He posted an excerpt on Facebook from Heidisongs Resources, the blog of Heidi Butkus. I have to share this excerpt as well, because it is fantastic. While Heidi (and Matthew) teaches kindergarten, and does NOT like to be told that teaching older kids (or adults) is the same -- I think we can safely apply much of what she says to all of elementary school.
This is her list of...
The Top Ten Signs You Work in Public School
1. The best person that can be found to teach K/1 teachers how to teach any subject is someone who has only taught high school.
2. If you were to add up the hours it takes to teach all of the required lessons in all of the teachers manuals in all of the subjects, they would total more than 22 hours of direct instruction per day.
3. Your current reading program is very similar to one that you have used before, way back two generations ago when the curricular pendulum swung the other direction. (I guess the advantage is that if you don’t like what you currently have, wait around for a couple of years and another curriculum or theory du jour will be in vogue to take its place!)
4. The curriculum that was chosen for you to use in Kindergarten was based on how well it works in some other grade level.
5. There is a teacher at your school that regularly calls in sick more days than she actually teaches, and somehow manages to hang on to her job.
6. You have had an LCD projector mounted on your ceiling for two years, but there is no money for a screen so you cannot use it. Or vise versa.
7. Three years after you have been given a new math program, they find the money to train you on how to use it.
8. Your legislature is thinking of increasing your hours but not your pay.
9. You know what your kids need to learn, but you don’t have time to do it because of all of the required programs.
10. The best way to make sure your kids learn (and therefore keep your job) is to close your door and do what you know works for your students!
3 comments:
Although I cannot relate to kindergarten teachers in any way, and I can't think of a group of teachers I'd be more miserably training, she is right on the button with education in general. Close my door, indeed!
Amen to each and every point in your list....
While I could comment on each and every point you made, I sympathize with the fact you had the equipment but no screen. Been there/done that. While it was difficult to pop some items up on the wall with no screen I found that I could prepare transparencies with notes for students to copy if I used a bold font and turned out the lights.
Still....why should I have had to do that?
I worked with about 6 of the teachers that called in sick more than they actually taught....I took off ONE HALF sick day, and I have two kids....who received perfect attendance.
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