| Find teachers' needs and fill them |
6/10/04 7:09 AM |
| Author:
Dorothy Wood
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Attracting and retaining the best teachers may not be difficult. Why not listen to what traditional school teachers are complaining about, and provide the opposite work environment? In our district, the main complaints are time and discipline. We are given new standards and new procedures, but outdated procedures that apply to old standards are not eliminated. We consume precious hours filling out paperwork, some of which is meaningless. We count lunch money, field trip money, fund-raising money, picture money, pencil money, instead of delegating these duties to an assistant (none available) or students (forbidden by administration). Severely disruptive students must be kept in the classroom because we lack the personnel to deal with them. Even those of us who are excellent negotiators and can manage a disruptive student cannot at the same time deliver our best instruction. It is often the best teachers who are the most frustrated with this kind of system. If a charter school can solve their problems, the teachers they most desire—those focused on excellent teaching—will beat a path to their door.
Posted as a reply to:
Teacher Quality by Bob Montgomery 
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