I am so sick of this shit.
I don’t really understand, I guess, how hard it is to understand: the more stupid crap I have to do to prove that I’m a good teacher takes away from my time to actually be one. I know, I know- it’s a political thing meant to frame the discussion around “accountability” and “bad teachers”. It’s absolutely fucking ridiculous.
Two things came across my screen today. The first was a release from the Washington State Superintendent of Public Instruction that shows 96% of teachers in my state are rated as either Proficient or Distinguished. (See Report to the Legislature: Teacher and Principal Evaluation Program) Seriously. We’ve spent tens of millions of dollars and lost countless hours to show that we damn well know what we’re doing. Money, time, and energy that could have been better spent with students were wasted in the name of bureaucracy.
The second was a story out of Australia (Stop blaming teachers for falling results and give them the trust and time to actually teach) that says, shockingly, the same damn thing: “Our obsession with accountability means that every spare moment of a teacher’s life is spent not preparing lessons or finding resources but satisfying the bureaucratic demands of the job. In other words filling in forms. Doing paperwork, most of which could be done by anyone.”
Enough is enough. Every hour we spend having to show that we are great at what we do is an hour lost ACTUALLY DOING it. The irony is unavoidable: wasting time to prove that we’re great teachers is stealing learning from our students.
