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5.4.8 Responsibility of Teachers
Now,
lets look at the teachers responsibility to school administration and
we really have two big issues that I want to end up on and we will not
get to the second one but we're going to get to the teachers responsibility.
We have now in our very superficial way, laid out the responsibilities
of administration. Now, in an equally superficial way, we will lay out
the teachers' responsibility for dealing with those school administrations.
I argue for example, that teachers have to be predictable. That whether
you like the administrators or not you have the responsibility to be predictable.
No surprises. They should be able to count on you to do what they think
you should do. They should count on you to take the responsibility to
be a responsible employee. Now if you can't go along with them, leave.
But you are not there to subvert the school board, you are not there to
subvert the administration, you are not there to subvert the parents.
I think parents need to have more say in the schools and I think the parents
need to have confidence that the schools are going to do predictably what
the parents want. I think the school needs to have the confidence that
the teachers will be predictable and responsible and timely. I promise
you that if you are not timely you are a huge pain in the neck for any
of the administrators you have to deal with. The difference between having
things in a day early and a day late is a huge difference. Get things
in on time. Get the reputation for being timely. Get the reputation for
being a person that can be counted upon to be evaluated well and to evaluate
well. Evaluation is an important part of the whole process and you have
to buy into the importance of evaluation as a process. You have to meet
the expectations of your administrator. If you don't meet their expectations
you're going to be on the outs and if you're on the outs you won't have
any fun being there and they won't have any fun having you there. So you
need to know what their expectations are and different administrators
have different expectations. If you have an administrator who wants all
the i's dotted and all the t's crossed, dot the i's and cross the t's.
If you have an administrator who wants you to get out there and be on
the cutting edge, get out there and be on the cutting edge. Learn the
expectations then meet them. That's your job as teachers and if you don't
like those expectations, leave. There is no way that I can justify your
not meeting the expectations of the school district and the administrators
you're serving. As unpleasant as that might be your job is to meet expectations.
Your job is to fit in. Now, you know me well enough by now, I hope, to
know that I have a little bit of roguishness in me. I like to challenge
systems and challenge the way of doing things and develop new things.
And I will continue to do that. But I also accept the responsibility as
a public employee, as an employee of Old Dominion University to fit in.
See if I had my way of doing things I wouldn't give any of you grades.
When I was Dean at U Mass I abolished grades completely. We had no grades
in the school at all. I don't believe in grades. But here I have to give
grades and so if I have to give grades I'll do my best to give the best
grades I can give. Do you see what I mean? Even though I don't believe
in them, even though they get in the way of teaching, Big time they get
in the way of teaching, I'll give those grades and give the best grades
I can. Why? Because I have the responsibility to fit in just like you
have the responsibility to fit in. I'll work to change the system and
any of you who want to take the class on a pass/fail basis I will applaud
that and be the first to congratulate you but most of you need to fit
in to so you can't do that. Communication is a real biggy. There never
is enough and it is always off. Chris and I will never be able to communicate
with you perfectly, you'll never be able to communicate perfectly within
your group. Teachers cannot communicate perfectly. Teachers and administrators
won't communicate perfectly. Communication is a big deal, a hard deal,
it's never enough, it will always be off but you've got to work at it
because wherever it is you can always make it a little bit better and
that's the process that you have to accept the responsibility to communicate.
You have to let people know. Probably at least half of the marriages that
fail, fail because of bad communication. You know it's one thing if you're
getting on someone's nerves because they're doing something you don't
like but it's another thing because you don't know what they're doing
or they don't know what you're doing. Communication is a biggy. You need
to be a team player. You need to let people think you are willing to be
a part of that larger group,that larger team that makes things happen.
You see, schools work better if the school thinks of itself as a team
and if parents think of themselves as being part of the team and kids
feel that they're part of the team. They will really perform in a very
different way. So team spirit may sound corny but I promise you it makes
a huge difference in terms of where it all comes out. As a teacher you'll
be responsible for curriculum development. The alternative is to hire
even more support staff downtown to develop the curriculum and give it
to you which is a bad idea. Right now, you know, the curriculum staff
downtown develops the curriculum, they give you the curriculum, they give
you the textbooks, they give you the rules by which you have to teach
it then they come around to inspect that you're doing it that way. I don't
like that process much, I would rather see you developing the curriculum
and I would rather see senior teachers in the school who have the responsibility
to help other teachers in the school. Remember the 2 plus 2 program where
we're encouraging teachers to observe each other and work with each other.
That goes back to that team spirit but also goes back to such issues as
curriculum development. And finally, having said all these things about
fitting in, I want to end with saying that you need to figure out how
to constructively challenge the system. In other words you shouldn't be
just a meek little do-gooder just doing everything you're told, when you
see something that isn't good you need to find out a constructive way
to challenge it. You need to find out a way of talking about it at the
right place at the right time in a way that people can hear and will hear
and respond to it. And so you need to alwaysbe alert to figuring out what
is the way to challenge something. Because it is not just what you say,
it's when you say
it, how you say it, and who you say it to and that constructive challenge
makes a huge difference. We'll finish this next time. We'll go on to the
schools responsibility to the community on Thursday.
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What are some responsibilities teachers have to their administrators? | |
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Mrs. Reed teaches
Advanced Placement American History. She is also the head of the
Social Studies department at her school. This part of her job requires
her to observe the others in her department once a month and submit
a report to the assistant principal on her observations. As department
head, she is also supposed to collect lesson plans for the following
week from her department members and add hers to the pile before
turning them all in to the other assistant |
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