Kristen said today:
…I have been asked to provide more documentation, assessments and curriculum maps with lessons to my admin to justify my work, and I am feeling overwhelmed and misunderstood….
This is most important, of critical importance.
Everyone takes it as natural that, if a teacher wants to be in the good graces of those who employ her, she would of course provide such documentation, assessments and curriculum maps, or risk a slap on the wrists at one end or firing at the other. Thus control is maintained and teachers are put in strait jackets and have legitimate complaints like Kristen’s above.
Most teachers believe in the “unspoken policy” described above without thinking that there are options. Those who see options are typically labeled as radical and made to look and feel odd and somehow not in the club. This takes its toll over the years.
But in giving in to the machine, teachers make a critical error. They allow themselves to be bullied.
(Not that the forced lesson plans and curriculum documents ever get read or thought about in the first place. How many times has anybody in our PLC been confronted over fake curriculum that they submitted in order to just hand in the required documents? I’ve not been caught in 38 years.)