When Passion Meets Policy: An Amphi Teacher's Story of Success Against the System
One big reason the Amphi school district has lost half of its students over the last 20 years.
Editorial By Sean Taylor
During the COVID-19 lockdown, I watched my students
disappear behind screens. The electronic workbooks went unopened. The recorded
lessons went unwatched. I was creating content nobody consumed, managing a
classroom that had ceased to exist in any meaningful way. So I stopped
following the script.
Instead, I opened each Zoom session with art. I had bought
pastels for every child sheltering at home. We watched simple YouTube tutorials
together—fifteen minutes of color, value, and saturation. We sang songs with
lyrics on the screen. We did readers theater, bringing stories to life through
gesture and movement, embracing total physical response because I knew
something administrators didn't want to hear: we were going to fail the
assessments, and not because we weren't learning.
The Unexpected Results
When students returned to half-empty classrooms, spread six
feet apart in a world that had broken apart, I made a choice. The goal wasn't
test scores—those had already tanked to 20-30% proficiency. The goal was to
rebuild what we'd lost: love and passion for learning.
I broke the rules. I set aside the mandated EdTech software
and tutorial programs. I brought out Montessori math materials, stamp games,
and Danish counting frames. We played games with dice. We painted constantly.
We sang daily. We read Esperanza Rising and Harry Potter cover to
cover—no worksheets, no comprehension packets, just Socratic seminars and the
joy of losing yourself in a story.
When we did write, it was reflection paired with art. We had
an artist in residence almost every month. We did handicraft, spending more
time on finished, formative work than on filling in blanks.
Everyone expected terrible test results. I expected terrible
test results.
My class scored 60% passing on both reading and math on the
Arizona assessment. The school average was 20-30%.
The Two-Sigma Problem
I teach students who are, on average, two standard
deviations below grade level. Educational researcher Benjamin Bloom identified
the "two-sigma problem" decades ago: students receiving one-on-one
tutoring perform two standard deviations better than students in conventional
classrooms. The question was always how to achieve those results at scale.
I had found my answer: art, music, physical learning,
hands-on experiences. Finnish handicraft. Lyrics that make you move. Dancing.
Acting out what you read. Total immersion in stories that matter.
The next year, my results climbed to nearly 70% proficiency.
When Success Becomes Suspect
Then our principal retired. Teachers weren't involved in
hiring the replacement—that decision was made at the district level. Within
weeks, the new principal began observing my classroom repeatedly.
Then came the letter of reprimand.
I was not teaching the workbooks. I was not using the
mandated EdTech curriculum. My contract stated I would teach the district
curriculum, and I was in violation.
I explained what I'd learned about the two-sigma problem. I
shared my results. I talked about what students truly needed after the trauma
of COVID.
It fell on deaf ears. I was told plainly: teach the
curriculum or be fired.
I was shocked. My class had outperformed every metric in the
district for 20 years. When schools in our district were failing to make
Adequate Yearly Progress and faced closure under No Child Left Behind, the
district sent teachers to observe my reading boot camp RTI strategies. They
would leave asking, "Does he really do all that handicraft? Does he really
sing all those songs?" And the answer was always yes.
As a male teacher with strong classroom management, a
master's degree in special education, and a track record of success with
struggling students, I sometimes had two-thirds of all special education
students in my class. They thrived.
The Third Year: When Data Doesn't Matter
In my third year under the new principal, after reprimands
and warnings, 67% of my fourth-grade class passed reading and nearly 70% passed
math. This included all special education students and English language
learners—not just the subset the state counts.
The fifth-grade class above me—after extra AVID training,
after two years with a school improvement specialist, after hiring a second
administrator and four teachers dedicated to RTI services—scored 17% in reading
and 18% in math.
I tried to share what I was seeing. I tried to explain why
my approach was working when nothing else was. But instead of listening,
administrators used the Danielson Framework for teacher evaluation to drop my
rating from level 4 to level 2.
They were going to put me on a corrective action plan. They
were going to micromanage me, require weekly lesson plans, and systematically
eliminate everything that was working: the games, songs, music, painting, art,
readers theater, puppet shows, even chess.
They wanted fidelity—to the curriculum, to the district
mandates, to AVID, to the EdTech programs. They wanted compliance, not results.
Meanwhile, our A-rated school had dropped. The district was
spending approximately $200,000 on additional administration, EdTech, RTL/MTSS teaching staff, and AVID
training. But the teacher getting actual results with art, music, theater, and
games? They didn't want to hear it. They wouldn't read my emails. They refused
my advice.
Then teachers started asking if I had helped my students
cheat.
They went to our IT person who proctors all computer-based
testing and asked if I was coaching answers. She told them plainly: "No. I
proctor his tests in person. These assessments give every student different
questions. There's no way he could cheat his way to these results. He's getting
them because he's creating passion and love of learning."
What This Means for Education
This is what happens when we stop trusting teachers. When we
value compliance over creativity. When we look for innovation everywhere except
in our own classrooms where it's already happening.
We're buying snake oil while silencing the practitioners who
are actually succeeding. We're blaming teachers who produce results because
their methods don't match our mandates. We're creating systems that punish
innovation and reward conformity.
The teachers who could help all students thrive—who
understand that school is not about test scores but about finding passion,
curiosity, and love of learning—are being shut down. We're not using them as
sources of wisdom. We're not learning from their classrooms. We're threatening
them with termination.
The Question We Should Be Asking
When a teacher consistently outperforms district averages by
40-50 percentage points, especially with the most challenging students, we
should be asking: "What can we learn?" Instead, we're asking:
"How can we make them stop?"
