A teacher’s burden: it’s not just the students; it’s everything else
Sometimes I wonder if I am a teacher or a secretary. In the first few years of teaching, my principal would observe my class every other day and he observed not just the teacher but the students as well.
Now I get an email from my supervisor to fill out a pre-observation sheet. Then after the observation, you guessed it, I got to fill out a post-observation sheet.
I understand I must do my job, but is this really going to make me a better teacher?
For some, it may work. I used to encourage my supervisor to come and observe me as much as possible. But now that I know it will cause me more work and tedious paperwork, I don’t want anyone to observe me.
As a teacher, you wear many hats, but now, the simplest things are made difficult, and if they are not difficult, they are tedious and mind-numbing.
It’s documentation without the action.
It’s style without substance.
There’s a famous quote and I don’t know who originally penned it, but here’s a paraphrase: “do not mistake activity as the same thing as accomplishment.”
As a twenty-two-year classroom teacher, there are good things happening in schools and good teachers doing great things with the leadership of some great administrators, but, the educational system is spinning its wheels because it is required to at least give the impression that it is accomplishing something, but it is not.
So, in the meantime between filling out pre-observation sheets and required student of the month nomination sheets and calling ( and logging) parents that 90% you will not be able to reach and collecting cell phones , occasionally, I actually get to teach.
I would request a personal secretary from the school district, but if you can’t tell who’s the teacher and who’s the secretary, why bother?
Let’s get back to the basics with old school discipline ( not corporal punishment) and help these students read, write and speak independently with creativity and critical thinking.
