Reply to Teachers - How Hard is Your Job, Really?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I suspect my job working in a Title 1 school is harder than in a non-Title 1 school.  We are constantly under pressure to bring up the test scores.  They don't care about progress either.  I teach ESOL and if I have a non-English speaker in September who ends up reading on a level G at the end of the year, that is terrific progress.  But I will get blamed for that student not reading at grade level no matter where they started.  If the benchmark for that grade is a J, then I've failed.  This is why it is hard.  Multiply this times 40 students and you get the idea.  I am supposed to be supportive and encouraging as a teacher but apparently the admin doesn't have to be.  They just stand around judging.[/quote]

Yup. Another ESOL teacher here. I have 65 students this year and I work at the elementary level. You hit the nail on the head with your comments about how progress doesn't count. If any student is below grade level then that's our fault.

I was assigned test coordinator responsibilities this year and when I discussed my concerns about how that will take time away from instruction and planning for instruction, I was basically told "oh well". Considering ESOL is the focus of our SIP I would have thought that admin would want us focusing our time and efforts on, you know, actually teaching. But apparently they're pretty much only interested in *saying* they're taking action and making us spend hours analyzing data and writing the SIP plan to show their bosses they're taking action. Then when our students don't make the progress they're expected to make we'll have to sit in meeting after meeting discussing *why* that didn't happen.

Um, maybe if you let me spend my time instructing and planning for effective instruction our results would be different?? But no, coordinating a standardized test is way more important.

[/quote]

1st ESOL teacher here.  I was testing coordinator 2 years ago and when we added up the time it took us to test our ESOL students plus the MSA testing, it was about 7 weeks of testing.  Last year with PARCC testing it took about 8 weeks total.  The PARCC test was last March and May and the results still haven't be shared with us.  Hmmmm.  How useful is the data if it takes 9 months for us to get it?  Oh, it isn't useful.  It's just used to judge us.[/quote]

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