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6 thoughts on “Report From the Field – Ryan Campbell – 2”
…they wanted me to look at doing the “college in the high school” program where students earn college credit for taking high school classes, but …the students at my school are stressed out enough….
It is egregious and grief-causing that school administrators don’t consider the stress they put on others. How they look with their fancy programs is all they care about as long as someone else, the teachers and students, actually do the work. The stress on you and the kids, Ryann, is at the very bottom of their list. I’m glad you refused it. I know a teacher who did that college credit thing and it was terrible for her on every level. What is wrong with those people?
Speaking as a parent, who has sent two kids off to College, I appreciate some college in High school programs. However, I have seen all upper level curriculum turned into College in High School. With many schools Juniors and Seniors are not able to take courses in their interests areas that are not mind rendingly difficult. With taking 7 to 8 classes a semester that is the equivalent of 21 to 28 hours.
This year a young man chose to kill himself in the school building. I wonder if the stress from the constant pushing to do more with a lack of support or understanding caused it. Not everything is the school’s fault but his choice of location makes me wonder.
Ryann, know that you are fighting the fight by rejecting the college in the high school class. Way to go! So is teaching in a way that students feel competent in learning a foreign language and remember so later in life.
Good news! During my post evaluation conference, my principal asked me again about the college in the high school program and if I could consider implementing it next year. I told him I had looked into it, and that if he wanted to see results like he was seeing with my current students, then it just wouldn’t work for my program and that it was a whole different approach to teaching and learning, and that students just don’t learn best that way. He knows that I had taught at the college level, and had experience with that kind of curriculum and finally seemed OK with my response. Another thing that helped, is that I told him there would be no way I could do blended classes using that program. I am the only Spanish teacher at the school, and have had to do multi level classes and I told him it just wouldn’t work with that program. He seems to trust and my professional judgment, which I was happy about.
Great news, Ryann. Glad to hear that your administrator listened to you.
He respected your professional judgement, and yet, Ryann, he failed to give you enthusiastic support. Why? Because he wanted something from you, something that held nothing good for the kids but, instead, would have added to an already ridiculous level of stress for them and you. Robert nails it when he says this administrator’s ploy …”is pure, unadulterated manipulation. It plays to both a teacher’s insecurities and a teacher’s ego…”. So I see nothing good in this (what sounds to me to be a grudging) response only. You beat him down, but what if you had not had the experience and knowledge to do that? So many younger teachers fall into this trap, and a deep fall it is. I once found myself over a five year period teaching five classes, levels 1, 2, 3 and an AP French Language section as well as one of AP French Literature. It doesn’t sound like all that much next to the army of people Paul was faced with, but it was, since the literature reading list never seemed to be the stuff that I was interested in in French Literature. But I was sufficiently young at the time to believe everything they said at me as per Robert’s insights in his comments on this topic. I got suckered into a ton of extra work. Of course, my paycheck each month increased by exactly zero dollars. You and the students would have taken on yet more stress, of a very high nature, so that this bozo could look good with his bosses. That is what was really happening here. I have nothing but disdain for such people, who are what we might term with lots of accuracy “educators who have no real sense of what the word even means in terms of language acquisition“.