I Was a Shittier Teacher This Week
Every so often I will get a little concerned that I may run out of things to write on this blog. I mean, how much could there be to say about the ludicrousness of teaching?
But every time I think that, God sends me to a meeting, or sends me a memo, or sends one of my administrator-muses into my room.
I had my first evaluations and debriefs in the last several days. The outside evaluator was quite friendly and more or less thought I was doing a pretty good job. She rated me an “effective” teacher.
The inside people, not so much. Ineffective. I am horrible.
Our evaluation system is based on a series of complex rubrics, because I don’t have enough rubrics in my life already. (Goddamn…is there any other profession on the planet that is evaluated this way?) The comments are all very robotic and, to be honest, even though I knew she was coming, it was a lesson that didn’t click. It just didn’t go well and sometimes that happens. So I got marked down because the kids weren’t engaged and for all other sorts of reasons and non-reasons.
It is my responsibility to always be engaging the child, rather than the child’s responsibility to learn how to shut the fuck up, think, and do something he or she doesn’t love once in a while. This HUGE shift in responsibility away from students and families and onto teachers is a topic unto itself. It represents an enormous social capitulation and places an utterly unfair burden on teachers.
So after recounting all the times I had missed opportunities to ask higher order thinking questions, failed to redirect off-task behavior, or whatever, etc, etc…we went on to Part II of the Rubric. This is where we examine all of the 38 things, other than what I am doing when I am teaching, that I am supposed to be doing in order to be an adequate teacher. (These are things made up by my school, not the district.)
Where to start…here are some of my favorites:
• Curricular documents reflect backwards planning, and SMART achievement goals;
• There will be 90% passing rate in all classes; for those students who are struggling, case presentation, referrals to Support Services, and collaboration with teachers and administrators will support student success;
• The attendance rate will be 95%;
• The classroom/work station reflects high expectations through posting of quality student work, data walls, positive messages, and an attractive room that reflects key aspects of the discipline taught;
• The Mission Statement, Creed, and Three Messages are evident in the room and in statements and interactions with students and adults;
• Data is used to differentiate and provide challenge for all students, both those who need significant growth, and those who are more advanced. There is flexible grouping for students, based on data analysis;
• 100% of parents are contacted by email, phone, and/or letter for positive news, progress reports, and/or concerns;
• Attends and fully participates in data meetings as part of the cycle of improvement.
Does any of that sound Orwellian to you? (I especially like that “Three Messages” is Capitalized.) Remember, that’s only eight. There are 30 more where those came from. If you would like to see the full list, contact me: mr.teachbad@gmail.com
Some of the concerns in my debrief:
1) Slogans not posted on walls;
2) I knew only the individual composite scores of my ELLs on the ACCESS test and not each student’s individual scores for Listening, Reading, Writing, and Speaking and had failed to provide documentation that my lesson plans had made accomodations for these differences in each student’s ability in Listening, Reading, Writing, and Speaking (DOH!);
3) Right kind of student work not on walls;
4) Interventions to raise grades and attendence not properly documented;
5) Etc…
Here is my point. “Feedback” was entirely negative. Breaks all the rules of basic management communication…or communication in general. Say something nice. Smile. And, in my heart, I know I am not a horrible teacher. But these soulless technocratic nitpick dickheads with their rubrics and their mandates to only find “opportunities for improvement” are doing a great deal of damage to the profession. At least two people have left this year. And the usual crop of new ones are already starting to talk about leaving. Would you stay?
You thought I was “ineffective” last week? You should have seen me this week. Your hyper-critical robotic ways have temorarily demoralized me yet again. I have worked less hard this week than any other week this year due to my only prolonged interaction with you, my boss. I will use the weekend to refresh myself and once again care about children and teaching purely in spite of you. Does this sound like a sustainable model to you? Does this “put children first”? I know…“Fuck it, we’ll just hire 40 more 23 year olds next year.” Good plan.
And good luck.
Mr. Teachbad
Our administration has decided that pure passive aggression is the way to go, to inspire us to open our eyes to the ways in which all our kids can “succeed” (read: “improve test scores”).
We the teachers will be given passively-voiced non-mandates of what we are not required to do, suggestions for our improvements, our “successes to come” (read: “higher test scores”).
If we build that word wall, they will come.
(They = “higher test scores”).
