Sunday, March 10, 2013

I have, since the beginning of this school year, posted my lesson plans in the same format. Last week, my principal sent me an email asking where the "language objectives" were for Tuesday through Friday. I answered, ' the objective was the same all week, because we are doing the same assignment (reading a novel) all week; I need to know what the problem is with my lesson plan so I can fix it."

The next email was a directive to come to his office to discuss my lesson plans.

At this meeting, the principal admitted he had read the lesson plan and understood that the classroom activity continued through the week, but he needed me to copy and paste the same objective in all the blank spots. Can you say "OCD"?

This "lack of imagination" or "bureaucratic BS" seems to be the hallmark of administration in my district:
  • teachers are not effective (need improvement) if they do not fill in all the blanks (even repetitive ones).
  • teachers (need improvement) if they turn in lesson plans at 7:45am instead of 7:30am.
  • teachers (need improvement) if, the day an administrator walks into the room, there is no "exemplary work" hanging on the walls at that specific moment.
  • teachers (need improvement) if they have a "Vocabulary" display rather than a "Word Wall."
  • teachers (need improvement) if the evaluator does not hear the repetition of four different objectives in every lesson.
  • teachers (need improvement) if they do not follow a strict pattern of presentation (called the "workshop model") in EVERY class, regardless of what has happened before the evaluator appeared.
  • teachers (need improvement) if students who do not speak or read English do not pass the End of Instruction exams.
The list goes on . . . . .

What is happening in education is that the "business model" is taking over, as though our students were "products" that can be educated through a "process" that ignores the very real social and economic obstacles that teachers and students face in an inner-city school. The model is actually based on educational research, but the Marzano Method espoused by our state and district never claims to be the philosopher's stone for education. Rather, it is offered as ideas that can help struggling teachers (note: struggling, not those who are doing effective work).

Rather than doing the work to identify teachers who might benefit from Marzano (that would take time and effort on the part of administration, so they simply put everyone on the plan) evaluators have been instructed to mark "needs improvement" on all evaluations, (that is why I was "ineffective" until I started sending my lesson plans in on Sunday evening rather that fifteen minutes later than the designated 7:30; now I am an"effective" teacher in the area of "content knowledge").

Another reason evaluators have been ordered to mark "needs improvement" on evaluations is because, in spite of everything teachers have done, students were not attaining the (arbitrarily) set achievement goals of the state. Denying any connection to social or economic conditions, the decision was made: if our students are not scoring as high as private and suburban schools, IT MUST BE THE TEACHERS' FAULT.

Saturday, February 23, 2013

first posting

this is a place for me to rant, mostly about the ineptness and hostility of educational "leaders."