injustice

q. what happens if a lawyer, doctor, accountant, business person or any other professional, does not perform well at their job after repeated help and support from the companies that employee them????

a. they get fired!!!!

q. what happens if a teacher does not perform well at their job after repeated help and support from the schools that employee them?????

a. they continue teaching.

as a future school administrator this is one of the issues that frustrates me more than anything. yesterday i attended a workshop on school law and we spent the majority of the session learning how to navigate the many laws that protect teachers from being fired. and then there are teachers who have tenure. tenure is granted to teachers who have worked 5 years as a teacher. once a teacher has tenure they are virtually impossible to get rid of.

the problem is that we can NOT afford to have poor, or even mediocre teachers in our schools. american education has fallen so far behind other competing countries and our achievement gap is not getting any smaller. the simple solution to this problem is to have quality, motivated, strong teachers in each classroom.

studies have shown that if a student has 2 really bad teachers during their years in school they may not be able to recover! do you see how serious this problem can be?????

in order to fire a teacher i have to do the following:
-collect TONS of data on them (classroom observations, walk throughs, etc.)
-put them on an action plan-this involves TONS of work on the part of the administrator.
-stay in constant communication with human resources to make sure you are crossing all your Ts and dotting all your Is.
-hold multiple meetings with the teacher and try to work on the action plan.

this process can take at least 2 years-and sometimes more. in the meantime that teacher is still teaching and having a negative impact on students. if this is not an injustice, i don't know what is.

some school administrators have a hard time going through this process and they decide to just let it be...well that will NOT be the case when i take the helm. i would not be able to sleep at night knowing that i am letting my students suffer at the hand of a bad teacher. so watch out bad teachers...i'm coming your way.

i'd trade it all

i will be the first to admit how much i enjoy being single. i love sleeping in on the weekends, watching what i want on tv, going places at the drop of a hat and not having to tell anyone where i'm going or trying to find a babysitter. that's just a short list of the things that i enjoy about being single. i try to embrace those things when i'm feeling down about being single. my friends that are married with kids always tell me that they are jealous (in a friendly way) of all these things that i get to do. for example, i'm going on a cruise next week and last week when i had veteran's day off i stayed in my pjs all day and didn't leave the house. i love these things, i really do. BUT...i would trade it all for the desires of my heart; a husband to share my life with and kids to love and adore. so you may be jealous of the little, fun things i get to do being single, but i'm jealous of what you have. so when i gloat about these little things, its only because i'm trying to make myself feel better about the things i don't have yet. bare with me.....