Feeling your pain

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Home : 2006 : November : 9

Feeling your pain
By klperry

Our district has teachers doing them too.
They don't offer extra pay, because "we're not paying people extra to do thier job" but they ask for volunteers to sit on the committees.
They say they want it to come from
the teachers so that they are realistically paced. I appreciate that, but I think they should offer a stipend for this work. I was on a committee that rewrote objectives for one subject area and I was lucky that the facilitator WAS realistic about time and other committments... it was just alot of hard work. THEN, we bring them back to our building after being approved and revised

and the teachers throw fits about what's on them! You just can't win! Anyway, I learned alot about our state expectations, and I feel the committee work was valuable to me as a classroom teacher but it was stressful while I was a part of the process.

On other note, I've also been troubled with a project that our district wants us to do as a grade level team. Our test scores are not good, at all, and they want us to create a week by week timeline of what we will do to improve them, but we don't get any direction. What should this look like? What kinds of things would you like us to do? If we knew how to get the kids to excell on the state tests, we'd be sure to do those things more often than once a week!

There's just so much pressure put on us...no one wants kids to be unsuccessful, on the state tests or otherwise. People are working hard. We are calling parents, modifying curriculum, working to differentiate learning, referring kids to professionals who may best help them (even when those professionals don't respond to us), sorting out recess drama (can you tell I teach upper elementary!), building community, teaching social skills, ETC. Taking away plan time when I have 29 students is just adding to what's difficult to begin with. There's also a concern that those in administration have lost touch with what is REALLY going on in a classroom. They're so quick to tell us to fix things...ugh!

I feel your pain and pray daily someone will start to understand where we are really coming from!