Baseball is like education. Hear me out! (lol)
Just like baseball, our education system is standardized with rules of play. We know what a school should look like. We also know how each team has areas that they recruit fans from. Just like schools. Our local is our reality. Baseball and education are further similar in that there is a farm system. Each major league baseball team recruits through the draft and free agency to build a team for the future. Schools do the same activity. Schools have future teacher clubs. But the also recruit. Not the high flying recruitment that major leaguers receive, but recruit still the same. Many school systems want the best and the brightest teachers. They also want experience teachers. So what happens? Larger schools across the urban and suburban areas usually find teachers and administrators from rural districts. The bigger locations offer more money or more perks. What is one perk of a larger school? A person in the urban or suburban communities can "get away" from the school. They do not need to shop in their local supermarket or grocery store. They do not need to, as part of a suburban or urban community, chance running into a student or their family at a local restaurant. A second perk is how many preps a teacher is assigned. It is very different in a rural district where a social studies teacher may have to teach all of the secondary social studies curriculum from grades 7-12, or all the science classes 7-12. Instead, a teacher in a suburban district or an urban district may be expected to teach 1 or 2 preps. This is a huge time saver, and allows folks to focus into their work and not have to do multiple preps every day. A third perk may be the spaces or technology. Some rural and urban schools were built almost 100 years ago. Suburban districts are often much younger, born after World War II and the baby boom. Suburban districts allow teachers a better hvac system. You do not understand how high quality HVAC can make a huge difference for quality of student experience. Schools in suburban and urban schools are often flooded with technology funding, and have provided computers, display boards, and more current technology than many rural schools, who may need better internet services than currently exist. A fourth perk is the ability to work with a team in urban or suburban schools. In many schools of size, a department exists, and local support networks like the Teacher Centers are large, have many resources, such as experts, and can invite in more professional expertise. For a novice teacher, a mentor in their own field can be made available , unlike in many rural schools, where just having a mentor is a win. Finally, as rural schools are often the stepping stones for administration, teaching, and other fields, the constant churn is like baseball. If you change leadership, or have a new team, your community experience the Tuckman rule for team development: forming, storming, norming, preforming, adjourning. I am sure you have a favorite team that had for bright shining moments an awesome group, that then broke apart. Some players retired, some left for more money or opportunity. Some were bought out (or cut) in order to reduce costs. In rural American schooling, our funding has dropped with huge consequences for programming since 2008. We have experienced two major recessions, and significant reduction in programming. Our students need stability. Our teachers need stability. We do not expect a pitcher to also play outfield or infield. The news media calls attention to this unique event. Yet in education, we ask a kindergarten teacher to be ready to do any elementary grade to 6th. We ask secondary teachers to be ready to teach any course in their content in grades 7-12. We ask principals, and superintendents to do three to five people's jobs. No wonder there is a revolving "call up" to suburban schools. People by human nature want to do good and do well. Right now, just as our career minor league baseball players have to "ride the bus" instead of fly on charter jet, our rural educators do not have what urban and suburban colleagues have. In order to make life better, lets give our rural teachers support, encouragement, and thanks. Let us as society ensure their work place is safe, up to date, and supportive of their professional work. Casey Jakubowski, PhD is a 20 year educator and author of 20 articles and book chapters published internationally and nationally. He has presented over 50 times on a wide range of education and improvement topics. He is the author of Edumatch (2020) Thinking About Teaching, and the new book Cog in the Machine ( Edumatch). He can be reached on twitter @caseyj_edu Comments are closed.
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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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