Oh, but we will do it our way, as long as it’s this week’s band-aid way; we will maintain our academic freedom as long as we exercise out right to do it their “right way”; we will be supported by them as long as we meet our SMART goals with properly worded essential measurement standards supported by daily objectives that include the latest academic vocabulary terms.
Research shows that we need not do any of this as long as we do it (that is, “get higher test scores”).
And on a side note:
As the kids like to say, “this”:
“It is my responsibility to always be engaging the child, rather than the child’s responsibility to learn how to shut the fuck up, think, and do something he or she doesn’t love once in a while.”
One of the things I love about this blog is your focus on the idiocy of the system.
But every once in a while, we need to look at the idiocy of the kids & the parents.
Not all of them; in no way do I mean that, & in fact it may be only a few, but an annoying, loud few.
I have given an in-class open-book quiz on the material we read aloud in class the previous day & had kids fail. With blank pieces of paper. Well, blank until I walk up to them, give them a pen & paper, show them for the 70th time where to write their name, remind them of the book we’re studying, open the book for them, turn to the page, pick up the book off the floor after it is dropped, tell them how to spell “quiz,” & so forth.
Half the students are done w/ number 5 when a kid w/ a blank piece of paper asks again can he go to the bathroom, expresses indignation when told to wait until the is done, drops his book, laughs, picks his nose, & is taken aback when reprimanded.
Yep, a 15-year-old who plans to go to college.
I joked years ago that my students should get school shirts that read “Entertain Me” on the front and “Now” on the back. I honestly let them know that no job is pure fun all the time, and an important life lesson comes from making better out of worse, and if the “worst” is having to read or (gasp) “re-read” a book, they’re well off.
Thanks, again, teachbad, for providing me a place to laugh & complain.
Man Teachbad,
Sounds like your management is awful. The terrible irony and hypocrisy is that they tell you all about how you should be managing a classroom and have the students engaged and ‘bought in’ at all times. Look at them! They have NOT A CLUE how to manage teachers or get buy in from them. How do these people end up in positions of power within a school? It’s appalling. It’s incredible that whatever district you work in hasn’t through some power of oversight figured out what these idiots are up to. I mean seriously, it doesn’t take a scientist to figure this shit out.
All my best teachers in middle and high school that molded me into a great student and gave me the tools to succeed in college were seasoned veterans who didn’t play these educational games. They didn’t post shit on the walls for no reason, they didn’t bullshit me, they didn’t put a huge emphasis on standardized test scores, and you can be damn sure they didn’t spent all afternoon documenting parent phone calls. And you can also be damn sure they didn’t have 95% attendance. or a 90% passing rate. They would have failed the shit out of anyone that didn’t do the work and not worried about the %s. They were quirky men and women who had a love of life and their content and wanted to share it with others.
How did this all get lost? When did the robots take over? How can they be stopped?
Eggs–
You rock. And give me faith…if only in nostalgia.
MTB
Aiyyeeee.….I’ve also had a hell of week but honeslty it sounds like yours was worse. Thanks for the great post once again. Hopefully tomorrow will go quick and you can recover over the weekend.
My observer last week gave me a lower rating because I didn’t circle back to the standard enough…oh yea and the almighty essential question. What the F.…she was in my room all of 10 minutes and I ticked off on my fingers the 4 times I brought up the standard and related it to what they were learning.….BUT I did it in kid language which I suspect she didn’t understand.
I sent her a note asking for detailed specifics on what I should have done.…and reminded her of exactly what went on in that class and all references to the standard. Trick # 1 is to nip this garbage in the bud early…I’ll be curious to see what she comes up with but I bet my next eval. is perfect.
anyhow…again rest up this weekend so you can face these idiots once again next week.
Ellie
Last year my master educator marked me down (2 out of 4) because my written objective was too simple. Never mind that I had a fourth grade student read it aloud, I explained it, checked for understanding, demonstrated it (art demo) and the students clearly showed me the evidence in their final artwork (which apparently doesn’t factor into an art teacher’s evaluation). The master educator rewrote the objective (the right way!) in 3 sentences using ed jargon. I would have lost the students after the first sentence.
This markdown was the difference between the effective and the highly effective category for me personally. I am a new teacher so I was too intimidated to speak up for myself. I’m more confident this year and plan to push back if needed. Like you, Ellie, I will try to nip it in the bud.
