Change in the realm of education is constant but the current reform movement is different. It is another phase that will come, be revised, refined and eventually replaced by the next big theoretical idea. Time will tell! ….Knowledge IS Power!
In this post, a veteran teacher with 30 years of experience explains why she had to retire. She didn’t want to. But the obsession with data-based decision-making finally broke her spirit.
She recounts incidents where she was able to help students, where students gave her their trust, where classes learned to love literature as she did. She remembers staff meetings devoted to lessons and students, not to data analysis. As all the rewarding parts of her work were eliminated, she realized that the reforms made it I possible to do what she loved est: to teach.
She writes:
“I remember a time when department meetings, faculty meetings, and in-service days revolved around reading, sharing ideas, learning about our subjects—and not around the only topics that seem to matter today: lesson plan format, testing, rubrics, teacher evaluations and technological gimmicks. Watch your back! If you don’t conform it will be…
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Terri Goldson 