I tell folks that often a room of high school teachers and administrators are a worse and less receptive audience than kindergarten kids after cupcakes. I can speak from experience.  For 12 years I have been a part of that audience!! First, many teachers don’t want to be there because they have “so many other better things to do with their time”. Second, many feel that their methods are good enough, so why fix it (especially in high school where we love our content!). Speaking as a high school English teacher who is leaving the classroom to do Professional Development full time. I have been in worthless PD workshops. My goal is to make the “Buddy’s” of the school world see two things- Change is good (and inevitable) AND The new classroom/student involves learning together and not teachers being the only keepers of information. Heck if the kids can Google the answer on their Smartphone, what do we have to offer.

Most professions require training and recertification procedures.  Teachers only have to recertify every 10 years.  Should we really wait that long to do meaningful restructuring of our practice?  Considering how different today’s student is from even 5 years ago, shouldn’t we be a little different too?

Retrain, untrain, be flexible… it will save you lots of head ache with the digital learners!

Are there quality resources out there to use for skill reinforcement and building that also documents what the students are doing?

In my English classroom, I have a class of various skill levels.  Many are special ed and have been passed along.  Their reading levels are way below grade level.  Are there any suggestions?

I found out shortly after I was hired that the principal also wanted me to take over duties as department head. I was honored and talked with the person who had been doing many of the duties without the title for several years. Since she was going to be out much of the following year for maternity leave, she gladly said I should step in and use my experience to help the department.

I attended my first mandatory teacher training (professional development is what the title of the day implied) and left there completely frustrated. This was not the training that professional educators should endure. I left there knowing that my plan to “lay low” and take it easy was not going to work.

To say that coming in during the middle of the year as the new girl and as the department head has been a challenge is an understatement. There have been times when I thought change was not possible and times when I thought it was not worth my effort. Our school has so many positives, it is unfair to only look at the negatives. The problem is that those negatives were standing in the way of so many positive possibilities. Working with our wonderful principal (who has only been here since August) we put together two of our own professional development days. We got several faculty members to use their expertise and offered numerous workshops. Lunch was donated by our PTO, and our new school improvement specialist came and did icebreaker activities. It lasted two days and went off without a hitch.

Here is the cool thing. I watched my colleagues who were also frustrated, unmotivated, burned out, stressed out, and beat down finally turn a corner. There was real community… real morale… real collaboration. We had almost our entire faculty there on two of their summer days.

Our principal and I have several sayings… call them Mantras…

“Baby Steps”- this one is used when I want things to move faster and change quicker… I am a North personality, by the way (go getter, aggressive)

“Move forward and leave the others behind”- this one is used when we know that there are always going to be people who will be resistant to change

“Are we having fun yet?”- When frustration gets the best of me.

“EASY!”- When frustration makes me say things I might regret

Our wikispace is a wonderful collection of the day and a great contrast to the first professional development I experienced in this district. Our faculty really felt refreshed after these days. I am also going to post some of the evaluation comments. It really was a success. I am so fortunate to have great people to work with!

Please offer your comments:

Can anyone suggest other ways to increase community within a faculty?

Have you had one of these WOW experiences? Explain.

How do you cope with those who are completely resistant to change?

P.S. Our Assistant Principal has nicknamed this school the Galapagos because he says there is no place like it. I want to say that the Galapagos has volcanoes on it, and I believe we have just started rumbling things up in the bottom of that volcano.

He describes an experience where he saw a teacher (during that dreaded last week of school) showing a video to her kids while she sat at her desk to do paper work.  First, let me say that in the teachers defense, and in agreement with one of Wesley’s commentors, many of us don’t have the time adequate for all of the paper shuffle we are burdened with.  And I am sure (at least I hope) that this day was not a picture of a common practice in this teacher’s classroom. Now, on to what I am so fired up about.  Check out this segment where Wesley assumes the role of the adult in charge who might respond in this way if asked the question, “Why are we here?”:

We are here so our school gets paid for you sitting in your chair and warming your seat. It really doesn’t matter what you do or do not do, as long as you are not disruptive or hurtful to others in our classroom. Since it doesn’t matter what you do, we are going to do the easiest thing possible from a teacher and administrator perspective today: We are simply going to show you full length videos…

He goes on to say how our current educational system is a coercive system where we are training drones rather than creating innovative, engaging lessons and classroom experiences for our students.  Unfortunately, in the high school setting, I see this all too often.

How do you make teachers (especially in the tenure system we have here in Alabama) more accountable for their classroom practices, strategies, and engagement levels?  Is there an answer?

In our state the legislature has been fighting over the education budget for several days now.  They ended their session in deadlock.  The universities don’t want their portion cut so they persist on lobbying to kill the budget until they get what they want.  With no budget, K-12 schools cannot make plans.  Unlike universities, K-12 schools have no other area in which to make up lost revenues.  What does that mean?  Cuts.  Subpar conditions for students and teachers.

As good teachers we learn to overcome.  Unfortunately, the not so good teachers do an even worse job because their complacency continues and they refuse to overcome the circumstances.  I would love some best practices examples of technology integration in low-resource schools, over-crowded classrooms, and one-computers classes.  Can anyone lead me to some sites with that info?

Well, today I had to stay home from school. My one-year old had a sinus infection and had been running a fever last night (24 hours fever free daycare rule, you know). So we got up at the usual time and saw dad and brother off to school. I caught up on email, fed him breakfast, changed some diapers, etc. He seemed to be feeling great, so I took the rare opportunity to call my salon and see if they might possibly have an opening this morning. Bingo! 10:45 appointment! I packed the diaper bag and the little one, snotty nose and all, and headed out. I got there a bit early and was entertaining the little one and happened to listen to the conversation at the check out desk. It went something like this:

“You know we just found out last night that Craig failed a big project”

” Oh really, he just came out and told you?”

“No the school has this online thing that let’s you see kid’s grades. We saw it last night and confronted him. It was on a poetry booklet. He showed it to me. It was pretty thrown together.”

“Well, I think that writing is just totally opinion anyway. I don’t see how anyone can grade something that is your personal thoughts.”

“I don’t think it deserved a good grade. Actually we like this teacher. We have had such better luck at the high school than we did at the middle school. Those teachers just got there tenure and are biding their time until retirement. My kids hated it.”

Now, there are several things I would like to address in this eavesdropping session.

First, the “writing is personal” comment-

Writing is personal. It is a creation. It is the highest level of Bloom’s particularly when you are doing creative writing like poetry. Because of this we must evaluate it. Unfortunately many teachers grade writing and other projects with red marks and a number. I have always used rubrics. My question is this- do parents and students understand rubrics? Does it make the evaluation of the writing more meaningful or more confusing?

Second, the middle school teachers have tenure-

We see this all of the time in professions where one’s job is not totally dependent on one’s accountability and/ or results. I cannot tell you how many times I have gotten behind a slow driver in a work truck and made the comment, “He obviously gets paid by the hour and not by the job.” Are we in a profession now that is filling up with those just biding their time until retirement? I know there are a few out there that go full speed for their students, but are we the minority? Are there any 21st Century Teachers as Andrew Churches points out in his insightful blog post?

Finally, kudos to the school district that uses an online gradebook that parents can view, and kudos to the parents that utilize that privilege!