This school year has started off on the wrong foot and I can't seem to get the right footing to come into play. We started the year with a brand new Principal. Best way I can describe her is Umbridge from the Harry Potter series. Yes, she is that bad. She started things off with saying that all of our evaluations from the past few years have been grossly inflated. Meaning we are all horrible teachers. Yeah, great way to start off with your new faculty.
Umbridge is an elementary school principal. Yes. Elementary is where she has had all her experience. She has never been stationed in a secondary school, not even when she was doing her principal's internships. So all of a sudden she is now the principal of a middle school. She wants to run it like an elementary school where everyone is responsible for what everyone else is teaching. Meaning I have to be on the look-out for what the English and math teachers are doing because if their test scores are low, that is my fault as well. That didn't sit right with any of us.
The curriculum for my subject has completely changed as well. They are doing a state wide pilot of the new program....but haven't thought up how they are going to collect the data from the program or will they give a good reason as to why the change is needed. All they said is that "we're doing this and this is what you are going to teach and how you are going to teach it." Yep. I have been told exactly how I am supposed to teach the lessons. I am not supposed to deviate from them in any way, shape, or form. That doesn't sit right with me. How am I supposed to make sure that students are getting the most out of what I am going to teach them without being able to change or modify anything? Besides, what they want us to teach is very worksheet oriented instead of the way it was with being hands-on. I talk, they watch a presentation (and very boring ones at that), fill in a worksheet, move on to the next day and repeat it again and again. I am bored, the students are bored, I don't think they are really learning anything better than how we were teaching them before--in fact I can almost say that they aren't really learning anything at all. This isn't the right way to do this.
Back to Umbridge.
Now, upon learning that we aren't happy with what we are teaching and how we're supposed to teach it, she says that we need to follow what the state wants us to and just get through this year. Next summer perhaps they will make changes, but until then we need to teach the way that we have been told to and "stop complaining about it". Stop complaining about the fact that we don't have control over our own classrooms? Stop complaining about the fact that the curriculum was written by people who haven't been in the classroom in years and are now trying to tell us that this is the right way to do things?
She is also proposing that we change our schedule next year to teaching 8 out of 10 classes. Yes, you see that right. 10 classes. Forget the ability to schedule guest presenters. Forget the ability to have hands-on activities with the students outside the classroom. She doesn't realize that this is hurtful more than it is helpful. I understand that she wants to "bolster the math, English and science testing scores because that is all that is important right now" (yes, that was an actual phrase from her in one of our meetings). This is only going to get kids more and more frustrated at learning than they already are. How are we supposed to support the student's learning when it isn't fair to them?!
She has also taken our meetings from Monday mornings during our late-start to Wednesday mornings bright and early before our contract times even start and don't you dare say that you'll miss it because she will find a way to dock your pay. They have even started installing key card readers outside the doors saying that it will make it an "effortless" way for us to enter the building. What they really want to know is when people are coming into the building...yet they left the key turn there. Yeah, no teachers are using the key cards. We all have them, but why in the world are we going to use it when the minute we walk in we are caught on the surveillance cameras anyway.
Evaluations have also changed. We now need to schedule a time with Umbridge in order to get her to come into our classrooms. She wants to have a copy of the exact lesson plan for the day and is expecting us to follow it to the letter. There isn't any room for error. And if we don't do exactly as we planned and do everything that is required of us in the evaluation (whether it is actually to the benefit of the student or not), our evaluation is docked. Oh, and by the way, we can't know what we are being evaluated on. We can't have a pre-copy of the evaluation form so we can make sure we are hitting the marks. I would much rather her just come in during any of the classes and watch me. I doubt she will do that, but that is what I have asked her to do. I'm not going to change up how I am teaching just because she is in the room. Sorry, that is not who I am. But if that is the hoop that I have to jump through to continue to have a job, then I will jump through the stupid hoop until May and then hopefully be able to find something else that is better.
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