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I am a classroom teacher who loves working with my students. daily, yearly.    What limits, frustrates and undermines the dynamics of the classroom are all the administrators who put in their required three years or so of classroom "teaching" and  then become the major obstacles to classroom teachers.  For 35 years now I have yet to find one administrator who understood and made a commitmnt to students and teachers.  They are the highly paid middle-managers who CYA so they can climb up the ladder.  Their loyalities are never with the teachers but rather with the "good old boys/and girls" whose major purpose is to maintain control, to limit and undermine teachers.  It's power and control that they want, not working with students and teachers.

If the system would focus on getting rid of ineffective, power-hungry and incompetent administrators not only would we save bilions of dollars nationally, we would have the resources to give directly to studets.  Adminstrators always say "it's for the good of the kids" but that's bunk.  Their focus again is on not making waves, not making supportive and educated decisions and sitting in meetings denouncing teachers.  If they were so "dedicated" they would be in the classroom, not the office or central or on the golf course scoring points with other like-minded jocs who couldn' stand being in classroom and doing the day-to-day work of motivating, teaching, preparing, planning, reflecting, grading/assessing and the myriad of hours such dedication to students requires.  They could not take the stress that being a great teacher demands, could not accept the limited financial pay for the long, long days,months and years, and they could not find purpose in being a classroom teacher--the very heart of a school.  Instead, they don the cloak of "leading teachers and students" into what?
 

DebbieL, Ph.D. (high school classroom teacher for 35 years, and I hope 30 more!)

posted 2 years, 7 months ago
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We don't need so damned many clogs that most adminstrators tend to be in order to reach high standards, to hold students and teachers accountable, to help kids see their tremendous gifts and potential each and every day! We need experienced teachers who KNOW intimately the valleys and mountains of being in the classroom daily as facilitators and connetors.  We don't need these highly paid  "walk through pretenders" who assume they know literacy, pedagogy and what helps students learn and understand.  Put in veteran teachers, English teachers, who grade and assess, who make literature and writing, listening, speaking and understanding the strong foundations every student must have in order to be able to achieve their potential and dreams.  We know how to manage time, we know what works and doesn't and we know from EXPERIENCE that administrators rarely support and help because they ran from the classroom after a few years and decided they had "more important work to do":  inflict as much chaos on teachers as they could.

What doesn't work?  People who think leadership is only in the domain of administrators, who think they deserve the big bucks and year-round contracts for making a few decisions that classroom teachers effectively, compently and creatively make hundreds of times a day!

If you want to "lead" stay in the classroom and do the hard work each day.  Then maybe, teachers will be supported and not blocked, be listened to and not merely tolerated and then too, administrators will have some credibilty as educators.  We have more than we need of roadblockers and incompetent meddlers; what we don't have are folks who know intimately the struggles and succcesses of being classroom teachers and who knowhow to be servants of the educational process:  supporters of kids and teachers!  Stop sending in former coaches as educational leaders--it's an oxymoron!

posted 2 years, 7 months ago
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