Monday, November 30, 2009

Presto

It used to require brains and experience to become an administrator. Now, all you have to do is be able to pay for the masters and presto--instant administrative license. And, if you happen to be young and in the right place at the right time--presto--instant administrator.

So now, the young and inexperienced, with that paid for piece of paper, are walking into classes and telling experienced, senior teachers what they are doing wrong. These youngsters have barely gotten their feet wet in the classroom and have often not even taught the subject they are critiquing, but this is not stopping them from writing things that left unchallenged, could ruin the career of others.

No one, especially me, likes to be criticized but when the criticism comes from a master teacher, it is easier to take. My first supervisor was one of the evilest people I ever encountered but that woman could not only teach, she knew how to teach others to teach. Her words made me cringe, but I knew what she said was correct and I adjusted my lessons accordingly because while I did not like her, I respected her. Today, an administrator does not even have to be licensed in the area they are supervising. It is possible the AP never even taught the subjects he/she is supervising and are totally unfamiliar with the population of students he/she is responsible for. Yet, this is not preventing him/her from finding fault with the teachers that have been working in that department for years.

The saddest part of all this is not what is happening to the teacher but what is happening to the students. Their education and their care is being left to the ignorant and their education is suffering because of it.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is a commentary on the state of education today and just another way principals can get rid of older, more expensive teachers.

Anonymous said...

I seriously wake up in the middle of the night wondering how that person can be running such a complicated department. There's really no chance at all for success or improvement. No one respects her and all she does is inconvenience everyone for no reason.

teachin' said...

That's what bugs me most - that administrators with absolutely no experience in a content area are suddenly in charge of it. I feel like if that happens, they should at least have to take a couple of classes at the grad level in how to teach it and spend some time (maybe a week?) in the classroom of a master teacher of that subject (or ideally a few different people with different styles), observing how it's done.

Anonymous said...

a couple of classes or teaching one semester doesnt cut it. I have been teaching special ed students for over 15 years and I would never say that I knew how to deal with each and every classification and diagnosis. You have to live and breathe it and know the law as it changes.

Kim said...

Yep, I teach science. My supervising AP? Former phys ed teacher. Doesn't even pretend to know anything about science, and can barely be bothered to do his job. Last year he only observed two out of the 15 teachers in my department, and fudged the rest of the evaluation forms.

Pissedoffteacher said...

Better no observations than ones that are set up to ruin a person's career. But, better still would be to have APs who know what they are doing.