Nip carefully but nip it if you can. It will build your confidence even more and young teachers don’t get many opportunities for that. They need every opportunity they can get.
Mine was the same thing…operational instead of fully. When I asked around everyone got the same. I suspect the goal is to show she improved us in the next evaluation.…i.e. real goal: keep her job and stay out of the classroom. I’ve yet to get a response back on my request for details.…bet I won’t. So next time I see her I’ll directly ask and hand her my note again.
Ellie
the 23-year-olds are fed up, too…
Uh-oh
I tell them I have been told I am a crap teacher for 9 years, and they have not managed to fix the problem. How the heck do they expect me to fix 300 (don’t ask) teenagers when they can’t even fix one adult?
Now that is HILARIOUS!!!!!!!!!!!! Thank you for that!
I, too, am a shittier teacher every week I work. In fact, at 1:12 this afternoon I believe I actually felt myself get shittier—I don’t remember why, but I just had that feeling. Back in the day when I was a mechanic, I had a sticker on my toolbox that read: “You can measure my concern in micro-give-a-shits.” This applies to my concern over being a shitty teacher today. When the standards used to measure our effectiveness are based in some la-la-land horse-shit, I truly feel blessed with the gift of cynicism. I would still want my child to have me as a teacher. I would want my son or daughter to have Kal Varnson as a teacher (I sometimes wonder if they might have actually had him, but his identity is impossible to determine). I would want them to leave his class and go to Mr. Teachbad’s room for their next period. My general rule is to only respect shitty teachers the same way I have come to respect more shitty students than good ones because they don’t melt helplessly into the distorted mold of success. The systemic problems, chronic ineptitude of administration, dysfunctional institutionalized misguidance, and general cluster-fuck that is American education should breed a healthy cynicism in any critically thinking human organism. “Good” teachers are those who fall in line and concede their dignity, better sense, and principles for the mere promise of a job. “Shitty” teachers constantly ask of themselves what we should be asking of our students. We want them to question those moments when they feel certitude and to arrive at relevant questions rather than bullshit answers. It is the opposite of what we are rewarded for in our present system. I’d rather dig fucking ditches than lay down and listen to my soul wheeze to death as I pretend that engaging students in test prep is somehow significant to anyone besides the suits and their sycophants who pop their greasy heads in my room to inspect my efficacy.
Keep being shitty. Keep believing you are shitty. Keep reassuring yourself of your shittiness. Embrace your shittiousness (shitoscity?). It should be worn as a badge of honor. In a world of assholes, it’s the hemorrhoids that stick out. My guess is that our students will share one memory of their experience with people like us. They will remember that most of their teachers knew stuff, a select and insightful few UNDERSTOOD stuff, and even a smaller number urged them to know the difference. If we are to teach by example, this is the one that counts. We shitty teachers rock. Gotta go…I’m working on my word wall.
“It is my responsibility to always be engaging the child, rather than the child’s responsibility to learn how to shut the fuck up, think, and do something he or she doesn’t love once in a while.”
Amen, brother. Nail on the head.
Funny blog.……
Been teaching for 30 years and while I have thought at times I was pretty good, I in reality, pretty much suck. Never mind the kids are idiots, the parents think their kid do no wrong, the administration is pushing the next great curriculum. ( The 12th in 30 years.)
The thing that brings a smile to my face is I can retire at Christmas if I wish. Until that I decide, I am going to keep faking them off, and use those 100+ personal days I have built up over the years.
I love that “95% attendance” is YOUR problem, and that communication with 100% of parents is also a factor in making YOU a good teacher. Because none of that is on the parents at all, right?
I work in an urban Detroit school, and I buy into the idea that good teachers can still be good teachers (and need to be good teachers) in rough environments. But it’s impossible to place ALL the responsibility on us. We can make lessons engaging, we can find creative ways to help kids catch up, we can try to be positive influences for kids with truly scary home lives, we can burn ourselves out going the extra mile for kids and families… but many things are out of our control. We can try to counterract any negative influences from student environments, but it’s naive to think that we can pretend those influences don’t exist. For instance, if the kid isn’t at school, there isn’t much we can do. Anything we can do. If your butt isn’t in the seat, it doesn’t matter how fabulous my teaching is.
–A prematurely disgruntled 20-something
Thank you for reminding how grateful I am that I quit teaching in July. And thank you to all who continue to teach. I feel for you.
