Ideas in education
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Are teachers just interchangeable widgets? I just lost my teaching assignment of teaching humanities to seniors for the stated reason that we should all be able to teach in any position. I guess this is better than last year. Last year I was told in the middle of the summer that I would be teaching tenth grade. On the first day of school I was told I was teaching twelfth grade after all. Some teachers found out what they were teaching a class they had never taught before. They found out on the first day of school. The students are the ultimate victims of the widget philosophy.
Being a good teacher requires a tremendous amount of thought and design in preparation for the school year; on average I spend a couple of hundred hours even on the classes I have taught for years. In order for the material to be compelling to your students it has to be fresh and compelling for you.
The beginning of the year has its own significant requirements for preparation. Every day you are getting feedback from your new students. Their individuality combined with the chemistry of each class has an enormous effect on your ideas of what you are going to do every day.
The Widget Effect by The New Teacher Project takes a critical look at how we view and value our teachers. It is their view that, "a culture of indifference about the quality of instruction in each classroom dominates". I find this to be true.
They postulate that, "If districts could systematically identify which teachers perform at the highest level, they could use this information to inform teaching assignments, target teachers for teacher leader positions, and prioritize the retention of these teachers."
chronically low-performing teachers languish, and the wide majority of teachers performing at moderate levels do not get the differentiated support and development they need to improve as professionals".
The contours of this debate are well-known. One side claims that teacher tenure and due process protections render dismissal a practical impossibility; shielding ineffective teachers from removal in all but the most egregious instances. The other argues that the process provides only minimal protection against arbitrary or discriminatory dismissal, but that administrators fail to document poor performance adequately and refuse to provide struggling teachers with sufficient support.
A culture of indifference about the quality of instruction in each classroom dominates.
If districts could systematically identify which teachers perform at the highest level, they could use this information to inform teaching assignments, chronically low-performing teachers languish, and the wide majority of teachers performing at moderate levels do not get the differentiated support and development they need to improve as professionals.
Howeven 47 percent of teachers report not having participated in a single informal conversation with their administrator over the last year about improving aspects of their instructional performance.
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http://www.tntp.org/newsandpress/060109_TNTP.html
"On education, we will expand exchange programs, and increase scholarships, like the one that brought my father to America, while encouraging more Americans to study in Muslim communities. And we will match promising Muslim students with internships in America; invest in on-line learning for teachers and children around the world; and create a new online network, so a teenager in Kansas can communicate instantly with a teenager in Cairo.
On economic development, we will create a new corps of business volunteers to partner with counterparts in Muslim-majority countries. And I will host a Summit on Entrepreneurship this year to identify how we can deepen ties between business leaders, foundations and social entrepreneurs in the United States and Muslim communities around the world." - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/04/obama-egypt-speech-video_n_211216.html
