Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Teachers; handcuffed and gagged

Journal reporter Hailey Heinz on her blog, link, reports on a teachers union president who donned handcuffs and duct tape over her mouth in protest during a public meeting over teacher evaluations.

The point she was trying to illustrate is how little regard is paid to the opinions of teachers.  She is saying what I have been saying for so long.

In the APS alone, there are nearly 100,000 years of current and ongoing classroom teaching experience, and no seat at the table where decisions are made about what goes on in classrooms.

In the APS, teachers are not allowed a seat at the table because one of the first observations they will share, is that the administration is failing to provide an educationally efficient environment in schools by failing to enforce discipline policies.  Teachers will point to student discipline and chronically disruptive students as significant obstacles to education.

Enforcing discipline policies is an administrative function.  The failure to enforce them is an administrative failure.  Therefore we won't talk about the failure to maintain authority of adults over students, link, nor will we invite to the table, anyone who might;
classroom teachers for example.

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