Amen to that. Leaving was the best thing to happen to me. Now I hear the RIF rumors are starting again and I feel *none* of that tension.
It’s interesting though, the response I get when I tell people I will never go back to the classroom. It used to be surprise and a puzzled look. Now it’s, “I don’t blame you.”
I was chatting with a fellow ex-teacher who had taught for 15 years and got out four years ago. For financial reasons, he’s thinking of getting back in. He told me he’d sent out resumes but was relieved he hadn’t gotten any bites yet. What other profession causes this kind of anxiety? How has it gotten to this point?
I teach High School English. It’s a nightmare
With so many teachers feeling the same way, how is it that we still allow our schools to get like this? The cycle will just make things worse in the long run. I feel like we need to act as a group of concerned teachers and fight back, but I don’t know how. I think its funny that the one group that has the most knowledge of what the classroom is like and what works has the least input as to what should be taught. I am glad I found this blog becuase I truely thought that I had a minority opinion.
Who ever said do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life should be shot.
The squeaky wheel gets the grease.
Parents do a LOT of squeaking.
This blog is awesome! I can’t believe you are voicing thoughts that have gone through my head countless times each day! It makes me feel a little less alone in this hell-hole, aka my workplace.
I totally feel your pain. I teach in Texas, and we have to deal with the fundie morons on top of the idiot administration. I love what I do so much, but…I am starting to wonder what the fuck I was thinking becoming a teacher.
Frustrated English Teacher in Texas, I feel your pain. It is getting worse in Texas. I am like you, I really like teaching and the kids, but the education bureaucratic mess is driving me out of the business. There are so many people that are now in administration in this state and all looking for something to prove their worth, in order move to the next step on the administrative rung… Asst Supt.…Supt. of Schools in a larger better paying district…going to work at ESC 4, or 12, or 18 etc. as a “consultant” making $95,000 a year performing worthless workshops on the newest “curriculum.” Each rung for these administrators is completed by stepping on the back the classroom teacher. There are so many superintendents who go into one district, have the teachers hopping through hoops just to show their next school district what they have accomplished at their “present” school district. These people don’t care about the community’s kids, you know that, and I know that.….I hate to be a pessimist, but if you don’t have a large number of years in the system like I do, go do something else. In the long run, you’ll be happier.
I am also supposed to place standards on the wall, so that my 2nd graders will know what they are working towards and will “buy in” to it.
I do not place the standards on the wall.
They are 7 years old. They hardly know where they are most of the time. They are not yet (most of them) reading chapter books. They DO NOT CARE what the standards are. Standards are completely irrelevant to their lives.
I teach them to read books, to write, to do basic math. How is knowing that the standard says they will be doing XYZ going to make them learn any better? They are seven. I put work in front of them. They do the work. I check the work. If it’s good, I smile, if it’s bad, I help them redo it. Then I smile.
WHY do I need to take hours and hours of my time writing out these crappy objectives and plans that differentiate based on learning styles and blah blah blah? And for the love of god, how many different ways are there to spell CAT? If the simple way to teach it will do, why do I have to spend hours differentiating for some little kid who hasn’t learned to sit still for 5 MINUTES, because he really prefers to learn kinesthetically? Well, I prefer to teach vertically, have them sit their little asses down and listen for 5 minutes. It won’t kill them. I might kill someone, if I have to listen to one more parent tell me that Junior is brilliant but just has a different learning style.
(His learning style is to be as annoying as possible because it’s fun.) There are only so many hours in a day, and if I spend most of them writing down how I might teach because the kid might/might not understand the lesson, when am I going to actually have time to teach?
God, I’m ranting, but at least I don’t have to pretend here that I just live for the kids and have no aspirations for myself, I just want to devote my every waking hour to them because these little angels deserve the best of everything, and I only live to serve them and their entitled parents.
I like kids, but they are short, flawed human beings like the rest of us, only with worse manners. They deserve an education, and I deserve a life. We’ll have to meet in the middle somewhere.
I think we all identify. There seems to be an implication that either a) all the extra work to differetiate for everybody doesn’t take any time, b) a teacher’s time has no value to the teacher, or c) teachers actually have more time than nomal people.
The real answer is d) parents need to do their fucking jobs and then we can do ours.
