JCEA

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Ejmbxv7dU/

Sometimes, the numbers lie.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1CXDR8PCcb/

🤔 TEACHER APPRECIATION WEEK IS WILD WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT

A flower.

A handwritten note.

A free dress down day.

Maybe a taco bar if the PTA is feeling generous.

That is what the system offers in exchange for a master's degree, ten months of emotional labor, fifteen unpaid hours per week, and $800 of your own money in classroom supplies.

A flower and a taco bar.

The teachers who are leaving are not leaving because they do not feel appreciated.

They are leaving because appreciation does not pay the mortgage.

Because a flower does not cover the cost of what this job actually takes from a person.

Because at some point the gap between what you give and what you get back becomes impossible to justify no matter how many heartfelt notes you receive.

Teachers do not need one week a year.

They need the thing appreciation is supposed to represent.

Value.

Signed, Elle. A former teacher who received enough mugs and candles to stock a gift shop and still left because none of it was actually what she needed.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1EVAsBKFST/

😤 EDUCATION HAS A LEADERSHIP PROBLEM NOBODY WANTS TO TALK ABOUT

The people making decisions about what happens in classrooms have not been in one in years.

They set the curriculum.

They write the policies.

They determine the pacing.

They design the assessments.

They mandate the professional development.

They evaluate the teachers.

And they have not stood in front of 30 children in a decade.

The people who know exactly what is and is not working are the ones with the least power in the building.

The teachers.

Who were not consulted on the curriculum.

Who were not asked about the pacing.

Who were not in the room when the assessment was designed.

Who are now being evaluated on outcomes created by decisions they had no part in making.

Education does not have a teacher problem.

It has a leadership problem.

And until the people making decisions start listening to the people doing the work, nothing is going to change.

Signed, Elle. A former teacher who sat in too many meetings where the people talking had no idea what was actually happening in the building and left to build something where her expertise actually mattered.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Yi6N2Scvn/

🙄 TEACHERS ARE EVALUATED BY PEOPLE WHO HAVE NOT BEEN IN A CLASSROOM IN YEARS

The person filling out your evaluation rubric has not taught in a decade.

Maybe two.

They came in for 20 minutes while you were transitioning between activities because that is when it is easiest to schedule an observation.

They gave you a "developing" on student engagement.

The kids were transitioning.

You now have to write a professional growth plan to address an observation that lasted less time than your commute.

And your job security depends on this process.

In what other profession does a person with no current expertise in the work evaluate whether you are doing the work correctly and have the power to end your employment based on a 20 minute window?

Teachers are not resistant to feedback.

They are exhausted by being evaluated by a system that stopped understanding their job a long time ago.

Signed, Elle. A former teacher who once got marked down for "not enough student voice" during a silent reading block she had communicated in advance.

Wishing you an restful, safe and enjoyable summer!
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/18pUJC5Ddk/

Summer starts now!