After finishing Darling-Hammond's Flat World, the policy that could effect the most change in education, especially here in the Napa Valley, is #4 "Strong professional standards and supports". I strongly agree with the career ladder model that she describes in Ch. 9. The current system's message is "Those who work with children have the lowest status; those who do not have the highest." (pg.318) I have worked as a 50% TOSA for the past 2 years as an Academic Specialist and I felt this firsthand. Although I love the concept of teacher coaching, it still seems odd to me that it requires excellent teachers to leave the classroom. If teachers had the support they needed from teacher coaches with the 10 hours a week of joint planning time, I think real change could happen. I found the Benwood Inititative very interesting (pg.321-322). The idea of combining financial incentives along with creating collegial professional communities seems like a great beginning step for our district. Even in our relatively small district, we have high-need schools. Money alone would not be enough to keep high quality teachers because we all know that we need other teachers for support. Teachers at my school often comment about what a positive group of people we are who are always ready to help each other out. My school is poised to make the next step forward because we already have highly trained, passionate teachers but we have too much on our plates and not enough time to "digest" it together.
4 Comments
Brendan Galvin
7/6/2016 12:03:47 am
Why is it that teachers in this country are so low in so many different ways? I wonder where that comes from... I like the sound of the Benwood Initiative, but how would you make that a reality? Who gets to make those decisions? (sorry for so many questions) I enjoyed your comments.
Reply
Jenny
7/6/2016 12:43:53 pm
You make so many good points about the best teachers being out of the classroom coaching other teachers. How amazing would we all be as educators if we received 10 hours of high quality coaching a week!? I completely agree with you about the positivity of our staff as well as often having too much on our plates.
Reply
Kristin Drew
7/6/2016 01:02:09 pm
The comment about teachers leaving the classroom bothers me as well. To me, it seems that we don't have the time in the day/week/month in our schedules to do an excellent job. Time is a commodity, and it does not seem like there in enough built in time to collaborate as well as design curriculum. I have always tried to be efficient but feel like I rarely succeed at this- I guess that is why they call teaching a "practice" just like medicine!
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
Dana HandI teach Read 180 at Northwood Elementary School and I am passionate about reading (obviously!) In my "free time" I love hanging out with my 2 teenagers and taking our two dogs for long walks. Archives
March 2017
Categories |