I find myself each year having a little more of a don’t care attitude. When I first started teaching several years ago, I worked hard on my lessons and managing my classroom. Now I can have a student cuss me or threaten me and our administration will just send them right back into my classroom (what am I suppose to do with the student now). If the parents don’t start doing thier job, there is no way we can do ours. On top of all this, we decided to move from block schedule back to the periods. Every teacher 9–12 has to teach 7 classes back to back without any breaks (not even a planning period, that is 8th period, and there is always some type of meeting). A few weeks ago, our administrator said that we could not go to the restroom while our students were on the way to the lunch room. When in the hell do you want us to go to the restroom? I have kids from 7:30am until 2:37pm, and the only break I have is the 17 minutes we have for lunch. This whole profession has gone totally insane, and I think they have been just passing out the administrative degrees to anybody that wanted one. I know some that have not been in a classroom for six months. So how can these administrators tell me how to run my classroom? They don’t know how to run one themselves.
I am glad I found your blog. I have just created one myself and should have it up soon. The whole reason I created my site, was to find a place to vent.
Can I just say, seriously, THANK YOU! This is the kind of garbage that is going on in my world, and I am so disgusted. You made me smile and laugh tonight. I so needed that!
I’m glad I made you smile. That makes me smile and that’s the best part about writing this blog. Keep your chin up and keep your poop in a group. There are dark times ahead as we near the holidays.
I love your blog! I find myself nodding as I read and occasionally laughing out loud. I, too, entered the profession full of hope and dreams of making a difference, but it only took a few years of doing little other than class management (teaching? are you kidding?) to make me leave. I have some good memories of certain groups of students. Sometimes the group dynamics worked, and everything clicked. I would then drive home feeling like a million bucks, believing I had the best job in the world. Because truly, the act of actually teaching is quite wonderful. Unfortunately, little teaching gets done in the public system these days. Students never shut up, and I did not relish the idea of spending the rest of my life shouting and asking for silence, to no avail. All I can say is that I fear for the future because those mannerless kids will be out and running the world one day soon. Horrors.
I can totally relate to what you are saying, Elle. It has taken me nearly 2 years to realize that not much actual teaching goes on in my class. I feel guilty about the few students I let down on a daily basis because I spend the majority of my time redirecting their disruptive classmates. I have an abusive ED student (calls me “bitch” and “retarded”, punched my door) who is argumentative, does no work, is off-task every minute disrupting my teaching and engaging others in inappropriate behaviors. My good students say they feel sorry for me and in fact asked just yesterday if I go home every night to a drink or two. They said I needed it with what I have to deal with and were totally sympathetic. The real travesty is that THEIR education is being compromised. This ED student is repeatedly sent back to class without an aide or medication. Because of his ED status he can’t be expelled. He wouldn’t last a week in MC public schools and yet in DC we tolerate it and have to move mountains to transfer these students to a place where they’re better served. But I do have my good days where I feel like my students benefited from something I did well. That’s what keeps me going. And also this blog. Thanks for putting yourself out there Mr. Teachbad.
Ellie’s advice to nip things in the bud is good, but be careful how you do it. Once you get a reputation as someone who questions their bullshit…
…it’s all over.
What? What does this cryptic comment mean?
–you’ve quit
–you’ve been fired
–you won the lottery, so…
–it’s the Thanksgiving weekend, so it’s all over until Monday
–you’re tired of the blog and IT’S over
Tell us, or I won’t enjoy my turkey dinner! And it’ll be all your fault!!
No, Mr. Teachbad, you can’t just tell me ‘it’s over’ online. At least have the decency to.…..
Oh, wait. That’s for someone else.
But really, tell us WTF’s going on!
You think I know what’s going on?
I hate to tell you Hannah, but your ED student would in fact last longer than a week in MCPS. The problem you are describing is happening on a national scale. I can think of three teachers off the top of my head in affluent districts including myself who are struggling with students that do not belong in a regular education setting, and are robbing their classmates of precious instructional time on a daily basis. The way the law is written, the regular classroom is a holding pen for as long as it takes for that student to go through all the red tape it takes to get transferred to a more appropriate setting, no matter how badly others are getting abused in the process.
