Teachers work in a different world. Roland Barth likened American teachers to a group of preschoolers engaged in parallel play. Although they may work in a building with other teachers and even use the same materials and follow the same schedule, they rarely turn to one another during the school day except during their thirty-minute lunch period, where informal norms often forbid any kind of professional talk. This dearth of collegial stimulation would be bad enough if teaching were a profession with a certain and finite knowledge base. But the problems of teaching are ever changing, and absolute solutions are usually not to be found.
Successful teaching is a mixture of art and craft honed through experience.
In such a profession, a lack of meaningful discourse with fellow professionals can have disastrous effects. In surveys of promising young teachers who decided to abandon education after only a few years in the classroom, professional isolation has been one of the most frequently cited dissatisfiers. If we continue to expect teachers to solve increasingly complex educational problems by themselves, we can forget about widespread excellence in the classroom. Most inquisitive and collaborative people will continue to shy away from teaching. And those who do take the plunge will probably confine themselves to the few teaching strategies they've found are easiest for them to use, keeping their door shut for fear of exposing to colleagues that they have not yet mastered this unmasterable craft.