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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote] [b]At my current school, there are too many admin, and each of them is scurrying to show that their post is relevant.[/b] 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.[/quote]

This right here. My small Title I ES has 2 admin and 4 nebulous facilitators who do not work with students and are instead supposed to be supporting teachers in improving their practice. What it really means is those 6 people spend an awful lot of time making tasks for us to do in meeting after meeting without ever working with students or in a classroom so they can see just how desperately our kids need more effective help. Their suggestions are great in theory but not in practice and most of them do not have proven experience improving a school like ours. My “planning time” is spent doing tasks they make them look and feel good without actually helping accelerate the growth of my students who are YEARS below grade level.[/quote]

I used to work in FCPS about 10 years ago, and it was the same.  We had classes with too many kids and then "coaches" walking around making more work for everyone, pulling a single kid or special "enrichment" group here and there, but essentially contributing nothing of value to the school while making more work for the rest of us.  Likewise, [b]we had two assistant principals whose main job seemed to be leading fire drills and roaming the school in search of teachers to criticize for something.[/b]  [/quote]

Yes.  I have worked at a few schools now that have multiple vice principals per division.  They didn't do anything useful, and NEVER subbed.  It was so frustrating to learn that I was losing my planning time AGAIN to sub AGAIN for the teacher they knew was going to be out for two weeks (but decided to just achieve coverage for her each day by randomly pulling other teachers out of their planning time).  I would see the vice principals wandering around, relaxed and smiling, with coffee in hand, as teachers rushed to and from subbing.  I actually worked with the spouse of one of these vice principals once, and he confirmed that his VP wife NEVER took any work home.  Did she ever sub?  Of course not.  She did, however, decide each day which teacher was going to lose their planning time to sub, and she did think up and orchestrate many stupid, pointless extra meetings for teachers to attend before and after school.  My favorite was the time she had someone with some kind of crystal "singing bowl" who led us all in meditation.  We were all super stressed because we had so much work to do; at the time I was thinking only about the many essays I needed to mark and comment upon at home that week, and how many of them I could have finished at school or just before/after school, if only I were allowed to actually have my planning time to plan and didn't have to attend so many meetings before and after school.  Still, for forty minutes we were directed to close our eyes and breath as instructed as the coach struck the stupid crystal singing bowl with a gong.[/quote]

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