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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Agree completely with 10/11/2016 10:07.

I will also add: [b]At one of the "FARMS schools" I worked at, I think the teaching was MUCH better[/b] than at the high-income school I worked at. We just had to do more and be better. The high-income parents would help or get tutors for their kids. It was completely acceptable to just give a lecture and assign some homework. You didn't even really have to grade much, because the parents were checking their kids' work all the time. At the "FARMS school", we tried much harder to give lots of feedback and create engaging lessons.

However, I also worked at a "FARMS" school which was a disaster zone full of TFA type teachers. The most experienced teachers had 5-7 years of teaching, most had under 3. It makes a huge difference in terms of classroom management and knowing how to create good lessons. The teaching and leadership at that place was pretty pathetic. It's not that they weren't trying. It was just a huge uphill struggle that no one had the skills to deal with. Insane expectations of teacher time and effort lead to incredible burn out rates- and it was like running in place.

The difference between a low-income school with great teaching and one with crappy teaching, in my mind, is good leadership, good mentoring, and reasonable expectations. That way, you'd get low teacher turnover and have some stellar experienced teachers. When I say reasonable expectations, I don't mean "low" expectations. I  mean reasonable expectations in terms of the amount of time, money, energy that I spend. I mean that if you give me a class of kids who are behind, I also get a smaller class size and teachers aide. That those kids who need help (food, clothing, counseling, etc) have access to it. That kids make progress, but not, "all students will be proficient or you will be in trouble". 
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I completely agree that at [i]some[/i] FARMS schools the teaching is of [i]much higher caliber[/i] than at other schools because the teachers at some FARMs schools have learned how to do much more with much less.  They also tend to have a tremendous dedication to their craft and their students.

I am at a Title I middle school in NoVa.  With our new principal, who is in her second year, you should see some of the incredible things that are happening in our school.  We are in a complete turn-around because we once again have the leadership that we need to help us get things done.  Most importantly, the new principal has helped stabilize the teaching staff so we don't have the same type of turnover problems we had for 5-6 years.

On the other hand, we have a lot of pressures that are outside of the principal's prerogative or ability to influence -- and those pressures are a constant threat to teachers' abilities to focus on core responsibilities of good teaching and learning in classrooms.  When you have a crew of teachers who place a high amount of value in producing outstanding teaching and learning in their classrooms, it is those pressures, as well as things like missing steps, that cause teachers to become disenchanted and to start looking for other options.

I don't know what the answers are for solving the teacher (and sub!) shortage.  Teaching is a difficult job and there is a lot of disrespect for teachers these days both within the school systems and outside them.  Certainly there is much more disrespect than when I first began teaching.  But I think that the dialogue needs to begin sooner rather than later, and absolutely before we hit full-fledged crisis mode with limited options.  It is a tough job but we need people who can step up to the plate and pitch in before it is too late.  Our children deserve it.[/quote]

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