jimmortensen.com

Teaching that is. Now that it has been suggested that teachers be armed, I’m all in favor of it. Just think, if those kids are fooling around in the back of the room, I could just fire a couple of shots over their heads–that would get their attention. And the guy sleeping in the corner–fire one shot into the floor while holding a Glock right next to his ear–that would keep him alert for the rest of the period. Of course, it might make for some interesting confrontations in the hall, what with both the students and teachers packing heat, and the cafeteria might turn into the OK Corral if food fights broke out.

Of course, I’m kidding. Elwyn Monahan, the idiot that thought this up is several sandwiches and a bowl of potato salad shy of a picnic. In fact, this is probably the least thought out, most knee jerk idea, that has come up in education since the No Child Left Behind legislation. I hope to hell some politician doesn’t take it up and get it enacted.

I learned the other day that one of the people I used to teach with is leaving the classroom for an administration job. This is too bad since he is an excellent teacher who always has a positive effect on his students; the children that will not have this influence in the coming years are going to be poorer for it.

One of the unfortunate things about education is that in order to get ahead money-wise, a teacher has either to leave the profession or go into administration. If the teacher is a poor one, this isn’t a calamity(in fact, it may be a blessing), but in cases like the above, it is tragic for both the students and the system as a whole. Of course, one could go back to that old chestnut about teachers shouldn’t be in it for the money but should be dedicated to their students. Bull! Dedication doesn’t put food on the table nor get your kids through college. The time comes for many good, dedicated teachers when the needs of their families outweigh the needs of their students and many make the decision to either move up or out to improve their income.

The unfortunate thing is that moving into administration is not going to be satisfactory for most really good teachers. Primarily they lose the one thing they are best at, contact with and teaching of youngsters. Whereas in the classroom one sees the good and bad students and, often, can change the latter into the former; as an administrator, one deals only those with problem students—if they see students at all. Any contact an administrator has with the good students is brief and results from the work of someone else. Eventually, as the exteacher loses contact with the classroom and students, he/she also loses the empathy they had with their colleagues and moves into an adversarial position in re to their teachers. This leads to a “me vs. them” position. The administrator forgets that his/her job is to work with teachers to facilitate the education of students and, instead, buys into a bottom line, numbers game in which the administrator takes credit for the good results and comes down on the staff for poor ones. Student/teacher relationships are forgotten about in a battle to hold down costs and improve test scores.

In my 35 years of teaching plus growing up in a home where my dad went from teacher to administrator, I have seen this happen often enough to generalize. My dad, who was the top man in a small school district, always considered himself lucky in that, because to the school’s size, he was able to teach one class per semester—health—to either freshmen or seniors. It kept him in touch with his classroom roots, the students, and a bit of satisfaction that he would have missed. Maybe this should be a model for all school districts.

From the Norwich, NY Evening Sun, 3/21/06

Oxford compromises with alternate plan

OXFORD – Openness and compromise proved to be successful approaches Monday night at an Oxford Academy meeting to discuss the implementation of a “Professional Learning Period” for teachers in the district.
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The goal of the professional planning period is to allow teachers to collaborate with each other every day at all grade levels, ensuring that while their curriculum may be different, the goals for each student should remain the same. “We need to give our teachers time to get better, to share a wealth of knowledge on a daily basis,” said (Oxford Academy and Central School District Superintendent Randall) Squier. “Only meeting twice a year makes it hard to sustain things.”

Squier strongly believes that in light of high dropout rates in the district and stricter state policies making a Regents diploma mandatory, the development period will be conducive to better teaching, better learning and better students.

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Things sure have changed in education, and not all of it for the best. The latest is occurring at the local school where they are now going to schedule faculty get-togethers after school to talk about students. They are calling it “Professional Learning Period”. When I taught, we called it “coffee in the faculty room before/during/after school”.

It would start first thing in the morning when we would arrive early for school. Everyone would gather in the faculty room for coffee and the talk, generally, would get around to our students and what we were able to—or not—do with them. Some of it would be serious, some would be griping, but everyone had some input and common problems were shared and solved. Often, these conversations would continue back in the faculty room during free periods, lunch or, briefly, after school. If there were a real problem or someone had an individual question, we’d meet outside on a one-on-one conversation. We shared information and, usually, the students were better off for it. What was discussed in the faculty room, mostly, stayed there.

Now, apparently that has changed, something I could see happening when I retired in 1994.

I think it started when, for better or worse, they banned smoking in the school. Many of those teachers still hooked on the habit stopped coming in to the faculty room and spent more time off campus getting their fix. This reduced both the numbers and the amount of time some members spent with the group.

Then, too, the administration tended to discourage these gatherings, figuring they were, somehow, subversive and making it look like the teachers had nothing else better to do than sit around drinking coffee and talking—the old PR thing. (OK, we trashed the administration too, but in a good, morale boasting, way.) This is interesting in light of the fact that the powers to be are now trying to schedule this kind of thing, which given the “horse to water” aspect of specific scheduled sessions will probably not work as well. For one thing, without the administrators being around, teachers tend to open up without the fear of reprisal for admitting they aren’t able to succeed in certain areas.

Coupled with the above, there was less inclination by those in charge to rig the staff’s schedules so teachers within the same subject area or grade level where given free periods together. Even a common lunch hour was done away with as more teachers were assigned lunch duties and the time for eating lunch as a group was shortened. Consequently, teachers just did not see as much of each other.

Finally, and more significantly, teachers were becoming more reclusive. I don’t know whether this was because of the increased work load, fear of seeming inadequate, or just a combination of the three things above, but more and more of the staff enter the school, go to their classroom, and stay there until it was time to leave. Aside from seeing them in the hall or at faculty meetings, there were colleagues that never shared their problems or questions on curriculum. Some seemed to go out of their way to isolate themselves from the rest of the staff, even blowing off the periods when teachers with the same interests could get together.

When I first began teaching, one of the bits of advice my father gave me was that if I was having problems with students, curriculum or getting things across to my students, go to the faculty room and talk about them with more experienced teachers. Chances were good that they would have had the same problems and could offer help. Dad had taught and administrated for over twenty-five years at this point and his advice worked for me. It’s too bad that those entering the teaching ranks aren’t getting the same guidance and, consequently, have to be forced into some sort of institutionalized form of give and take to accomplish the same thing.