Lecture 11 –

Lesson Element .1: A Misuse of Teacher' s Time

• Present Staffing Practices Are Less Than Ideal.
• Dr. Allen argues that if we took our present practices and reversed them, they would be better than what we currently have.

In order to fix the problem we must first understand it.

• Problems:
• Security Guard and Monitoring:

Using teachers to supervise lunch rooms or act as security guards is a ridiculous waste of professional time.

• Often times assigned to sit in hallways.
• Also includes supervision of non-instructional areas such as lunchrooms and study halls. Also includes other supervisory responsibilities.
• Clerical and Disciplinary Duties:
• These practices should be eliminated.
• Teachers should not have to do their own copying, stapling, and organizing, or spend their time in repetitious clerical tasks.
• Teachers also shouldn't be required to supervise time-out areas, or In-School-Suspension areas unless those detention areas involve some professional activity.
• Analyzing the Situation.
• Dr. Allen prefers to first ask what is the ideal, show that what we do now is less than ideal, and then suggest that these are the items that we should be working on to create ideal practices.

Lesson Element .2: A Picking Teachers

• Teachers Should Not Be Thought of as Interchangeable Parts.
• Teachers should be thought of as individuals.
• Current practice is to simply deal out students to teachers by grade level, without regard for parental wishes for assignment of their child to a specific teacher.
• This is wrong. Teachers come in all varieties from good to bad.
• If a parent desires that their child be taught by a specific teacher, then that should be the policy.
• Dr. Allen advocates that parents use the principle of the mother duck defending her young.
• If a parent makes enough noise about their kid to the principal, then they increase their likelihood that they will get the best teacher for their child.
• Difficulties in Making the Best Matches.
• Difficult problem in deciding how to make the best match of student and teacher.
• We currently don't know how to do it, so the system retreats to the safety of having everybody do the same thing.
• The mode of thinking follows the line that except for the mother duck kids, I can't allow all the kids to pick, so we shouldn't allow any of the kids to pick.
• What criteria should be used to break this cycle?
• Dr. Allen believes that the students who are failing the most courses should get to pick their teachers.
• Choice is the Key to Making the Best Matches.
• Having a choice is very important because if you have a choice, your involvement is much higher than if you are simply forced to accept something.
• Just having the process of choosing is a benefit.
• Dr. Allen would start with allowing the kids with the most problems to pick.
• It doesn't make much sense to place the best teachers in the honors class with the students who need the least attention, while often the least experienced or worst teachers are assigned to the kids with the most problems.
• Ideally, all teachers should also be good teachers and the kids should be able to pick their teacher according to preferred learning style or personality.

Lesson Element .3: A Increased Standardization

• Teachers Should Have Great Personal Discretion in Curriculum.
• They should have some discretion about what they teach, and how they teach it.
• Dr. Allen thinks that this discretion on what they teach should be 20-25% of the total curriculum.
• The current system does not give teachers discretion, particularly in the k-12 grade levels.
• In reality, the discretion is getting less because of the pressures to get students to pass core tests.
• The concept behind the core tests is that we would know how good a school is by how well the test scores are.
• This leads to the result that we are increasingly making the tests the same and making everybody accountable to those tests.
• In Norfolk, they will have the same exams in every subject. No discretion.
• The Uniqueness of Teachers Is Another Facet of Discretion.
• This is a valuable facet. Teachers should be themselves, not identical cogs in a machine.
• There are many teachers of widely varying personality and style, that are equally successful in terms of establishing relationships with their students.
• People also vary in regard to what type of personality to which they respond best.
• Standardization would disregard this valuable aspect of teaching.

Lesson Element .4: A Cutting Edge

• Teacher Training Should Emphasize the Technology of Education.
• Teachers should be ahead of their students in technology.
• Currently, most teachers are behind their students in terms of technology.
• Also, the old teachers are behind the new teachers in terms of technology.
• Some teachers at ODU will not touch a computer.
• Dr. Allen believes that this is a menace to the training of teachers.
• It sends the wrong message. It models the wrong attitude.
• Teacher have to be ahead of the curve, and teachers of teachers have to be even further ahead of the curve.
• Unfortunately, that isn't how the current system works. Teachers of teachers are usually as backward as the teachers. We are training teachers to be backwards.
• Then these backward teachers go into schools and teach. This is one of the reasons that things in school can't change.
• The Training Should Be State of the Art.
• Too often the training is not state of the art because the system is at fault.
• The system is defining expectation in an unreasonable way.
• The system has to become much more supportive of everybody getting involved in technology, and giving it a higher priority. Technology is here to stay.
• Dr. Allen believes that computer education is going to become more important in the future, not less important.
• This is actually a conservative prediction.
• The Use of Technology Should Be Embedded in the Training of Teachers, Not Just Added On and Taught.
• Use of technology should be a core objective in all facets of teacher training.
• We need to get used to technology to a degree that it's use is second nature.
• Net surfing or the use of overhead projectors and VCRs should be automatic.
• Sadly, there are many people who do not even know how to program their VCR.
• An example of how useful the technology can be:
• CNN has a special program for schools every morning at 3:30 am. They will even fax a lesson plan for the show.
• If you can successfully use a VCR, you could tape it and show it to your class as you desire. Current information!
• Bottom Line: School systems are not currently geared up to deal with new technology, and as teachers, we are on our own in trying to adapt to the use of technology.

