Teacher School Board Feedback
A local teacher spoke at last night’s board meeting and I’m cc’ing all teachers bc we all feel this:
———-
“which moved Student of the Marking Period off an administrator’s plate onto ours, weekly.
At the last faculty meeting we were asked to post objectives and write success criteria for every single lesson, in kid-friendly language, which is not part of the DTGSS Framework. We were told to enter extensive iReady math and ELA data into a grade-level spreadsheet. Data already visible in iReady. Staff are entering it a second time, by hand. Words Their Way too, which is already in DSC.
Nothing came off our plates. Not one thing. And not one minute was added to the day to do any of it.
You bought a reading curriculum before the pilot was half over. You didn’t trial anything against it. That’s not a pilot – that’s a purchase with a word in front of it.
And now we’re teaching a program that takes hours of planning to deliver well. Hours that do not exist. The presenters at yesterday’s PD confirmed that to me themselves.
You tell us to build relationships with our kids. You never asked what it would do for this district if you built one with us. You fill every minute of our day, then give us PD on relationship-building – to teach us something your best teachers were already doing before you got here.
And when you do ask us – survey, committee, this podium – most of us have stopped believing it changes anything. The decision’s already made. You’re checking a box. You do what you were going to do and count on nobody saying anything.
Some of us have students who beat the district proficiency rate by three and four times, every year.
Not one person has ever asked us how. Instead we’re told that telling kids we want them to hit a stretch target motivates them to hit it. Spend a day doing what we do and you’d hear how that sounds.”
———
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
More.
