The fascinating op-ed, How to Improve Teacher Quality? Treat Teachers as Individuals, offers a compelling retrofit of the seemingly age-old teacher quality debate. Teachers, Rick Hess and his co-authors say, should be treated as individuals with particular strengths and gifts. The current way that the job of teaching is structured does not just ignore this important and sensible recommendation, but it actually makes it impossible to put into effect. Teachers do many jobs rolled into one in a work environment that does not facilitate communication or collaboration between colleagues. Instead of trying to make the wonderfully human teacher fit the impossible job description, let’s change the job description.

NCTAF has championed for years, through research and action projects, the idea that stand-and-deliver teaching requires the kind of heroism that no one individual possesses. The education workforce needs to be redesigned because the education system itself needs to be organized differently, so that schools can become fluid learning organizations. Hess et al effectively make this case, enjoining educators to look at new ways of working together. This article adds to the growing conversation about how to reinvent teaching!