I love the fascinating kids who surround me. They\u2019re so funny and so resilient. And they are without a doubt worth getting up before sunrise and putting in way too many hours a week. I mentor kids outside of school, and I\u2019ve developed lasting relationships with kids I taught more than a decade ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At my school, we eat with students in the lunchroom. I\u2019ve been with kids for four hours at that point and have four more to go. I\u2019d just like to talk to an adult for fifteen minutes while I wolf down a salad. We spend 10\u201315 minutes lining kids up in the hallway at dismissal and waiting until the entire school is silent. Try having that as your last interaction with kids before the weekend. Worst of all is supervising lunch detentions. Eating while pacing around the room eyeballing kids and silently daring them to throw another pea across the classroom? Very relaxing and conducive to good digestion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Teachers at my school design their own curriculum.<\/a> It\u2019s a massive time commitment and responsibility\u2014and a huge privilege. I get to teach kids whatever books I think they\u2019ll love. I spend tons of time every summer reading up on the research, and I seek out my own training opportunities. And I wouldn\u2019t change a thing about that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sometimes that\u2019s money. More often it\u2019s time. I never have planning at the same time as the exceptional ed teachers, so any co-planning we do has to take place outside of school. Same with my grade level team; our planning is so often taken by conferences, there\u2019s hardly ever time to explore cross-curricular connections that would really help our kids. And when we do have a teacher planning day, it\u2019s invariably a \u201cdata dive,\u201d where we talk about test scores all day and never address ways we can actually help the students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A kid came up to me this year and said, \u201cMy sister said not to worry that I can\u2019t read that well, because she says you taught her how to read.\u201d And dude, I totally did. I get kids who come in reading at a second grade level and they make three or four years of progress in my class. I take kids who can\u2019t write a sentence and teach them how to write coherent essays. And I\u2019m nothing special; teachers all over the place are doing this for their students. It\u2019s basically a superpower.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We give computer-based benchmarks three times a year, state tests every spring, and a variety of standardized measures of achievement in between. Every time, I\u2019m expected to analyze each student\u2019s performance and growth in stupefying detail and then differentiate activities based on Lexile level, language usage skills, vocabulary, and a plethora of other factors. Problem is, these assessments and the endless analysis that accompanies them don\u2019t actually tell me anything new about my kids. I already know which kids are low readers. All this accomplishes is putting competent kids in groups that are too low for them because they had an off day during testing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I draft former students as mentors. When I don\u2019t have lunch duty, I spend it listening to a kid talk about Marvel movies or helping a cohort of others apply to a scholarship for summer leadership camp. I\u2019m getting trained in restorative justice<\/a> so I can apply it in my classroom and, hopefully, my school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I can\u2019t pretend that yelling at kids to tuck their shirts in or punishing them for wearing the wrong color belt is preparing them for their future jobs. Who would willingly stay in a job where people treated you like that? Aren\u2019t we trying to give them options for the future, a chance at jobs where they\u2019ll be treated like responsible people? Should I really get bent out of shape if they whisper in the hall or if the line they march in to the bathroom isn\u2019t geometrically perfect? I\u2019m supposed to spend half my day tending to minutiae of student behavior<\/a> that has no impact on their well-being or learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I love my kids and their families, and even my administration most of the time. Differentiation and lesson planning are my jam. But the things I have to do that are completely unrelated to student learning and growth are killing me. The time I spend on \u201cdata dives,\u201d monitored bathroom breaks, and benchmark testing has to come from somewhere, and the other stuff I\u2019m doing is too important to give up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It comes down to horrible choices: Do I stop helping students apply to private high schools,<\/a> or do I miss my own son\u2019s school party because applications are due on Thursday? Do I stop giving long writing assignments that I have to grade so I can do more data analysis, or do I grade those papers at night and basically never see my husband or read a book again? The emotional weight of teaching is very real indeed.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n I shouldn\u2019t have to make these choices, and neither should anyone else. And it\u2019s easy to fix: Provide support for teachers and trust them to spend their time in ways that help kids, rather than assign busy work to make them prove they\u2019re doing their job. We love teaching \u2026 we just don\u2019t have time to actually do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reference: https:\/\/www.weareteachers.com\/teaching-extras\/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR0jAJr-P45iAokT-HW_B3cOW3sBOXDRGAADBfvxKaIJEByUFHZ6DIOoWTg#Echobox=1668196792<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I love time with my students \u2026 I love the fascinating kids who surround me. They\u2019re so funny and so resilient. And they are without a doubt worth getting up before sunrise and putting in way too many hours a week. I mentor kids outside of school, and I\u2019ve developed lasting relationships with kids I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs","category-educational-trends"],"yoast_head":"\n\u2026 but it would be nice to have the resources I need.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
I love watching my kids grow \u2026<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\u2026 but the constant documentation exhausts me.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
I love helping my students grow socially and emotionally \u2026<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\u2026 but enforcing meaningless rules is a waste of my time.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
I love teaching.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n