Get Schooled

By David

August 18, 2005 02:35 PM | Link to this

Woe is me, I’m a P****** Paul. I need to change!! Boo hoo, I see the errors of my ways…

Wait-a-minute… I’ve spend 13 years teaching chemistry and physics to teenagers. I’m creative. I try new things every year in hopes of getting students to learn more. When something works, I add it to my repertoire for future classes; when something doesn’t work, I throw it away. The “teachers” who are presenting these “new ideas” have usually been teaching 6 years (or less) and only teach the “top students” assigned to them by helpful administrators. Throwing a book at a “top student” and going off into the corner and sleeping works with these kids.

When I first started teaching, I had a teacher with 10 years of experience tell me what I needed to do to be successful. He showed me every thing I was doing wrong. It only took him 5 minutes of watching my class to notice every error I was making - and he did it every day. I went home every day depressed about my lack of skills. The next year he was assigned a class like mine instead of the top students he was used to teaching. After 4 weeks, he came to me and asked me how I was succeeding with my kids. The shoe was on the other foot then.

I especially love the way these “staff development teachers” use analogies to get their points across. This one - Wise Wanda, etc, is pretty good, but the best one is the “speedboats - tugboats - rocks and shoals” analogy. You know, the creative teachers are the speedboats - always trying new things and jumping from task to task trying to learn new and creative ways of doing tasks. Then there’s the tugboats - these guys are sturdy and stay in the middle of the channel and pull everybody along. They’re slow, but they do get the job done. Then there the rocks and shoals - these guys subvert every new idea. They end with, “Which one are you?”

Actually the analogy for new teaching tactics is more appropriately “Army scouts, Infantry, and Officers.” These scouts go out and try and find a secure way through the jungle. The infantry follows them and gets all shot up when the scouts’ path is just plain wrong. The scouts go out another way and the infantry blindly follows again. Yep, they get shot up again. After about 4 or 5 times of this behavior, the officers shoot the scouts as bad scouts.

I play the role of officer, and I play it to the hilt. Kids haven’t changed in the last 100 years. They still don’t look to the future anymore than older generations did. Procrastanating teen-ager is a redundant term. Boys put little girl’s pigtails in inkwells in the last century. The more things change the more they remain the same. What has changed is our willingness to tolerate misbehavior. I haven’t seen any new teaching tactics that haven’t been used before by someone else older.

Teachers use tactics that are successful for them. What works for one teacher may not work for another. People should be suspicious of the “one-size-fits-all” teaching tactics that promise success for all students.

Think about it. What other professions would take an individual and throw them into “the fray” with no back-up? What other profession puts a professional in charge of a large number of other subordinate individuals and expects - from the first - this professional to modify their actions so that every subordinate succeeds? And all by themselves? Ans: none. The Army puts a non-com in charge of 4-5 soldiers. We have up to 28 individuals that we’re individually responsible for. What skills would you expect that professional to have? Ans: Strong-willed, confident, creative, willing to take a challenge, and likes to work alone. And you’re surprised those individual believe they know more than someone with less experience?

By hello, there

August 19, 2005 10:11 AM | Link to this

I, too, am a P****** Paul. I resent staff development that is just a rehash of EDU101, it is a waste of my time. Every year, they give us more and more paperwork to do, then they steal our planning periods with this garbage.

No one has ever answered the question, “these things all seem really interesting, but how can I find time to do them and still teach what the state of Georgia says I must teach?”

By william

August 19, 2005 12:40 PM | Link to this

It seems like a lot of these “important” meetings only serve as a way for some central office personnel to justify having the job that they have. I have seen the Pauls of the education world turn into central office personnel who are deeply offended by the people who act the same way that they did before they were promoted to their highest level of incompetency. I understand the necessity of meetings/trainings, but I may never see the usefulness of spending time on things that can be handled without a group gathering. I am the one who sits as quietly as possible, speaks when it is necessary to provide appropriate input, and then gets out without prolonging the “vital” meeting.

By Peter Rbless

August 19, 2005 04:46 PM | Link to this

To tell the truth….I am not really clear on what the heck “Wise Wanda and P****** Paul is about.

But if we are talking about another “Quality” program…then it just makes me laugh. I used to work for a large manufacturer in Dalton. Every other year some “Quality” nutcase would come up with some silly program that we all had to join in.

One minute you were training to be a “Black Belt” the next year a “Green Belt, then the buzz was “Quality Pro” and the list went on and on. It really got silly. (I hope some of the management read this so they know just what a true waste all these silly programs are.)

I love my job now. All they expect you to do is your job and do it well. No time wasted on silly meetings….no “measurement goals”, no tracking “non conformances”…..what a bunch of silly wasteful crap. But few had the guts to tell the big wigs how silly this crap was. Those that did….like me….found other jobs and I am glad I did.

By David

August 19, 2005 04:57 PM | Link to this

William: I wish I could do what you do, but when I hear that mindless drivel, I see red and can’t just let them get away with it. I just read another article by a PAGE bureaucrat in PAGE ONE. In it she said that Professional Learning Communities REQUIRES “teachers to take responsibility for students’ learning.” Isn’t that a hoot? Next, I’m going to be RESPONSIBLE for their weight gain because they’re not active enough, and RESPONSIBLE FOR their number of cavities because of eating too much sugar, and RESPONSIBLE for their pregnancies because… who knows why? It certainly can’t be THEIR responsibility, can it? Today, one of my students blamed me for her failure on a test because she didn’t know how to operate the calculator that she borrowed FROM ME because she forgot to bring one for her test today. She told me I was RESPONSIBLE for teaching her how to use it on the test. This bureaucrat probably agrees with her. I can’t keep quiet when things like that happen.