At the superintendent meeting yesterday the subject of poor teacher morale was brought up and a board member proudly said; we have a committee to reduce paperwork. I am more than happy to break it to her, that where the mountain of often superfluous paperwork that teachers have to do isn’t helping, that isn’t all that is bringing teachers down.
Somewhere along the way teachers went from valued colleagues to easily replaceable cogs. They are often spoken to in a fashion by administrators that would see teachers in trouble if they talked the same way to students. Furthermore right now teachers have few job protections and new teachers don’t have any. They can be replaced at a moments notice for any slight real or imagined and friends too many that is stressful.
Then when you add the fact that teachers have all of the responsibility but none of the authority in their classrooms, we have entered soul crushing territory. Teachers are told what to teach and how, many are not allowed to discipline and are given arbitrary numbers of students they must pass or can fail. Teachers that dare discipline kids or give them what they run the risk of bad evaluations or other loss of privileges and believe me friends when you go from having a room to being a traveling teacher it is a big deal.
With above when you also eliminate, creativity, innovation and flexibility and then sprinkle in way to much paper then you have the recipe for a brow beaten and down trodden stuff. Welcome to Duval County.
So yes school board, please lighten the load but if you want to make real changes try supporting your teachers too. Back them up with student discipline, and let them teach and then you will see some real improvement.
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