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I have found that making the principal look good in front of the superintendent is vital to the wellbeing of my students.
Rather than spiral review, or reteach, reteach, reteach, or work in small groups, or differentiate, or actually PRACTICE the skills they missed so they can move leaps and bounds faster, or holding students accountable for doing ZERO work all year… We need to make it LOOK like we are on a movie set in the worlds most engaging classroom with all the latest of whatever tech/materials/bullshit the district just sunk a shit ton of money into.
We can’t just ACTUALLY teach the days the superintendent isn’t there because we need to implement the dog and pony show with FIDELITY. Every day should be fun, so much so that the kids don’t even WANT to be on their phones. “How can we compete with smart phones? By showing them learning is fun!” Hahahahahah. No innovative stations that incorporate types of learners, varied technology that’s scaffolded to each students technology ability, with added background knowledge applicable to all kids, relevant obviously, with real world examples, while incorporating mental health topics and demonstrating growth mindset, that is so engaging that the kids won’t even want to look at their phones. Must be me. Lol
Learning can be boring. That’s okay. Practice isn’t always fun. In fact, most of my days are VERY MUCH not fun. That’s unfortunate but I’m getting a little tired of putting on a wild show when I KNOW that the best way to learn is to PRACTICE. Yes, sometimes it can be fun. Other times, it’s just arduous. So what? Let me drill and kill them on the hard math skills (like fractions because it doesn’t matter if I’m in middle school or high school, kids SUCK at fractions lol) so that way they’ll be prepared for the more engaging material once they’ve had a chance to first UNDERSTAND the concept.
I’m salty AF but I’m so tired of having to go through principal after principal being on my ass for spiraling in stuff they don’t seem relevant, for having my class quiet and working on occasion to ensure they have time to independently understand, for going off the pacing calendar because I actually DO utilize my students data to reteach and differentiate, and for sometimes “drilling and killing” because it’s doesn’t look “engaging” enough.
First off, I have some of the highest Math scores in my district and some years my state. So STFU. What I’m doing works because kids actually start to like Math and actually enjoy learning when they get the chance to do so.
Secondly, it’s not helping the kids to just “keep going and they’ll catch up.” I can’t just play stupid Kahoots, while another group has some self purchased escape room, and yet another is doing an inquiry based model, while we also all incorporate jumping jacks as a kinesthetic piece, and also allow them to move freely about the room to best collaborate. No. You want to see some crazy shit for YOUR boss to like you, but I care abouty students learning.
They miraculously like my teaching style after they see my scores but I’m tired of getting new bosses with their big ideas that have hardly any data or longevity. I’m tired of pretending to teach. I just want to actually help kids learn math. I don’t want to counsel kids. I don’t want to be the nurse. I don’t want to stress because my boss is brand new and wants everything sparkly and fake. I want to [expletive] teach!
We use whatever resources we can, and the biggest thing is that it just takes time and repetition for a lot of it. The pandemic just revealed how poorly the system has been in a lot of schools unfortunately. Hopefully it will be a big opportunity to make things better overall.
Summer school has been a helpful alternative for some of the kids in our district. We did that before the pandemic though.
Chief
One of our 6th grade teachers and I was talking about this tonight. Our incoming 6th graders were going into 2nd grade during the time of the pandemic. Our students missed out on so many fundamentals during the remote and hybrid learning fiasco!