Ever go to work and forget about the rest of your life?
That's what happens when I taught. I used to go in early just to get some quiet time to think and organize, because once that bell rang it was go, go, go until the end of the day. Checking in involved visiting different stations to pick up, collect, and check out. Sometimes I had to make a personal call during the day, you know, doctor's appointments or other stuff, but on my way home I would always discover that I forgot. If a teacher has a more traditional schedule, the bell rings, class is seated, roll is taken (that's where the money come from), pass out graded papers, review a previous lesson's ideas, a new lesson is taught, we practice the concept together as a whole, then give homework. Then the bell rings and it happens all over again. This is repeated over and over again until the end of the day. If you're lucky, you have a planning period to grade, personally analyze student's progress, and plan for the next lesson. Every minute of the day involved dealing with students' success, failure, behavior, planning for the next lesson, making personal notes of what lesson delivery was the best, grading papers, and the last five years involved putting up with increasing administrative blah-blah.
Sure, there are a few lazy teachers, but in reality, there are not many. Even the lazy teachers are not the same lazy quality you find in other jobs. There is just too much stimuli to let a person sit back for too long. Yet, 'accountability' treats teachers like they have been lazy and not doing their jobs. To address this idea, administrators are taking the precious little time away from teachers and giving busy work.
All bureaucracy sounds good on paper, but in reality always falls short of what the original intentions were. The district decided that teachers needed to collaborate more and forces 'common' planning. But it's not like we went to the planning meetings and were really able to plan together. NO! We went to the meeting where administrators would feed us the data and give us 'homework' to regurgitate the data back to them. Problem was, everyone, and I mean everyone, was so very busy, that even when the data was strained and drained back into the sewer from where it came, THEY didn't even have time to check to see if it were done properly and in the end everyone knew that it was all a futile effort to make us look busy and productive and the administrators shine.
The district that I retired from invented this INOVA. On paper, it really sounds good. The teacher is given analysis of all past students' test performance so we can analyze weak points and give individualized, personalized lessons and attention to all 180 students we see in a semester in a class of 30-35 students with varying degrees of behaviour etiquette. Now ask me in what manner was this information delivered? One year, it was delivered on a CD in Adobe Acrobat. The teacher had to do a search for the student's name (not student number) (do you know how many different Jose Martinez's there are in a single school in El Paso, TX?) then copy data onto a separate sheet and make teacher goals and comments about that particular student's ability. Last year, the data was printed out in a massive pile (imagine the paper waste and money). We were told to come to our 'forced' common planning meeting with a printed copy of our rosters. We then had to sit and sort through these piles for our students. Most teachers were very good students themselves. They loved the academia world and that is why they returned. They wanted to make a difference. They buy into this mumble jumble that administration cooks up and try to meet the deadlines and perform the Easter-egg hunt. The stress mounts up. Everyone complains but tries to do the fruitless task.
In reality, teachers know their students. Given class time, a few assignments, we know when the student is trying but having trouble, is going to give up, acting out to avoid the difficult, or just plain lazy. We see the handwriting skills, we see the spelling problems. We talk to the students, give encouragement, remind them of their potential, tell them that this is preparation for life beyond school, and these days, tell them that this prepares them for the state school accountability exams. In reality, a class of 30-35 students it is difficult to reach out to that student in a (depending on your school schedule) 55-minute everyday or every-other day for a 90-minute session.
If you do want to forget about your personal life, become a teacher.
That's what happens when I taught. I used to go in early just to get some quiet time to think and organize, because once that bell rang it was go, go, go until the end of the day. Checking in involved visiting different stations to pick up, collect, and check out. Sometimes I had to make a personal call during the day, you know, doctor's appointments or other stuff, but on my way home I would always discover that I forgot. If a teacher has a more traditional schedule, the bell rings, class is seated, roll is taken (that's where the money come from), pass out graded papers, review a previous lesson's ideas, a new lesson is taught, we practice the concept together as a whole, then give homework. Then the bell rings and it happens all over again. This is repeated over and over again until the end of the day. If you're lucky, you have a planning period to grade, personally analyze student's progress, and plan for the next lesson. Every minute of the day involved dealing with students' success, failure, behavior, planning for the next lesson, making personal notes of what lesson delivery was the best, grading papers, and the last five years involved putting up with increasing administrative blah-blah.
Sure, there are a few lazy teachers, but in reality, there are not many. Even the lazy teachers are not the same lazy quality you find in other jobs. There is just too much stimuli to let a person sit back for too long. Yet, 'accountability' treats teachers like they have been lazy and not doing their jobs. To address this idea, administrators are taking the precious little time away from teachers and giving busy work.
All bureaucracy sounds good on paper, but in reality always falls short of what the original intentions were. The district decided that teachers needed to collaborate more and forces 'common' planning. But it's not like we went to the planning meetings and were really able to plan together. NO! We went to the meeting where administrators would feed us the data and give us 'homework' to regurgitate the data back to them. Problem was, everyone, and I mean everyone, was so very busy, that even when the data was strained and drained back into the sewer from where it came, THEY didn't even have time to check to see if it were done properly and in the end everyone knew that it was all a futile effort to make us look busy and productive and the administrators shine.
The district that I retired from invented this INOVA. On paper, it really sounds good. The teacher is given analysis of all past students' test performance so we can analyze weak points and give individualized, personalized lessons and attention to all 180 students we see in a semester in a class of 30-35 students with varying degrees of behaviour etiquette. Now ask me in what manner was this information delivered? One year, it was delivered on a CD in Adobe Acrobat. The teacher had to do a search for the student's name (not student number) (do you know how many different Jose Martinez's there are in a single school in El Paso, TX?) then copy data onto a separate sheet and make teacher goals and comments about that particular student's ability. Last year, the data was printed out in a massive pile (imagine the paper waste and money). We were told to come to our 'forced' common planning meeting with a printed copy of our rosters. We then had to sit and sort through these piles for our students. Most teachers were very good students themselves. They loved the academia world and that is why they returned. They wanted to make a difference. They buy into this mumble jumble that administration cooks up and try to meet the deadlines and perform the Easter-egg hunt. The stress mounts up. Everyone complains but tries to do the fruitless task.
In reality, teachers know their students. Given class time, a few assignments, we know when the student is trying but having trouble, is going to give up, acting out to avoid the difficult, or just plain lazy. We see the handwriting skills, we see the spelling problems. We talk to the students, give encouragement, remind them of their potential, tell them that this is preparation for life beyond school, and these days, tell them that this prepares them for the state school accountability exams. In reality, a class of 30-35 students it is difficult to reach out to that student in a (depending on your school schedule) 55-minute everyday or every-other day for a 90-minute session.
If you do want to forget about your personal life, become a teacher.
