As a former teacher, I firmly believe that if we want to reform schools, we must reform the teaching profession and school management structures. At least, we should address the things that are most insane:
A school district is a big operation, with many having thousands of employees, and budgets running into the hundreds of millions of dollars. And it is usually run by literal amateurs. As in, the school board is a group of unpaid volunteers.
As tough as it is to be a teacher, consider what it’s like to be a principal: You get the most odious parts of being a teacher (dealing with discipline, contentious meetings with parents), with a longer workday, shorter (if any) summer vacation, much greater responsibility, much greater public exposure (and corresponding chance of getting fired for some perceived failure), but not really that much more pay. It’s hardly surprising that it’s hard to find good people to take that job. So, as a teacher, you can’t count on competent support from management. But, you really need it.
The teaching profession takes a lot of skills. Yet, the job description for a first year teacher, and the job description for a 30th year teacher are identical. Imagine hiring an engineer fresh out of college and asking them to do what a senior architect does.
But, from a practical standpoint, the job of the inexperienced teacher is often much more challenging. The experienced teacher gets to pick the honors classes, the electives, etc., to teach. The inexperienced teacher gets stuck with the remedial classes. It’s not uncommon for a new teacher to get hired to teach class sections that were added at the last minute—and those sections will be full of students who got put into those sections at the last minute, because they didn’t have their act together, didn’t pass, didn’t register, etc.
As you discovered, an inexperienced teacher will find it a lot of work to deal with even one or two classes. Where I work now, if someone was asked to conduct a training session, they might spend a couple days prepping. We ask teachers to do 5, 6 even 7 of those per day, only not with well-mannered professional adults, but kids whose brains are not fully developed. And then grade homework, call parents, be hall monitors, function as social workers, etc.
I could go on.
There are many problems one could bring with various approaches to teaching. There are many challenges that teachers would face even in the best of systems. But fundamentally, there are some serious structural issues with the design of the system.
Related to your principals comment.
I can’t speak too much about the situation. Though am close with a former principal of a mid sized rural town. A real tricky job, and they knew that taking it on. It happened to be a town that (if I understand correctly) our government was sending a lot of refugees to. This resulted in a school where a large minority couldn’t speak English. In top of that, it’s a rural school. Notorious for horrible shit.
Anyway, this principal made a small slip up and publicly apologised in a video. It then went locally viral and the state wide news picked it up.
This principle was dragged through the mud for half a year. They couldn’t go to the grocery store or walk down the street.
The news just kept going. I live pretty far away from them, but people know I know them. I had people come up and give condolences because of how harsh the treatment had been in the media.
I’m not sure how much this adds to the discussion. But I hope it helps to update someone’s model. A principle is a public figure with power over a tiny domain. They are sometimes attacked in the same way as a politician, but without the defences that politicians have.
Absolutely, and all good points! But what kind of reforms would help fix these problems? You suggest that we could change the job descriptions of new and more senior teachers to give a better distribution of duties. But what could we do to fix the management problems you mention?
As a former teacher, I firmly believe that if we want to reform schools, we must reform the teaching profession and school management structures. At least, we should address the things that are most insane:
A school district is a big operation, with many having thousands of employees, and budgets running into the hundreds of millions of dollars. And it is usually run by literal amateurs. As in, the school board is a group of unpaid volunteers.
As tough as it is to be a teacher, consider what it’s like to be a principal: You get the most odious parts of being a teacher (dealing with discipline, contentious meetings with parents), with a longer workday, shorter (if any) summer vacation, much greater responsibility, much greater public exposure (and corresponding chance of getting fired for some perceived failure), but not really that much more pay. It’s hardly surprising that it’s hard to find good people to take that job. So, as a teacher, you can’t count on competent support from management. But, you really need it.
The teaching profession takes a lot of skills. Yet, the job description for a first year teacher, and the job description for a 30th year teacher are identical. Imagine hiring an engineer fresh out of college and asking them to do what a senior architect does.
But, from a practical standpoint, the job of the inexperienced teacher is often much more challenging. The experienced teacher gets to pick the honors classes, the electives, etc., to teach. The inexperienced teacher gets stuck with the remedial classes. It’s not uncommon for a new teacher to get hired to teach class sections that were added at the last minute—and those sections will be full of students who got put into those sections at the last minute, because they didn’t have their act together, didn’t pass, didn’t register, etc.
As you discovered, an inexperienced teacher will find it a lot of work to deal with even one or two classes. Where I work now, if someone was asked to conduct a training session, they might spend a couple days prepping. We ask teachers to do 5, 6 even 7 of those per day, only not with well-mannered professional adults, but kids whose brains are not fully developed. And then grade homework, call parents, be hall monitors, function as social workers, etc.
I could go on.
There are many problems one could bring with various approaches to teaching. There are many challenges that teachers would face even in the best of systems. But fundamentally, there are some serious structural issues with the design of the system.
Related to your principals comment. I can’t speak too much about the situation. Though am close with a former principal of a mid sized rural town. A real tricky job, and they knew that taking it on. It happened to be a town that (if I understand correctly) our government was sending a lot of refugees to. This resulted in a school where a large minority couldn’t speak English. In top of that, it’s a rural school. Notorious for horrible shit. Anyway, this principal made a small slip up and publicly apologised in a video. It then went locally viral and the state wide news picked it up. This principle was dragged through the mud for half a year. They couldn’t go to the grocery store or walk down the street. The news just kept going. I live pretty far away from them, but people know I know them. I had people come up and give condolences because of how harsh the treatment had been in the media.
I’m not sure how much this adds to the discussion. But I hope it helps to update someone’s model. A principle is a public figure with power over a tiny domain. They are sometimes attacked in the same way as a politician, but without the defences that politicians have.
Absolutely, and all good points! But what kind of reforms would help fix these problems? You suggest that we could change the job descriptions of new and more senior teachers to give a better distribution of duties. But what could we do to fix the management problems you mention?