Should teachers pay for their own lesson plans? Would teachers pay for their own lesson plans?

Even if they were only two bucks a pop?

Okay, on one hand, as teachers, we already pay for so many of our school supplies that adding another $2 to the fire here and there doesn’t seem to bother me much. (As long as the materials were of high quality.) On the other hand though, if the school site isn’t to be expected to pay for the educational resources I use in the classroom, what the heck are they paying for, the rent on the building?

Is my district just a landlord with a whole lotta goofy, bean-counting, bubble test rules? (Don’t answer that.)

Maybe I’m just employed under the barbershop model whereby I work at a station but I am required to bring my own scissors, hair gel and blow dryer in order to do my job and they’ll provide the toilet paper in the restroom, but it will be the cheap, rough kind. Free, but grainy, a devil’s compromise if ever there was one.

Sure would be nice if I knew the terms of our fiscal agreement on these matters though, wouldn’t it?

I mean really, what is my school supposed to pay for? And what should I be expected to pay for? And where is it written what is what so that there is some transparency to the process of all of this?

And how come after all these years as a teacher I still really do not know the answer to this stuff?

Is this like one of those “need to know” matters where I don’t have security clearance that’s high enough to be welcomed into the loop?

What should they buy, what should I buy and why-oh-why does the thought of all this always make me want to sigh, cry and kiss this job “goodbye”?

So here’s a fear I have about national standards. I think it’s going to create too much of a checklist system.

For example, I will be given a national standard to teach. I will teach it.

Then there will be a test. Scouring over the data from this test will be on a checklist of “tasks to do” for my school site administrators.

This data will be collected because collecting this data will be on a checklist for school site administrators. Then they will send it on.

Which, of course, will be on a checklist that someone sends to the district. Then they will send it on.

Which, of course, will be on a checklist that someone sends to the county. Then they will send it on.

Which, of course, will be on a checklist that someone sends to the state. Then they will send it on.

Which, of course, will be on a checklist that someone sends to the federal government. Then they will send it on.

Which, of course, will be on a checklist that someone checks at the level of the federal government.

And then, the federal government will look at all this data. And they will provide feedback on their ascertained checklist. Then they will send it on… which, of course, will be on a checklist.

Then they will send it on to the state. Which, of course, will be on a checklist.

Then they will send it on to the county. Which, of course, will be on a checklist.

Then they will send it on to the district. Which, of course, will be on a checklist.

Then they will send it on to the school site administrator. Which, of course, will be on a checklist.

Then they will send it back to me, the teacher. Which, of course, will be on a checklist that they expect me to check.

And what will that check actually tell me?

Something preposterously obvious that I am sure I could have already informed anyone along the chain of checklists if ever they had bothered to 1) ask me or 2) trust my professionalism.

Is this the new world?
Is this the current one?
Is it just me or are American schools becoming more and more dystopian?

The Checklist System, A Banquet of Preposterous Beauty

Let’s be honest… to a quite certain extent America is have a crisis of administrative leadership in our schools. It’s the unspoken calamity. People blame teachers for all that is wrong but the truth is our nation’s principals and vice principals are woefully under-prepared and under-resourced to do their jobs… which really is all about empowering me with the ability to better do my job.

Look at my school, for example. We have only 1 principal and 3 VPs in charge of nearly:
-4,000 students
-175 teachers
-15 counselors
-at least 50 – 75 other “classified” employees.
(These are ballpark numbers; they keep the real numbers under wraps around here for some reason and year to year I never know what’s really what. Plus things are always in flux. One year we were near 5,000 kids. This year, due to budget cuts, we are looking at losing 18% of our teaching staff. Ya just never know what’s what.)

Of course, the responsibilities for my administrators above don’t even take into account the requisite interactions with the teacher’s union, parents, other principals, conferences, meetings with the school board, the district personnel and on and on with which the P and VP’s must deal. Like these administrators even have a prayer of being able to successfully navigate all of the discipline, grades, budgets, emergencies, proms, politics, sporting events, meals, tardy sweeps, staff meetings and so on.

In a word their assignment is “untenable”. Truly. If you look at all that our school site administrators are asked to do, it’s simply not possible for them to be able to accomplish everything we are asking them to accomplish — especially if we want them to accomplish their mandates excellently well. Crud, I never thought I’d say this as a teacher, but I really think we need more warm bodies in the administrative game because with such limited resources leading our schools, how in the world can we truly be expecting them — or us — to flourish? Of course, flourish is a word that they we will all pay lip service to but let’s be honest, when we view school site administrators, we kinda get the feeling that they are merely hoping to survive, to navigate this unmanageable ship through a rocky sea without losing too many passengers to the wild waves.

Some, we know will be lost. But c’est la vie, right. There’s always next year.

And oddly enough, I like my principal. And the VP’s. They are not bad people… they are just swamped, handcuffed people who are overwhelmed, overworked, overtaxed and under-resourced. I mean, when I see that 250 teachers were axed by Rhee in DC, I gotta wonder, were these folks given support, encouragement, training, clear expectations, adequate interaction with principals and school site administrators before they were cut loose? ( I can only guess what Rhee would say. But what would the teachers who work with — not for — with Rhee say.)

If our educational ship is sinking, doesn’t a look deserve to be given to the performance of each school site captain? I mean ya can’t blame the rowers if we crash into the rocks?