Scott wrote:
> One thought that returns frequently is this: "How can a school
> district have people on the payroll who are there mainly because their
> lack of education prevents them from getting better paying, more
> interesting work?" This is not to say that a food s ervice worker cannot
> love his/her work, nor that we don't have some highly-educated bus
> drivers. We do. But it simply acknowledges that there are many people
> working to support the education system who have not succeeded in that
> system. I am not blaming t he victim; the worker whose learning growth has
> been stunted
On NPR awhile back they had a piece about getting more teachers trained
who are from the area and will commit to working long term in some of
these "problematic" schools. There was one guy who worked in the cafeteria
who decided to enlist into this program and get involved in the classroom
teaching (back to school, financial aide, mentoring with veteran
teachers.) I think that the cafeteria people and bus drivers have a lot
to offer a school system but they are generally excluded --- conciously or
otherwise.
> We have two classes of people within schools systems. [I am not here
> picking on any particular school system.] Within school district pay
> structures, we reward teachers who get additional education, but that same
> privilege is not offered to bus drivers, custodians, cooks, maintenance
> people. If a teacher with a master's degree plus 30 hours gets more pay
> than one with a bachelor's degree. Then a bus driver working on a master's
> degree certainly deserves more pay than one who is not. Or is higher
> education only useful and valuable if you are going to explicitly 'teach'
> others?
Our school is private and boarding. Our 3 silo's are:admin, teaching
staff, dormitory staff (include here recreation workers, tutors, subs). We
are going into a year 2 of "teams"-- trying to be more cross disciplinary
between the 3 silo's but the core of people who partake of the team
meetings are teaching staff -- in part due to the scheduled time of the
meeting (at teaching staff conveience rather than dorm staff) and some
turf issues I'm sure.
> I think the great question in public education is not "How do we get
> the kids to learn?" but rather, "How do we create an atmosphere in which
> teachers and administrators can learn?" Perhaps if we accomplished
> something close to a 'learning organization' in our school systems, the
> kids would learn from our example.
Amen.
I think that we as teachers think that we are learning all the time, or
that we have already learned what needs to be learned.In our regular staff
meetings it is still very hard to voice or indicate a lack of knowledge
about a kids needs, a technique or what have you --- to state that you
have a need to learn in a learning environment can be risky (isn't that
what we were supposed to already know ? if we don't know it maybe we
shouldn't be teachers ?) This is the area where we will be focusing on
across the comming year with our team structures: facilitating learning
about topics like writing across the curriculum, note taking techniques,
evaluating reading and reading in content classes. Our team structure (in
a nutshell): to have a cross fuunctional group of people with a subset of
students who monitor abilities, progress across social, academic and
emotional areas and to identify compitencies and strategies to facilitate
independent learners. Our students all have pretty sever learning
disabilities and communications disorders. If any are interested I can
provide more depth and history on the teams since I've been a major
architect in its design and functioning.
prkosuth@mychoice.net
OPINIONS ARE MY OWN
Brehm Preparatory School
Carbondale IL
--"prkosuth" <prkosuth@mychoice.net>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>