroom and into education entrepreneurship and professional development. Both possess impressive résumés.

Canter is best known for Assertive Discipline, a classroom-management framework built around clearly stated expectations, consistent consequences, positive reinforcement, and a teacher’s authority to maintain an orderly classroom. The model became enormously influential. It also attracted criticism from educators who questioned its behaviorist roots and warned that rigid implementation could prioritize compliance over student agency.

Borrero no longer serves as CT3’s chief executive. That role is now held by Dr. Joy Treadwell.

Treadwell spent six years teaching secondary education, including time in a Title I district with a 99-percent poverty rate, before moving into administration. She served as an assistant principal, principal, and chief academic officer. She joined CT3 around 2016 and moved through the organization as a managing associate, program manager, and chief program officer. CT3 named her interim CEO in 2024, and she is now listed as the organization’s chief executive officer.

Any of that sound familiar?

At the center of CT3’s work is something called Real Time Teacher Coaching. Under the model, a teacher wears a discreet earpiece while a trained coach observes the lesson and offers immediate prompts. Instead of waiting until after class to say, “You might have checked for understanding there,” the coach can whisper into the teacher’s ear and suggest the check while the students are still sitting in front of them.

The stated goal is to strengthen instruction and classroom culture by allowing teachers to adjust in the moment. CT3 also trains school-based coaches and administrators to use the model so that schools can eventually continue the practice without relying on an outside coach. MNPS has purchased the equipment necessary for schools to carry out the coaching.

On paper, there are circumstances where this could be useful. A novice teacher struggling to deliver clear directions might benefit from a short reminder. A teacher experimenting with a new strategy might appreciate a coach pointing out a missed opportunity.

Immediate feedback can be powerful. That is why athletic coaches give it, musicians receive it, and surgeons sometimes participate in carefully structured real-time mentoring.

But “it could be useful” is not the same as “it will be useful.”

The difference lies in the details—and in whether the teacher wearing the earpiece is treated as a professional partner or a remotely controlled employee.

Questions Before the Headset Goes On

Before this becomes another district initiative that everyone is expected to applaud, several questions deserve public answers:

• Does the teacher help choose and clearly understand the coaching target?
• Is participation genuinely developmental, or is it effectively mandatory?
• Are prompts brief, specific, and limited in number?
• Is coaching kept separate from formal evaluation and discipline?
• Does every session include preparation beforehand and reflection afterward?
• Is success measured through student learning or merely teacher compliance?
• Can a teacher decline a prompt that does not fit what is happening in the classroom?
• Is the ultimate purpose to build independence from the coach—or continued dependence on one?

There is also the matter of who earns the right to be the voice in a teacher’s ear. What qualifications must a coach possess—not merely in general pedagogy, but in the subject, grade level, student population, and curriculum being taught? And who decides which instructional strategy the teacher is expected to pursue: the classroom teacher, the coach, the principal, CT3, or somebody at central office? A headset does not magically confer expertise. Before a coach directs instruction in real time, teachers and the public deserve to know who selected that person, what experience supports the advice, and who has final say when the coach’s strategy conflicts with the teacher’s professional judgment.

Those are not small matters.

Teaching already requires a person to monitor content, student understanding, behavior, timing, safety, individual needs, and the emotional temperature of the room—often simultaneously. Now add another adult’s voice directly into one ear.

Research on “bug-in-ear” coaching—not CT3’s complete proprietary program specifically—suggests that immediate feedback can improve certain observable teacher behaviors. Broader research on teacher coaching has also found meaningful average improvements in instruction, along with smaller positive effects on student achievement.

That deserves acknowledgment.

But so does the research warning that in-ear coaching can increase cognitive load by forcing the teacher to divide attention between the coach and the students. The more complicated the lesson, the more disruptive that divided attention can become. A prompt delivered at the wrong moment may not improve instruction; it may interfere with it.

Getting good at something also requires making mistakes. We try something. It fails. We think about why it failed. We adjust. Through that cycle, we build judgment.

