Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I've now been at 2 FCPS schools that went bad after a principal change. Dramatically bad. In both cases, the principals had come from Title 1 schools to high performing schools in middle class areas where SOL passing rates were great and the school had been kind of under the radar, with longtime principals who weren't chasing every FCPS fad and buzzword. Principals who understood that true instructional leadership means hiring and supporting great teachers...and then largely removing obstacles so that those great teachers can stay great teachers.
Toxic principals I have been heartbroken to encounter have been FCPS bots...diving 100% into every FCPS fad and trend from central office. Favoring compliance over brilliance, conformity over individual teacher strengths.
In both cases, the new principals quickly created new "coach" positions to create more layers of bureaucracy, changed one CLT a week to 2, and turned team planning time into dog and pony shows where people presented spreadsheet after spreadsheet of data with little or no instructional value. Principals who created so much extra work, so much unnecessary stress.
In both cases, the teachers they targeted and started to make miserable were the outliers...the ones who were experienced and confident and effective enough to push back against insane time wasting edicts. Usually teachers who were smarter than them.
I recall vividly one of our most brilliant teachers, one whose students got the highest test scores in her grade by far. She was a divergent thinker, someone who planned on the fly, someone who had unique ideas and had her students do all kinds of engaging and fun projects. She engaged in quiet rebellion about some things....like, teaching phonics when central office boys weee pushing Lucy Calkins or bust. Having kids sing jingles to memorize multiplication facts. Previous principal loved her, new Central Office Bot principal hated her, and over 3 years made her life a misery. Big things and small...bad evaluations (claiming her higher test scores were evidence she wasn't a team player), removing her from leadership positions, moving her to another team, moving her to a room without windows.
She transferred to another school with a principal who had previously been at our school. Over 3 years, at least 6 of our best staff moved to that school. Another half dozen retired...these were not teachers who had planned to retire that year necessarily, but the new principal was toxic so they got out when they could. Several more transferred to other schools for different opportunities, but wouldn't have thought of leaving that school before the principal change.
I WISH anyone in leadership would car about these kinds of school climate tsunamis. But they just seem to be concerned about getting people who play the game and are all in for the dog and pony show stuff.
Clearly, this is a sensitive topic for you, but as a teacher, I’d like to let you know that the coach position and two CLT’s have absolutely nothing to do with school leadership. Those are mandates from the county and your previous principal would have had to have done them as well.
With over 20 years of teaching experience, I can tell you that your beloved teacher was undoubtedly a bully to all the other teachers on staff, no matter how great their test scores were. In addition, many of those teachers lie about their test scores; it’s a part of their whole bullying persona.
This particular teacher was the opposite of a bully. Some of her teammates were less comfortable with her because she pushed back on things in the pacing guide or wasn't keen on just doing things like packets for social studies rather than projects and things that let kids be creative.
I'm not that teacher, but I'm old enough to have been around the block a few times, and I hate to see great unique teacher be penalized by administrators who value conformity over everything else. The biggest hassles for her f-'d this is true in other grades too) were that the pushy parent community would ask why Mrs. Smith's class was doing that cool outdoor garden project and why isn't her child's 4th grade teacher doing that? Or if Mr. Jones has the kids do a multimedia project in Google Earth to supplement their unit on X, a parent might question why their child's teacher wasn't also doing it. So, just to make less hassle for herself, she stomped out all individual autonomy in the classroom...the things that make great teachers great. What makes them love their jobs.
Understandably, NO ONe wants extra work, and there are times that not everyone on a team wants to do something like Google Earth or planting a garden or publishing a printed book of poetry...but if a teacher gets joy and pleasure from those kids of things, they should be encouraged, as long as all teammates are suitably teaching the standards. The idea that "collaboration" means people are in lockstep the same day in every class is just ridiculous. Teachers as spreadsheet robots. But I've literally seen it happen now in TWO FCPS schools in the past 6 years. Schools with 90+% pass rates.
And no, two CLTs is not in the regulations county wide. Some Regions seems stricter on it than others. and not every school has an instructional coach, math coach, reading coach, and technology coach', thankfully. Every school gets a reading teacher and an SBTS. These new principals both cut specialist positions to use school funds to pay for instructional coaches and math coaches, doubled CLT requirements, and made the reading teachers into coaches and SBTS into a coach so every CLT had 3 or 4 coaches attending, in addition to the team and admin. All a dog and pony show, so then teams had to plan on their own outside of that lost planning time.
That is NOT mandated, thankfully. That is small minds in leadership thinkinvbone size fits all, and if they came from a Title 1 school that is coachified, then every ES should do that, too.
So the best teachers leave, the impressionable or obedient stay and get beaten down and more stressed and dramatically less effective.
I'm a specialist and left both schools....the entire culture changed to conformity rather than creativity. And I'm also a specialist who loved collaborating with passionate colleagues in Gen Ed and special Ed who liked doing multimedia and multimodal activities to enrich the curriculum. And it's like, systematically, the teachers enthusiastic about that stuff were penalized for it because, understandably, not all team members are on board with that kind of thing. I joined schools with really positive climates and in both cases that was pretty much destroyed in a couple of years. They have more coaches, but teachers are so much less happy and more stressed out. They are miserable places to work.
Luckily, that's NOT a manadate. I found another home with a great principal. But seems like those are few and far between these days. I wish Region leadership would care to find out what's happening when they see a mass exodus. But they probably hear "we are investing in professional development on truly understanding the CLT cycle" and think that's great. And real teachers on the ground LOATHE it and never get asked why they're leaving or retiring.
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