Reply to Declining education quality: too many admin staff and asst. principals

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This is absolutely true.

I'm a high school teacher and have taught in multiple schools.   There is an inverse relationship between the quality of education/time+resources teachers are given to plan/teach and the proportion of admin to teaching staff.

At my current school, there are too many admin, and each of them is scurrying to show that their post is relevant.  In my school, high school teachers share a common calendar and work together to ensure that students don't have major assessments on the same day or near the same day when possible.  None of the members of our bloated admin staff have the same consideration for teachers as they all rush to create new "initiatives" and processes and meetings.

In the past week I had: one meeting early in the morning before school on Monday, one meeting after school on Tuesday, one Wednesday morning meeting before school and then an after school meeting also on Wednesday.  The Monday meeting, held EVERY Monday morning, is led by an admin who is focusing on "team building" among teaching teams, and is largely pointless, with snacks and stupid party games ("ice breakers" for teachers who already know each other and work together).  Meanwhile, I have hours of grading to do, and it would happen a lot faster, with more thorough feedback, if I could just be allowed to use my non-contact time to work.

There are multiple online training courses our school randomly signed up all high school teachers to complete over the course of the last semester, with no consultation with us about when the best time to do this would be.  The courses are not subject specific, but involve things related to DEI, etc.  They are fluffy and very time-consuming, and we are expected to complete them outside of school. One, which I am only now finishing, involved a great deal of reading and many written responses and tasks.  I have a Masters degree, and I maintain this course required the same amount of reading and writing as a college course.  I did NOT have time to adequately provide feedback on my students' writing AND do this course, so the grading suffered.  Admin is fine with this: they don't care about grading/feedback because they are completely out of touch with what it is like to be in the classroom, or the implications of taking away high school teachers' time to plan and grade.  These stupid courses are the brain child of one admin, who is making this part of his job.

You might be thinking, what about this woman's planning time during the day?  Don't high school teachers get planning periods?  The truth is that I don't really get planning periods in the day anymore because my school has apparently decided that this year they are no going to make much effort to procure subs for coverage.  Instead, they like to pop by my room in the morning to "ask" me to cover for a colleague during my planning that day because "You have period 4 free."  ("Free?"  FREE?  That is my PLANNING TIME).

I am stressed and unhappy 
[/quote]
+100[/quote]

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