After three to five years in the classroom, teachers reach “the ledge,” writes TMAO in a post that’s drawing raves from teachers.
You get up on the ledge as a young teacher when you realize that there is no formal system of accountability anywhere.
. . . You’re up on the ledge when you want to know how to get better, but there’s nothing there. The vast store of practical strategies you took from your alternative or traditional route credentialing program seems to be running a little dry and district PD (professional development) is either non-existent or an exercise in futility. There is no formal plan for post-competency-acquisition development, unless it is in the areas of technology, and you already know how to use PowerPoint.
If a teacher improves, his or her title, position, responsibilities and pay remain the same, TMAO writes. At most, the teacher will get to teach higher-performing students.
You look around at the time and effort spent on bringing about better instruction and better assessment for the kids, the energy and will poured into creating dynamic environments and learning experiences, the grit and the grind of trying to make of yourself that turnaround teacher, the kind that reverses the disastrous inertia of the previous years – you look around and realize that none of it has any bearing on your professional standing.
Teachers have every incentive to be mediocre — or to leave teaching for a profession that will reward people who excel.
When the CTA lady came to the union meeting to specifically alert new teachers to the dangers of proposed merit pay provisions, I shook my head in tight side-to-sides, because true systems of meritorious compensation are the future of the work we do. New hiring practices, the dissolution of tenure, authentic evaluations, performance based pay – this is what’s needed to get us off that ledge and quell the schizophrenia of being an ambitious and successful teacher in a public school.
Ms. Frizzle is teaching on the ledge too.
Meanwhile, Miss Bennett is struggling to make it till Christmas break in her first year of teaching.
Really, TFA should consider banning their teachers from blogging. Miss Bennett is not good for the brand, and she’s not the first one.
I agree with this post.
There is a spooky lack
of quality in education
that no one has hit on yet.
This excerpt from “the ledge”
approaches the problem.
———-
From “On Caring”:
This makes for good copy, and
allows us to weave compelling
narratives about the glorious
teacher-martyr, but it is a
flimsy thing, unmeasurable and
unreliable — like so much of
what we do.
———-
Upon reading school mission
statements, I often find the
term “nurturing” or “nurturing
enviorment” stated.
I find the term repulsive in
the context of education. I
can’t imagine embracing a
child, metaphorically, or to
my chest (bossom, to you
women), amid the cut and dry
facts that I must teach from
the Math or Language Arts
Lesson Plan.
My interest has always been
to appeal to the students’
intellect, as if we belong
to the spiecies with the
greatest ability of thought
on this planet.
I don’t like to be thought
of as a nursing sow.
“Teachers have every incentive to be mediocre…”
Right, because teachers don’t care one way or the other about their students’ progress, and learning to be a more effective teacher is only worth it if you get higher pay or better benefits.
They want us to find our OWN professional development opportunities?! What? Why won’t our employers do it FOR us?
GRRR. Teachers with that sort of mentality SHOULD leave the classroom, and probably shouldn’t've entered it in the first place.