What we need is a leadership that does not fear alienating the CSA which Sandy Feldman once told me we can't go too far in attacking because they are "another union." I call bullshit - we need a union that will aggressively pursue these people and not shy away. I hope any group running in this election will put this issue front and center. "We will stand up against this type of humiliation of our members."
As a chapter leader, I liked a lot of supervisors. I also understood we were in an adversarial position. If you don't speak up against your adversaries, you're lost. Whether union or not, they're management and we're workers. That's more important than theoretical concepts. We cannot sit on our hands and let crazy supervisors ruin potential careers.
I can completely to relate to supervisors who berate teachers. I began teaching as a "permanent sub". Every day was a nightmare, and I was ready to quit. One miserable day the assistant principal opened my classroom door and quickly calmed the chaos . I was temporarily thankful. Before leaving he looked at me and said, (in front of the class) , "You don't know what you're doing. Find another job". I don't have to tell you how the rest of that day went.
Holy crap. I'd say it's really unbelievable that a supervisor would do that, yet I've known and seen supervisors who do much the same. In the papers, there's all this talk about terrible teachers, but no one seems to notice these toxic supervisors.
my first principal in nyc, without and self awareness or irony, at meetings with me about my teaching approach (I had taught for a number of years in connecticut and had extensive teacher training before ending up teaching in nyc), told me it was his job to change my attitudes and approaches to teaching to make me a better teacher right after he had told me that he had been an awful teacher who had had no idea how to control a classroom nor how to write a curriculum or lesson plan and had only taught for the minimum of three years before becoming an administrator because he had been so bad in the classroom and hated teaching so much
I never had a teacher in my nyc career who clearly understood what it was like in a "real" classroom, or who really know how to teach....when I retired in the middle of the second semester of a year, my principal took over my 9th grade special ed inclusion classrooms to "show the staff what real teaching was"...my special ed co-teacher informed me that the kids wouldn't listen to him, would do what he said, and included no scaffolding in the lessons and just expected the kids to keep up with the pace of work he set for the students...which they couldn't do...after finishing that semester, he apparently never taught another class again....
when I taught in connecticut as an english, theater, and public speaking teacher, my principal had been a science teacher...he told me he had been very good....and he just might have been...but he spent his entire time in his meetings with me trying to force me to plan my classes and teach my classes, and evaluate my student, as if my classes were science classes...for instance for my theater and public speaking classes I had units on self confidence and fear....he expected me to give multiple choice tests on those units and give grades to the students for those units (among other performing arts units) on whether they could list qualities and give definitions as that would show "objectively" whether the students understood the concepts like one would do in a science class...he didn't care, which he stated explicitly, whether students could become more self confident or deal better with their fear because that wasn't "statistically" measurable like in science....
I nodded my head and refused to change my curriculum or the way I taught and became a union fight...other young teachers gave in to him in subjects other than science, much to the detriment of their teaching and their students....
interestingly, he was principal for 11 years and then became superintendent of the school district and I happened to run into him 5 years after he became superintendent. he apologized to me, saying two years ago he had taken an intensive education summer workshop and had realized that everything couldn't be taught like science and that you had to understand each kid and teach the "whole" student.....just imagine how many young teachers who he destroyed in the 14 years before his revelation.
sorry...in the above I meant I never had a principal....not "a teacher" in the first line....I hate the anticipatory typing on my ipad which inserts things I'm not typing and if I'm not extra careful puts in things like the above into what I am writing that completely change my meaning
A lot of leaders follow fads, which change year to year. This year you need to write an aim in the form of a question and that will change everything. The next it needs to be in the form of a statement and that will change everything. Then you have to write SWBAT--students will be able to--and that will also change everything. You need portfolios. Portfolios are out. The students need to sit in rows/ circles/ pairs. There's always an answer, it's always The Only Possible Answer, and it's always discarded the following year.
I completely lived through that....the principals could never explain how the last fad which was being dumped, and which was presented as the holy grail of education, was now no longer the best thing ever, but rather the new thing was the best thing ever....one principal actually said to me, "if you believed, you wouldn't be asking these questions."...boy am I glad I retired before danielson had completely and totally become the be all and end all
Danielson won't last forever, but I can tell you, a written observation from a supportive supervisor is much more valuable than the barely comprehensible checklist. Most or many of us, post-Danielson. look at the rating, and if effective or higher, ignore the rest.
There has to be a way to get rid of bad admins and bad teachers. Some teachers refuse to or are incapable of improving. They actually make more work for those who are competent. Problem is admins just convince said teacher to transfer rather than going through the process of discontinuing.
All new teachers need an opportunity to learn from other experienced teachers. This was something I constantly fought for while I was a Chapter Leader. Intervisitations shouldn’t happen after a teacher receives a poor rating. They should be ongoing throughout the year. The most successful year I had was when my own colleagues invited me into their classrooms to help me during my first year.