If a voice immediately rescues teachers from every misstep, when do they develop the ability to diagnose and respond on their own? If the coaching is continuous, evaluative, or imposed without trust, the system risks becoming someone remotely directing a teacher’s performance instead of helping that teacher strengthen professional judgment.

There is a profound difference between “Try asking a follow-up question here” and “Teach the lesson the way I tell you to teach it.”

The technology cannot decide which version schools create. Leadership culture will decide that.

And MNPS does not exactly have an overflowing reservoir of teacher trust from which to draw.

The Mysterious Impact School

During the 2025–26 school year, MNPS used CT3 in Schools of Innovation and in what the district calls “Impact Schools.” Teachers participated as part of the instructional support and professional development offered at those schools, with opportunities determined by school leadership.

Like me, you may be wondering what an “Impact School” is.

According to Braisted:

“‘Impact Schools’ is an MNPS term for schools receiving additional, targeted district resources and support based on academic performance and student needs. It is not a state accountability designation and is not synonymous with a state-designated intervention school.”

That tells us what an Impact School is in broad language. It does not tell us how a school becomes one. I have been unable to find a current public MNPS document containing a formula, cutoff score, complete rubric, or annual list.

Some might consider that a problem.

How do board members provide oversight if they do not know the parameters? How do parents understand what the designation says about their school? How do teachers know whether additional “support” is tied to a documented need or simply to a central-office judgment?

It also becomes difficult to evaluate the intervention itself.

If MNPS later announces that Impact Schools improved, we should know which schools were included, when they entered the group, what supports they received, how much those supports cost, and what outcomes were used to define success. Otherwise, “Impact School” becomes a label flexible enough to support whatever story leadership wants to tell.

Transparency is the foundation of accountability, and it should apply to the adults designing interventions just as surely as it applies to the teachers expected to implement them.

I remain cautious about claims that CT3’s full program produces broad and lasting gains in student achievement. Much of the readily available evidence consists of company materials, implementation stories, and relatively small studies of related coaching techniques. I have not located a strong independent randomized evaluation that isolates CT3’s complete proprietary model from other reforms happening at the same time.

That does not prove the program does not work. It means the claims should remain proportional to the evidence.

You know what has consistently been shown to matter? Treating employees with respect and dignity. Listening to experienced teachers. Providing planning time, manageable workloads, strong curriculum, functional systems, and leadership grounded in trust. Most of that costs less than another outside program.

Applause at the Board Meeting

The MNPS board met this week, and I watched it again so you would not have to.

Roughly three-quarters of the meeting seemed devoted to applauding Dr. Battle and her team for hosting a College and Career Fair.

Apparently, these events have become extraordinarily difficult to organize. The fact that MNPS managed to host one was treated like the district had split the atom, landed on the moon, and cured cancer before lunch.

Nobody seemed particularly interested in noting that a college fair held at the end of September may arrive two months late for a process governed by deadlines.

Yes, many applications are not due until January. That does not mean January is when the process begins. Fly-in visits, honors programs, competitive majors, and institutional aid frequently operate on earlier timelines. Students who begin exploring options after a late-September fair may have missed opportunities they never knew existed.

My daughter graduates this year. She has been working on applications since August 1.

Some colleges will pay to fly prospective students to campus, but requests for many of those visits are due in early summer. Oops. Too late for us. The same principle applies to scholarships and grants. Last I checked, most MNPS students resemble mine in at least one respect: they need every available dollar.

That raises an uncomfortable question: Who benefits most from a late college fair—the students or the local institutions still trying to fill their recruitment pipelines?

And with everything else currently transpiring across the district, is extended self-congratulation over one fair really where the board’s attention belongs?

Recognize the staff who did the work. Thank the colleges that participated. Celebrate the students who attended.

Then get back to oversight.

And the Finalists Are…

Ironically, the same week brought news that MNPS Director Dr. Adrienne Battle had been named a finalist for the prestigious Green-Garner Award.

