May 18 2008
Scheduling and Looking Forward
While considering a few different items I had a thought about schedules…
1) I was reflecting on the shift of my own thinking from concentrating on what I taught this year to how I would change my curricula for next year (which seemed to occur right around Spring Break).
2) I was thinking about how destructive to instruction it was for my district to postpone Spring Break for several weeks so it couldn’t interfere with our CSAP tests;
3) and I was listening to many teachers complain about the scheduling of professional development right before the start of classes each year in the fall–there’s no point in teaching us something we can’t integrate because we see kids in 48 hours, and PD in June is too late, teachers are all burned out.
The soup I made from all these ingredients is that we should have an extended Spring Break. The students would have an additional 1-3 days off each year during which the teachers would come back, refreshed and looking toward the next year more than the remainders of 4th quarter, and it would help us ease back into school after vacation. We could move the PD days from August without complaint.
I have suggested this, but each person I mention it to nods his or her head with a “Yes, that makes sense,” and an implied, “but it’ll never happen.” The teachers believe (accurately) that they occupy a separate universe from the District Administrators. Whereas most teachers consider how each decision will affect students’ learning, most administrators seem to consider… everything else.
Even in our faculty meetings, I am bothered by how rarely someone says, “How will this help our kids?” Although, as a newbie/probie/schmuck I concede that this thought may underlie many of the comments veteran teachers make, I also think it would benefit everyone to address it more explicitly.
Now that I’ve identified that problem–and now that I’ve been offered a position next year–I think that voice will have to come from me.
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A postscript to this post…
The last four weeks have seen multiple field trips, athletic events, and family trips that have reduced several classes to less than 50% attendance regularly.
It is very hard to teach something to less than half of the class without wasting a lot of students’ time. It would be good to reduce field trips (as much as possible) to a 2-3 week period during the term, preferably not in the last month of the school year. Teachers could expect it and lighten their instructional loads briefly, rather than trying to juggle repeated lessons throughout the semester.