Lesson Element .5: A Teachers vs Administrators

• Most Teachers Feel Like They Are at War with Their Principals.
• This is a wrong attitude to take.
• In reality, both the teacher and principal are striving toward the same goal.
• Both want to make the school work for the students.
• If both aren't on the same side, something is drastically wrong.
• There is no inherent competition between the two roles.
• The successful administrator is one in a happy school. The same is true for teachers.
• The things that make one group happy should be on the same wavelength as the things that make the other group happy.
• Antagonism Between Administrators and Teachers is a Lousy Idea.
• The administrator should be there for the teachers.
• How can I help you?
• How can I run interference for you?
• How can I as the principal, protect you from wrath of the people if an idea you tried, fails? New ideas should be encouraged.
• There should be a sense of working together. Teachers and administrators need to be on the same side.
• Dr. Allen Believes That Teachers and Administrators Should Have the Same Status.
• Teaching will not be a real profession until the highest paid teachers and the administrators are paid the same.
• Dr. Allen believes that the highest paid teacher in a school should be paid the same as the principal of the school.
• The concept that the administrators are above all the teachers is a bad idea.
• Administration should be considered a specialty of education, not as a disconnected job as a people manager.
• Many corporate parallels to this concept.
• Physicians who work in hospitals are paid more than the hospital administrator.
• Some colleges pay the professors more than the college president.
• The bottom line: Both the teachers and the administrators make equal contributions to the end goal, and this should be recognized by parity in compensation and status.

Lesson Element .6: A Out-of-Pocket Expenses

• Teachers Should Not Have to Pay For Supplies Out of Their Own Pocket.
• There should be provisions for reimbursement for classroom supplies purchased with personal monies.
• Unfortunately, there isn't such provisions.
• Staff Development Should Take Place on the Job.
• In reality, teachers have few expectations that systematic staff development will take place on the job.
• Teachers are expected to take and pay for advanced degrees and courses on their own time.
• This normally takes place during the evening and summer.
• These course should be part of their job benefits and take place during school hours.
• Requirements for upgrading technology knowledge should be matched by the schools providing such knowledge during the in-service staff development time.
• Dr. Allen would have three weeks a year of full time duty responsibility for in-service education.
• One week on methodology, one week on new content, one week on technology.

Lesson Element .7: A Beginning Teachers Equal Hardest Assignments

• Dr. Allen Believes That Beginning Teachers Should Have the Easiest Assignments.
• Logically, the least experienced teacher should have the easiest job.
• Reality: Beginning teachers get the hardest jobs.
• The senior teachers get the easiest job. They teach the honors classes.
• The new teacher in generally harassed.
• Often they are Afloaters, with no assigned classroom.
• The system is that teachers have such little status that anytime they can get a bit more status, (i.e. seniority), that they work to minimize their workload.
• The new teacher is overloaded.
• Dr. Allen Believes That We Need to Change this System Because it Extracts Too High a Price on the New Teachers.

Lesson Element .8: A Teaching as a Full-time Profession

• Dr. Allen Believes That Teachers Should Be Responsible for Their Own Schedules.
• Dr. Allen want teachers to work a 40-hour week.
• Most teachers work a 50-55 hour week.
• They spend hours at home in addition to the classroom time, working on lesson plans, grading papers, etc.
• Teachers should work full-time, 40 hours.
• Teacher should work for the full year.
• They should have the 7 weeks of vacation time spread out throughout the year.
• The image of teaching should be that of a full-time profession, not a part time one as it is currently viewed by much of society.
• The pay should equal a full-time profession.
• Professionals Set Their Own Schedules.
• Teachers should not be required to sign in and out.
• That is not a hallmark of a professional. More like an hourly wage factory worker.
• As professionals, they should be counted on to be where they are supposed to be.
• The teacher should be able to figure out how many hours per week they need to work.
• If they need less than 40 hours, that's ok. Likewise, if they think they need more than 40 hours, that too is ok. Let the teacher as a professional, determine the needs to meet the objectives.
• Set the expectations that on an average, the job can be completed in 40 hours.
• Dr. Allen Contends That the School Day Should Be Longer.
• Everyone would go to school from 8am to 5pm.
• This would remove any requirement for homework by both student and teacher.
• This would allow both student and teacher to spend time with their families at home.