Presented annually by the Council of the Great City Schools, the Green-Garner Award recognizes urban education leaders for contributions to student achievement, leadership, governance, and public confidence in their districts. The award alternates between recognizing a superintendent and a school board member. This year is the superintendents’ turn.

The award honors Richard R. Green and Edward Garner. A panel of current and former urban superintendents and board members selects the finalists. The winner will be announced during the Council’s October conference.

Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell offered enthusiastic praise:

“This national recognition of Dr. Battle is also recognition of the remarkable progress happening throughout Nashville’s public schools. Strong public schools are fundamental to a strong city, and Dr. Battle has brought a consistent focus on students, educators and the conditions that allow them to succeed. Nashville should be proud of what our students and schools have accomplished, and I congratulate Dr. Battle on this tremendous honor.”

Interesting.

And congratulations to Dr. Battle.

The four finalists for the 2026 Green-Garner Award are:

• Dr. Fabi Bagula — Superintendent, San Diego Unified School District
• Dr. Adrienne Battle — Superintendent, Metro Nashville Public Schools
• Dr. Alex Marrero — Superintendent, Denver Public Schools
• Dr. Mark Sullivan — Superintendent, Birmingham City Schools

Now for the caveat.

The nominee’s district must belong to the Council of the Great City Schools. The Council has 81 member districts, including MNPS. Metro budgets list the Council among organizations covered by district dues, but do not publicly isolate its individual share.

That does not mean the award lacks value. The finalists lead large, complicated urban systems, and nobody should pretend those jobs are easy.

But language matters.

When the Council calls the Green-Garner Award the nation’s highest honor in urban education leadership, the more precise description would be:

The Council of the Great City Schools’ highest honor for a leader from one of its member districts.

That is still an honor. It is also useful context.

Worthy of noting.

Who Gets Coached, and Who Gets Celebrated?

Put the week’s stories next to one another and an unmistakable pattern emerges.

Teachers in selected schools receive voices in their ears telling them how to improve in real time. The public receives an undefined district label—Impact Schools—and is expected to trust that the proper schools and interventions have been selected. Board members devote considerable time to celebrating a college fair whose timing deserves more scrutiny. District leadership receives national recognition from an organization to which the district belongs and pays dues.

Maybe every piece is defensible on its own.

Maybe CT3 will help some teachers. Maybe the Impact School designation directs resources where they are genuinely needed. Maybe the college fair reached students who otherwise would not have encountered those institutions. Maybe Dr. Battle deserves the Green-Garner Award.

All of those things can be true.

But it is also fair to ask why scrutiny seems to flow downward while praise flows upward.

Teachers are observed, prompted, measured, and corrected. Leadership is thanked, applauded, nominated, and celebrated.

When teachers question the latest initiative, they are too often described as resistant to change. When the district declines to publish clear criteria, we are asked to trust the process. When a board meeting spends more energy on congratulations than examination, the public is expected to confuse ceremony with governance.

That imbalance is the issue.

Teachers do not oppose coaching. Most good teachers are relentless self-critics. They revise lessons in the car on the way home, replay conversations while making dinner, and wake up at three in the morning thinking about the student they could not reach.

What they oppose is coaching without consent, support without capacity, accountability without transparency, and expertise that always seems to reside somewhere outside the classroom.

If MNPS wants Real Time Teacher Coaching to succeed, the district should begin by treating teachers as partners in its design. Publish the Impact School criteria. Clearly separate coaching from evaluation. Share the contract, cost, expected outcomes, and independent evidence. Establish a process for teacher feedback—including criticism that does not carry professional consequences. Measure whether the approach builds confidence and independence, not merely compliance.

Most importantly, listen.

Not through an earpiece. Not through a survey designed to validate a decision already made. Listen directly to the people doing the work.

Because the central problem in public education has never been that teachers cannot hear central office.

Central office has always had a microphone.

The question is whether it is finally willing to take out its own earpiece and hear teachers.

Until then, I suppose we keep going.

After all, everything will be alright in the end.

And if it is not alright, it is not the end.

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Categories: Education