Former #ssteacher take: There are so many great #resources and programs out there to help teachers w/ civics. We we have is a breakdown of #society & really a huge issue w/ how ppl & communities value teachers & schooling. What we really need is #time. We must STOP overwhelming@TNTP
#newteachers. We can NO LONGER assign 5 preps to teachers and expect good #practice. We are reaping what we sew. Lets face facts. We have 50% of teachers #leaving the profession by year 5. This is like #fastfood numbers. We have schools who have been told by #policyand #government that test scores matter in ELA/ Math/ Science (only). We ask overwhelmed #elementary teachers to teach EVERYTHING. We want schools to do #everything from #SEL to #DEI & make sure that children, who almost 40% live in poverty are #proficient on tests developed by companies that are paid $millions to create #psychometric tests on #learning. Yet when we try as a profession to do #PBL or #experiential learning, there is no budget. We want our schools to do everything when #resources via taxes have plummeted in the past 30 years and now, with the #economy, everyone needs a #sidehistle & #gigeconomy jobs. Young Teachers cannot afford to live, pay back #studentloans & folks who are #thinkingabout teaching question why they should be publicly abused #humiliated and treated like garbage. hear of #crisis in education recruiting, drops in #enrollment in ed programs, but I DO NOT BLAME #GRADUATES Our very soul as a nation is in jeopardy, & so-called leaders are #tellingtales & creating #falsenarratives. We MUST #changethenarrative b/c #thesystemisbroken. #Edleaders #goinvtleaders folks, demand #change Demand an #end. Stop the #abuse We have so much #waste! So many teachers w/ certification cannot find jobs. Really questionable people are #hired into systems. So many resources are purchased yet never used. So many children are #tossed away. WE must #dobetter! It failed. Bad. Why did an amazing company, founded by three OUTSTANDING intelligent people fail? Why did AWESOME company, founded by four creative genius fail?
What the heck? And why could I predict that the company was about to fail? Because, THERE BE DRAGONS! Conflict dragons, for sure, and really bad ones too! I saw different types of conflict emerging in the two companies I mentioned. They were really unaware of these scary, harmful beasts in their midst. So good at science, math, technology, and with extremely creative ideas, these teams did not see the beasts that would destroy, and their castle of an idea in the sky fell apart! The business was destroyed by conflict! There are many types of dragons, and conflict dragons are obnoxious. Fire breathing, scaled, and HUGE, conflict dragons are bent on attacking and destroying the company from without and within. The conflict dragon emerges when any type of resource becomes ready: *Praise *Bonus *Perception *Time *mental bandwidth Conflict dragons emerge out of amazingly beautiful eggs. These multi colored eggs are the foundation of companies! Ideas that are shiny, pretty, and fragile. The conflict emerges as the eggs crack, and leave the nest- in search of their own dungeons and ways. The conflict dragons may start small, no bigger than a small lizard, but the eat away at the company in small, almost un noticeable chunks, until at one point, the dragon is the size of a raging elephant. And from there, the conflict is in the open, always in the room (elephant or dragon in the room) and is hungry and feeds on problems. The problems grow, and become more terrifying, as now the snout is joined by the tail, and the claws in ways that can destroy the castle, or company. And the conflict dragon is hungry and greedy. The dragon claims your time, your energy and your resources. The dragon is willing to consume all in order to sanitate its hunger! So how to tame the dragon: call in your merry band of experts: CTJ Solutions LLC! We have the team to quest to tame that dragon, and to move the horde of resources back into use! Email me: [email protected] for details! Presenting on Monday: A Free Chapter from my @Edumatch Book Thinking About Teaching!
Twenty years…. That’s how long I have worked in education starting September 2018. After graduating a Teaching Social Studies 7-12 BA program at SUNY Fredonia’s school of education, I got my first job- at a rural school district of 240 kids K-12 that no longer exists near the Pennsylvania boarder with New York. Growing up in suburban Hamburg, near Buffalo, I was used to a graduating class that size. Now, I would be working with social studies students in 7th, 9th, 11th and 12th grade. Yikes. We were also in a block schedule as well- so this was really new to me. Blocking was never covered in college, so I had to learn on the fly. I was also teaching 4 different preparations, which in many suburban and urban districts would be against the contract! But in rural schools- you do what you have to in order to survive. So the worst lesson I ever taught was in the days before the Teacher Evaluation Rubrics. Lessons were evaluated by what ever instrument the school administrator and the union determined would be a good fit. In my school it was very narrative, so it was a time/action running record of what happened in the class. So lets begin the reflection into a really bad lesson. We had learned Madeline Hunter’s model of lesson planning in undergrad: Pre-opening, opening, Body, review, conclusion, assessment. This is a very structured form of a lesson plan, and for a new teacher, its especially good for keeping you on track. Except for one little problem. By February, I was overwhelmed with teaching four preps and six classes each day. It was too much. I wasn’t really lesson planning so much as identifying resources and listing them in the lesson plan sheet the district gave to us. Tired does not begin to describe the exhaustion I was feeling. Additionally, i had no mentor, as mine was out on medical leave, and many other teachers weren’t as forthcoming as they could have been- or I didn’t know they were offering help and I thought I was doing fine- after all, I was a member of the Education Honors society Kappa Delta Pi, and had graduated with Honors in Liberal Education and Summa Cum Laude honors on my degree. Arrogance and pride before the fall, I guess…. So- that Mid-winter day I showed two videos in my 72 minute block class to ninth graders in the Global Studies I class. These students were Regents track students who would need to take an end of Course exam next year while 10th graders. They would face 48 Multiple choice questions and three essays about the enduring themes of Global History. In our small district, every student was a Regents track student. Your section though was determined by when you attended Career and Technical Education at the local Board of Cooperative Education Services. Usually the AM section were the top kids in the school, and the PM section were kids who were not drawn to academic pursuits. I cannot even remember what those two videos were on. I had given directions verbally to my students to “take notes as you watch the video.” That was it. I popped the video in and let it play. Occasionally, I’d stop the video, or make a comment about what the program was talking about but that was it. Train wreck would be way too polite to describe how bad it was. So lets go through what I did wrong:
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AuthorOver 20 years experience in consulting for improvement. Lean and Six Sigma Certified. PhD in Leadership Archives
November 2022
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