That's not school improvement. That's institutional
self-sabotage.
Our students—especially after COVID, especially those
furthest behind—don't need more worksheets, more software, more
standardization. They need what they've always needed: teachers who see them,
experiences that ignite curiosity, and classrooms where learning feels like joy
rather than compliance.
They need passion. They need love. They need to know that
education is about becoming fully human, not about filling in bubbles.
And teachers like me? We need administrators who trust us,
systems that learn from success rather than punish it, and the freedom to do
what we know works—even when it doesn't match the manual.
Especially when it doesn't match the manual.
Sean Taylor is a fourth-grade teacher with over 20 years
of classroom experience and a master's degree in special education. This
narrative is based on his experiences teaching in Arizona.
On Misplaced Priorities:
"When we demand fidelity to curriculum but not fidelity
to childhood, we've forgotten what we're actually here to do."
"The system celebrated my compliance for years while my
students failed. The moment I achieved results by breaking the rules, I became
the problem."
"We're spending $200,000 on programs that produce 17%
proficiency while threatening to fire the teacher achieving 70%. That's not
school improvement—that's institutional insanity."
"They sent teachers to learn from me when schools were
failing AYP. They sent district policy lawyers after me when my methods challenged their
investments."
On Trust and Control:
"Fidelity to curriculum is just another word for 'we
don't trust you to think.'"
"When administrators trust EdTech companies more than
the teachers in their buildings, children lose."
"They wanted my obedience more than they wanted my
students' success. That should terrify every parent."
"You can have teacher compliance or student growth.
Increasingly, our system has chosen compliance."
On What Students Actually Need:
"A child two years behind grade level doesn't need more
worksheets. They need a reason to believe school is for them."
"We've replaced learning with documentation, teaching
with data entry, and passion with compliance—and we wonder why students are
disengaged."
"Fidelity to a workbook written by someone who's never
met your students is not fidelity to education. It's fidelity to a
product."
"My students needed art, music, movement, and stories
after COVID. The district needed me to open the workbook. One of these was
educational malpractice."
On the Absurdity of the Situation:
"I outperformed the district average by 50 percentage
points and got a letter of reprimand. Teachers following the curriculum got
professional development. Tell me what we're actually incentivizing here."
"When your best teacher's success becomes your biggest
management problem, your system is broken beyond repair."
"They asked the IT person if I was cheating because my
results were 'too good.' Excellence had become suspicious. Mediocrity had
become expected."
"I taught the same way for 20 years. I was a master
teacher until my results made their programs look bad. Then I became a problem
to solve."
On Testing and Real Learning:
"Test scores measure compliance with testing, not love
of learning. We've confused the two, and it's killing education."
"My students could tell you about Esperanza's journey,
paint the Valley of California, discuss immigration with nuance, and yes—they
could also pass the test. But only one of those mattered to the district."
"When we teach to the test, we get test-takers. When we
teach to the child, we get learners. These are not the same thing."
On Innovation vs. Snake Oil:
"We're innovating everywhere except where innovation is
actually happening—in classrooms where children are thriving."
"The district spent hundreds of thousands on external
'solutions' while threatening to fire their internal solution. That's not
incompetence. That's ideology."
"Every teacher knows which classrooms are magic and
which are management. But we only reward the ones that look good on
paper."
"Snake oil sells because it promises transformation
without transformation—results without changing how power works. Real
innovation threatens the people in charge."
On the Two-Sigma Problem:
"Benjamin Bloom showed us that one-on-one tutoring
creates two-sigma gains. I showed them that art, music, and handicraft could
too. They chose the workbook."
"The two-sigma problem isn't a mystery. We know what
works: relationship, hands-on learning, immersion, passion. We just refuse to
fund it, trust it, or allow it."
"I solved a 40-year-old problem in educational
research. My reward was a corrective action plan."
On Bureaucracy and Children:
"Somewhere between standards documents and fidelity
mandates, we forgot that education happens between a teacher and a child, not
between a district and a vendor."
"The bureaucracy exists to serve learning. When
learning must contort itself to serve bureaucracy, we've built the system
backwards."
"When following policy means betraying students, and
serving students means risking your job, the system has become actively hostile
to its own purpose."
On What Teaching Should Be:
"Teaching is not delivering content. It's igniting
something that makes students want to learn long after they've left your
classroom."
"You cannot standardize passion. You cannot script
curiosity. You cannot mandate joy. But you can kill all three with a workbook
and a pacing guide."
"The question isn't 'Did you teach the curriculum?'
It's 'Did you teach the child?' We've systematically chosen the wrong
question."
"I was hired to educate children. I was threatened with
termination for educating children too well in the wrong way. Think about
that."
On the Stakes:
"When we lose great teachers to bad policy, we don't
just lose one classroom. We lose two decades of wisdom, thousands of students
who could have thrived, and the knowledge of what actually works."
"The next generation of teachers is watching. They're
learning that innovation gets punished, excellence gets investigated, and
compliance gets rewarded. What kind of teachers do you think we're
creating?"
"Children don't care about fidelity to curriculum. They
care whether their teacher sees them, believes in them, and makes learning
matter. We've built an entire system that makes that almost impossible."
"We're not just failing students. We're systematically
eliminating the teachers who refuse to fail them."
The Ultimate Quote:
"Twenty years of evidence that art, music, movement,
and passion create learning—and the system chose the workbook. That's not
education policy. That's educational malpractice dressed up as
accountability."
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