Nancy Flanagan felt inspired by Elon Musk’s management idea. What has your teacher been up to? Reposted with permission.
When I first heard about Elon Musk’s email blast to over two million federal employees directing them to submit approximately five bullet points of what they accomplished in the previous week, I was reminded of a couple of school administrators from my past.
Eugene Robinson called Musk’s scheme “an exercise in contempt”—also a great description of some of the so-called professional development teachers routinely endure. When a principal doesn’t trust their professional staff to know what they’d like to do with time available for their own learning or planning, you end up with meaningless exercises like “five things I did last week.”
Ultimately, it’s about control.
Eugene Robinson, again: Thus begins the inevitable power struggle at the court of Mad King Donald, between his various ministers of state and his billionaire Lord High Executioner.
No word yet on whether the soon-to-be defunct Department of Education will demand five bullet points of the 3.8 million public school teachers in the U.S., given that 13.7% of the funding for public schools comes from the feds, give or take.
But there’s no need to put teachers through that particular, umm, wood chipper. I can supply the federal government with five bullet points that apply to all teachers, summarizing their most recent contribution to the education of America’s youth.
Here are five things that all teachers accomplished last week:
- They showed up. They showed up when the driving was treacherous, even when their own homes were threatened by floods. They showed up when they were sick or hadn’t slept, because it’s easier to teach with a cold than find a sub. They showed up because it was test day, or the field trip, or opening night of the school play, or because a particular student didn’t do well with strangers at the head of the classroom. They showed up, because thanks to a global pandemic, we now know that virtual school is not the solution to cheap and easy public education. Personal relationships matter.
- They planned a learning experience that failed. That’s par for the course, by the way. Most lesson plans fail to accomplish their goals, 100% and immediately. That’s because kids learn differently, through different means and at different rates. The slam-dunk lesson plan that teaches everyone all they need to know, challenging the brightest and scooping up the laggards, doesn’t exist. What happens when a lesson goes sideways today? Experienced teachers adapt and adjust–and reinforce tomorrow.
- They dealt with diversity, equity and inclusion, even the AP teachers with classes of 12 well-behaved senior calculus students. D, E and I are endemic in K-12 education—not the fake shorthand of “woke,” but the bedrock truth-in-practice of embracing student differences, playing fair as a teacher, and building a learning community where everyone is valued.
- They exposed themselves to the viral miasma of 30 small, touchy-feely children, or perhaps 150 sniffly teenagers, in their role as caretaker. Let me repeat that: they acted as caretakers, with the school being a safe and (key word) free place for children of all ages to spend their weekdays. The lack of affordable childcare across the country makes schools a first line of defense in an economy where parents need to be in the workplace. And parents send their kids to school when they’re sick. #Truth
- They did the intellectual heavy lifting of observation, instruction, assessment and accompanying record-keeping on the learning of a large number of children. This, of course, is a teacher’s actual job, and it’s harder than it looks to the casual observer. Teachers take their work home—not just grading and lesson plans but worries and concerns. Keeping tabs on the students in their charge—so they could learn.
Here are some things your child’s teachers did NOT do last week:
- Go out for lunch at a nice restaurant and indulge in a glass of wine.
- Use the bathroom whenever the urge arose.
- Spend most of their day in an office or cubicle, blessedly alone with their thoughts and their work.
- Talk to other adults for an extended time–on the phone, or in casual conversation.
- Duck out for a medical appointment that had to be scheduled during the workday.
- Decide to knock off early, and get in a round of golf.
So—should the Billionaire Lord High Executioner come after public school educators, further annihilating America’s once-proud, once-functional institutions, keep your heads down and just say no to the five bullets.