making changes

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Home : 2002 : July : 16

making changes
By Cathy-Dee

This is often the most difficult part of being a new teacher.

Unfortunately you are in a difficult spot. While it would be great to just say, do it your way because you feel it would be the best for your students, I'm
sure you also want to maintain a good working relationship with this vice-principal.
Are you able to talk with her? Perhaps write out a plan (include her idea of the tapes but reduce the time - perhaps make it into a center type activity rather than full class). Show her all the different ways you would introduce vocabulary to your students - how you will assess them, etc., Tell her

you are really excited to try some of these things that you learned in your training and you understand that the students really need to come up in their vocabulary skills. Suggest perhaps that you try it this way with your schedule until the end of January and do major assessments at that time to see how the students have progressed. And if at the end of January they are not showing as good of growth as they should be, then you would increase the amount of time they would listen to the tapes, etc.,

If she really fights you on this, I would then let her know that you plan on passing your idea by the Principal as well because the current plans contradict so much of what you were told and learned in your training. Then go and see the Principal and let him see what you have planned. And I would question her decision to remove social and science from the classroom. I'm wondering what the school district would have to say about that as in most districts it would be mandatory to teach those subjects. You may want to bring that up as a question as well.

The main thing here is that she is the vice-principal not the principal. So she most likely does not have the power to have you released at the end of the year. And if your kids do well and do come up in their scores with vocabulary using your methods the Principal is going to be happy with what you are doing. He may not be totally aware of how much influence the vice-principal has on the classroom teaching.

And I fully agree with your assessment on the situation. Her methods are not going to improve test scores for those students. Listening and practicing word drills for 2 hours a day will only serve to bore the students and create classroom management problems.

I guess my last thought on the situation would be this. I find that if you approach someone like your vice-principal (with all her years of experience) in a way that makes it seem that you are more "wondering" about trying new things, not that you think her way is not good or won't work, chances are she'll be more willing to listen. Usually problems occur when the other person feels that you are critizing what they are doing or thinking. So perhaps do some internet searching on articles about increasing student's vocabulary, etc., And then when you ask to meet with her show her the articles, etc., and use them as a bridge to bring up your ideas.

Good luck with this.