Teacher Appreciation Week is almost here, and Gregory Sampson has some thoughts about how Florida could celebrate.
t has snuck up on us once again. It’s time for the annual Teacher Appreciation Week, five days of … in Florida, Grumpy Old Teacher (GOT) has no idea because the governor and his henchpersons have made it very clear how little they appreciate teachers.
Nevertheless, there are a few ways that districts, including GOT’s, could show some love.
- Let me buy an extension cord and maybe a power strip to go with it. Seriously, teachers receive $325 a year to buy things for their classrooms. The only condition is that the purchase must benefit students somehow. Hmmmm, we’ve given every student a laptop computer and bought computer programs for all types of learning. We’ve transformed our classrooms into digital laboratories. And every day, at least half of every class shows up with the same request: the laptop is not charged, the battery is dead, and they need to plug in.
What would benefit students more than a teacher having extension cords and power strips strategically placed throughout the classroom for power-starved laptops to connect to? They need the juice, not teachers.
But no, that’s against the rules.
- Replace the third evaluation metric with a scavenger hunt. 50% a dodgy calculation of data growth by students based on dubious tests, 40% a principal’s ability to hit a 22 point checklist, based on a published theory now repudiated by its creator, in 30 minutes, and 10% on how well teachers have preserved their ability to BS through a bluebook essay in college. Oops, just kidding, that’s the IPDP, once known as the ippy-dippy, but formally is the Individual Professional Development Plan.
What a teacher does is to create a goal, not any old goal, but a SMART goal. (What does anyone have against stupid goals? Seems like we have plenty of them … oops, don’t want a call from Professional Standards. Forget GOT said that.)
Here’s the thing: no one has to achieve the goal. Pick a few things to measure at the beginning of the year because data, data, data! Be careful on this one, though. The district keeps a laser-like focus on end-of-the-year test scores. You know, the ones based on the tests in May.
Now the catch. The IPDP must be completed by April 30. So you can’t use the all-important test scores as a data metric. Gotta pick something else, even if it’s an anticipatory test given in March whose only purpose is to have some numbers to put into the IPDP in April.
Let’s forego this game of Twister, but even that would be more fun. Let’s have an Easter egg hunt. The teacher who finds the golden egg gets a Highly Effective rating for the year. Nothing more needs to be done. As for the rest, the eggs have random scores that will be plugged into the evaluation form.