As for Teachbad, my stomach is knots just reading your post. I am so happy not to be teaching there anymore, and so sorry they are putting you through this bullshit. When will they realize that the recipe for a good teacher is not throwing every good ingredient they’ve ever heard of onto a rubric and baking at extreme temperatures? Remind me to show you the MCPS rubric sometime. You will cry at how reasonable it is in comparison. I get so angry thinking about how they use to make me feel, and how completely off base they were about what good teaching is. All I can say is don’t let them get to you. Remember that they are unqualified morons who are allowed to abuse you because the principal is a coward. It’s like a screwed up scene from Monty Python or that sketch from You Can’t Do That on Television where the kids are prisoners in a torture chamber making jokes and trying to get out of the day’s torture. Instead of the community circle they should start the year with a ceremonial bootlicking. The whole thing is grotesque and completely absurd.
Hey Teachbad, did you know that this idiocy is now being exported.I teach EFL in Israel and they are now making us do that rubric thing and they want to introduce the Higher ORder thinking Skills garbage terminology in to Literature taught in a Foreign Language when our kids don’t read books in their native language, it’s insane. The admin robots have most definitely taken over. How do we get them back to their planet?
Also the point you make about having to entertain these “little darlings” whose only concern these days is the latest game on their mobile phone, well you really said it all.
Keep writing because we are all with you ‚man.
Boy did this hit home! I’ve been an EFL teacher in Israel for 33 years. My Mom was a superb educator (got the plaque from the NY State Teachers’ Union as Teacher of the Year to prove it) for 45 years and anything I do right in the classroom I learned from her or from my own common sense.
I.E. Don’t tell the folks in charge, but when I taught 19 years in an inner city type school I had absolutely no discipline problems, ‘cuz I loved the kids and they felt it. I wasn’t afraid of telling them I loved them and hugging them. (As an Orthodox Jewess, I only teach girls so got no flack for that
I was flexible; used humor and NEVER gave homework for I knew they wouldn’t do it anyway.… So as long as they showed up with book; notebook and pencil/ pen and worked in class, that was fine.
It seems to me that annually we are getting far dumber and ruder pupils than ever before due to Facebook addiction. (Some time soon kids will be asking what a tome is ; what libraries are; etc.) And, instead of having EDUCATORS with experience like my former supervisor who successfully taught in Harlem, we have pencil pushing bureaucrats trying to tell us how to teach!!
Seems to me that educators such as Louanne Johnson of ‘Dangerous Games’ fame (If you haven’t read her book, ‘My Posse Don’t Do Homework’ check it out) and Frank McCourt of ‘Teacher Man’ fame would fail these ridiculous rubrics too, Mr. Teachbad. So you are in good company I’d venture to say!
“It is my responsibility to always be engaging the child, rather than the child’s responsibility to learn how to shut the fuck up, think, and do something he or she doesn’t love once in a while. This HUGE shift in responsibility away from students and families and onto teachers is a topic unto itself. It represents an enormous social capitulation and places an utterly unfair burden on teachers.” — Couldn’t agree more! I’m a first year teacher teaching middle school math. I have 5 classes: an eighth grade geometry class (advanced students) and four remedial math classes for students who failed the state assessment. I am supposed to magically bring these students up to par so they pass the state assessment in the spring! How can I teach division when they don’t even have the basic multiplication facts down?! And we can’t “make” them memorize the facts, God forbid! Oh my gosh. I would like to think I’ll teach longer than 5 years, but at this rate of ridiculous expectations being thrown at us, I may start looking for a different career path sooner than I would’ve liked.
Thank you for writing about what needs to be said!
You so pegged it with this one. OMG!!! When did it all start getting like this? Of course they don’t care about the children…if they did they would connect the fucking dots. A demoralized ME creates a shitty teacher. A shitty teacher means the kids get a shitty education. Oh, education. That’s not what we’re giving them anyway, is it? That isn’t what Pearson Education makes money off of anyway now is it? Silly me…getting education and the fucking “D” word mixed up.
What a stupid educator I can be sometimes.
We had to do self evaluations over the summer with our new principal. There were 3 categories we could fall in. I don’t remember the shitty category, but the 2nd was “proficient” and the 3rd “exemplary”. I’ve been doing this a few years, I thought I’d at least be proficient in several areas, maybe even exemplary in one or two. Well, once I looked at the big notebook that described each of the standards we were supposed to evaluate, I think I was proficient in two. And below in the rest.
How is that supposed to make me feel good going into the new school year? And, after reading what it means to be “exemplary”, I’m NEVER going to be exemplary, I’m not even going to be proficient in many things. Not until they pay me to teach one class and let me have the other six periods off.
