Building a Fence

What in the world am I talking about? I have no idea but I will say that we in the education field have done so in a great way. The staff at my school is entirely too fenced in to move forward with any kind of modern agenda. Or postmodern if you will. On the other hand we do have teachers with Masters degrees. So that makes them great, right? Sure, if you are an ignorant fool. There are quite a few here at my school with those credentials. We all think we are quite good at educating the children of our semi-rural area. But are we. Hardly.
My thought is that a good staff desires to learn more about their field and uses data to increase the efficiency of the output. How do we do that? First, we gather data. Of all sorts. Gather as much as is possible. No, homework packets do not count. What counts is that data that can be collected and used. Who is missing a great deal of homework or even which days does a kid not turn in homework most often? Which days are kids absent would work too. Data is what a business collects to figure out what is going on in order to see what can be done to improve the business and production. If each person in business decided to do as they please, I wonder the likelihood that the company would maximise profits. The same goes for schools. Are we maximizing the education children leave with if we do not teach common areas at common times and collect and use data to improve profits, if you will.
I am feeling as if each teacher at our school feels as though he or she is above pleasing the shareholders (students, parents) and wants only to try to profit in a way that makes the worker happy. Too bad the shareholders are those who will ultimately lose.

Raining Cats and Dogs

This morning I was greeted by my team teaching partner saying, "I was really hoping we would be two hours late, today."
She was speaking of her hope that our school would float away in the incredible amounts of rain that fell on Sunday night. Consequently, because all the rain fell on Sunday, there was little chance of school being late on Tuesday. Perhaps she entered a time warp and actually thought today was Monday. Who knows?
That is how things are around my school. On Monday another teacher said, "I am hoping for some major rain so we can get a day off." Wow.
Not much later I heard, "A couple of your kids ran into me." SHe was speaking of my kids, or kid as there was only one boy who made such a mistake to look backwards while walking and run into a self-proclaimed bit#@.
Is this the way things get when a school makes a gigantic transition from a principal who does very little to a principal who puts all of her guts into making a school run effectively. Perhaps there is a culture issue with us all and we really are not in the mood to work. Not well anyhow. Or maybe we are tired. With Christmas (not the holidays) on the horizon who can blame teachers for not feeling rested?
Not this cat. I want to take it all the way. Give me that ball. I am tired of hearing all of the whining and complaining. We do not do what other schools with the same amount of time. Now is the time to be unlazy.