Today I am writing about the ways that administrators waste teacher time during the day. These things are what I refer to as check the box items that have never proven to help me be a better educator. These are old school ways that somebody built into the American educational system of puclic schools that should have been abandoned long ago. These are the things that bog teachers down, take too much time away and end up helping them go out the door. State, county and district level leaders push these things on the admin team which pushes it down the line.
1- Staff meetings- These are a waste of afterschool personal time and 99% of the information could be emailed in a weekly notice to the staff. Sitting in a meeting to hear about data, staffing issues, student attendance, lesson plans, blah, blah, blah is a waste of time.
2- PLC meetings- These meetings are about checking a box. I have never attended more than a few that had anything valid for me as an exceptional children teacher. I could care less who is passing math EOC, science EOC or some way to upscale a lesson plan. I am an EC teacher so I need training and if have to attend a meeting please make it vaild to what I do on a daily.
3- Staff Training on Workdays- At the beginnning of every school year and at the end we have like four or five days of some kind of new training. Some crap the admin or district read about in a book gets shoved down the throats of the teachers. The latest and greatest we have seen recently is this crap about RPC and rah rah classroom junk. Let the teachers actually prepare for class and the year instead of some stupid training that noone will use.
4- Not Managing Discipline- Too many admins are soft on the kids. They disrupt a class and the teacher sends them out. The admin gives them a little talk, some candy and sends them back to class to do the same over and over again. I wanted to be an admin but stopped a few classes shy of my add-on because I didn’t want to see the same kids everyday, every week and have the same results. Students need effective discipline that has a bite to it and will not tolerate misbehavior. My dad once told me, “what is allowed will persist” and it is so true in our system today.
5-Back the Teacher, Not the Kid or Parent- Mom gets mad because little Johnny is failing. He sleeps in class, skips and does not turn in work. Halfway through the year he is failing so he complains about the teacher not taking missed assignments that were due months ago. Mom comes to the school and complains at the admin calls the teachers and tells them to take late assignments for johnny. That is bull crap and goes back to accountability of the student and parent. Hold them to a line and back your teachers or they will leave.
I am sure some will disagree with me and I am on “oldhat” gray headed teacher that is close to the end. I have seen the system slowly degrade and the classroom slowly degrade due to the practices of bad leadership and checking a box mentality. Checking a box is simply that. It is checking a box to make sure someone has followed a process. Children are not boxes. Teachers are not boxes. Schools are not boxes. Leave the past behind and press into a higher learining environment that has discipline, rigor, manners, effective training and stop wasting time checking a box.
TeacherTalkblogger 