My name is Not a Dog and Pony Show and I am and will continue to be a Shitty Teacher.
Here in Texas (although apparently not exclusively), we use the Teacher Advancement blah blah, or TAP. A PRIVATE corp funds performance based pay (which I may never see). The rubric runs 1–5, 5 being the highest, and I swear to God, we were told that “no one has ever seen a 5″ and video examples don’t exist. Really? How the hell did they come up with that? Surely “walking on water” is on the rubric!! I just insert their jargon into what I’m already doing… And that seems to be working; I got a 3.5! So… True question is, why is my boss lecturing me on teaching ELA to special pops when 1., she thought a child would “grow out of” autism… And told the parent that, and 2., Hasn’t sent even ONE email that shows a basic command of the English language?? Sorry… Ranting!
Keep your chin up! Education and administration are like the weather in Texas. It’ll change, and soon!!!
Hey, guys — been there, feel for you. But listen up — there’s light at the end of the tunnel. I’m now teaching religious girls and loving it. Ok, the classes are small, but they’re low level, yet they’re working, usually on task — amazing. And I can do fun stuff like enactments, tell jokes, ask them about their weekend. So unlike the pack of low level boys I had in previous years. They had me on the 3rd floor and one of them threw something down the stairwell — so the principal gave me a classroom between hers and the teachers room. There was a piano in the room and a bunch of boxes with checkers that after throwing at each other, started filling up the boxes. The room reverberated with noise. Oh, I wasn’t alone — the principal had two of us teachers to try and tame the barbarians. Well, I didn’t last too long there and transferred to another substitute job where everything was superorganized — but each teacher was expected to be able to discipline or what we call here to “handle” the students. My method of raising my voice to high decibels (I have a professionally trained opera voice) only managed to ruin my voice, thank goodness only temporarily, but did nothing to allow real teaching. But the day I was observed by the principal, I had observed my coordinator in action and copied her lesson almost exactly. The principal said that was the way to teach — to have a very structured lesson. That’s fine for grammar — but I could never read a story to them, as demanded by the coordinator. But, hey, I’m a good teacher. You see, I was teaching adults and they appreciated me. And now I’ve hit the jackpot — I’m teaching a small group of smart, motivated teenagers — writing — and right after the lesson they report to my boss how they enjoyed the lesson. Wish I could work full time at that school, but there’s no vacancy. So now I’ve got to try out at some full classes high school where the principal asks Can you handle discipline and I say of course and hand in my references signed by my friends…Oh, and the girls school also — no opening — but maybe with the help of Providence,…
It is a pity, that now I can not express — it is very occupied. I will be released — I will necessarily express the opinion on this question.
This blog is a Godsend.
In California, administrators are only required to have been teachers for 3 pitiful years. In fact, after two years they can apply to be a Teacher On Special Assignment (TOSA) which is a non-teaching position. After getting three years under their belt (because they couldn’t hack any more or didn’t want to) they are now in a position to be a principal or vice-principal. So…worst case (and it is NOT a rarity) veteran teachers or, hell, teachers with just 5 years under their belt are being professionally evaluated by someone with 3 years of teaching experience-who has no business evaluating anyone! Not to mention the ludricous other stuff they come up with and decisions about the entire school.
CHECK YOUR STATE LAW. See how many years teaching is required before you can become a principal.
Thank you so much for this post!!!
I along with 3 other teachers at my school were not asked back and we were not given any reason why…we all had satisfactory or above satisfactory evaluations, and our FCAT scores were wonderful, but we got a new administrator and since administrators can do what ever they want and not answer to anyone, we all got the shaft. We were all up for our continuing contract, so this extremely professional and ethical administrator chose to basically fire us instead of lock us into a continuing contract. I loved teaching because of the students, but this post just reminded me of all the reasons why I should be grateful that this outstanding administrator chose not to renew my contract. I would love to see the administrators evaluations…why don’t teachers have a say in their evaluations?
i hated teaching in my south Bronx public elem. I actually loved being a teacher, but I expected to much from myself, after 7 years I quit because my principal was bullying me. I was so happy and excited. Literally 3 weeks after I quit I came down with a chronic illness. I have horrible luck. Oh well. I still sep out of my door evey day so thankful I don’t have to go back to that shitty school.