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.
2 comments:
Jen, as a teacher, I would WANT you to fire me if I was hurting children's lives! Seriously! The thought of me continuously impacting children negatively for the kingdom is heartbreaking. Promise me if you're ever my boss and I'm crappy, you'll fire me! :-)
Just happened to pass by your blog and thought, if you haven't already seen it, you might be interested in this:
http://www.newsweek.com/2010/03/05/why-we-must-fire-bad-teachers.html
There was one other interesting article in that day's magazine about this subject, but I can't remember the title.
Just some thoughts that seem to be along the same lines.
Peace -- Susan (from newhope)
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