What we need is a leadership that does not fear alienating the CSA which Sandy Feldman once told me we can't go too far in attacking because they are "another union." I call bullshit - we need a union that will aggressively pursue these people and not shy away. I hope any group running in this election will put this issue front and center. "We will stand up against this type of humiliation of our members."
As a chapter leader, I liked a lot of supervisors. I also understood we were in an adversarial position. If you don't speak up against your adversaries, you're lost. Whether union or not, they're management and we're workers. That's more important than theoretical concepts. We cannot sit on our hands and let crazy supervisors ruin potential careers.
I can completely to relate to supervisors who berate teachers. I began teaching as a "permanent sub". Every day was a nightmare, and I was ready to quit. One miserable day the assistant principal opened my classroom door and quickly calmed the chaos . I was temporarily thankful. Before leaving he looked at me and said, (in front of the class) , "You don't know what you're doing. Find another job". I don't have to tell you how the rest of that day went.
Holy crap. I'd say it's really unbelievable that a supervisor would do that, yet I've known and seen supervisors who do much the same. In the papers, there's all this talk about terrible teachers, but no one seems to notice these toxic supervisors.
my first principal in nyc, without and self awareness or irony, at meetings with me about my teaching approach (I had taught for a number of years in connecticut and had extensive teacher training before ending up teaching in nyc), told me it was his job to change my attitudes and approaches to teaching to make me a better teacher right after he had told me that he had been an awful teacher who had had no idea how to control a classroom nor how to write a curriculum or lesson plan and had only taught for the minimum of three years before becoming an administrator because he had been so bad in the classroom and hated teaching so much
That points to what I consider a fundamental issue in NYC. Anyone who needs to escape from the classroom has no business supervising teachers.
completely and totally agree....
I never had a teacher in my nyc career who clearly understood what it was like in a "real" classroom, or who really know how to teach....when I retired in the middle of the second semester of a year, my principal took over my 9th grade special ed inclusion classrooms to "show the staff what real teaching was"...my special ed co-teacher informed me that the kids wouldn't listen to him, would do what he said, and included no scaffolding in the lessons and just expected the kids to keep up with the pace of work he set for the students...which they couldn't do...after finishing that semester, he apparently never taught another class again....
when I taught in connecticut as an english, theater, and public speaking teacher, my principal had been a science teacher...he told me he had been very good....and he just might have been...but he spent his entire time in his meetings with me trying to force me to plan my classes and teach my classes, and evaluate my student, as if my classes were science classes...for instance for my theater and public speaking classes I had units on self confidence and fear....he expected me to give multiple choice tests on those units and give grades to the students for those units (among other performing arts units) on whether they could list qualities and give definitions as that would show "objectively" whether the students understood the concepts like one would do in a science class...he didn't care, which he stated explicitly, whether students could become more self confident or deal better with their fear because that wasn't "statistically" measurable like in science....
I nodded my head and refused to change my curriculum or the way I taught and became a union fight...other young teachers gave in to him in subjects other than science, much to the detriment of their teaching and their students....
interestingly, he was principal for 11 years and then became superintendent of the school district and I happened to run into him 5 years after he became superintendent. he apologized to me, saying two years ago he had taken an intensive education summer workshop and had realized that everything couldn't be taught like science and that you had to understand each kid and teach the "whole" student.....just imagine how many young teachers who he destroyed in the 14 years before his revelation.
sorry...in the above I meant I never had a principal....not "a teacher" in the first line....I hate the anticipatory typing on my ipad which inserts things I'm not typing and if I'm not extra careful puts in things like the above into what I am writing that completely change my meaning
A lot of leaders follow fads, which change year to year. This year you need to write an aim in the form of a question and that will change everything. The next it needs to be in the form of a statement and that will change everything. Then you have to write SWBAT--students will be able to--and that will also change everything. You need portfolios. Portfolios are out. The students need to sit in rows/ circles/ pairs. There's always an answer, it's always The Only Possible Answer, and it's always discarded the following year.
I completely lived through that....the principals could never explain how the last fad which was being dumped, and which was presented as the holy grail of education, was now no longer the best thing ever, but rather the new thing was the best thing ever....one principal actually said to me, "if you believed, you wouldn't be asking these questions."...boy am I glad I retired before danielson had completely and totally become the be all and end all
Danielson won't last forever, but I can tell you, a written observation from a supportive supervisor is much more valuable than the barely comprehensible checklist. Most or many of us, post-Danielson. look at the rating, and if effective or higher, ignore the rest.
There has to be a way to get rid of bad admins and bad teachers. Some teachers refuse to or are incapable of improving. They actually make more work for those who are competent. Problem is admins just convince said teacher to transfer rather than going through the process of discontinuing.
All new teachers need an opportunity to learn from other experienced teachers. This was something I constantly fought for while I was a Chapter Leader. Intervisitations shouldn’t happen after a teacher receives a poor rating. They should be ongoing throughout the year. The most successful year I had was when my own colleagues invited me into their classrooms to help me during my first year.