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Thursday, September 22, 2016

Your kids not going out for recess? Vitti says blame their fraidy cat and greedy teacher. (rough draft)

It's been a busy and exciting week but now back to my regularly scheduled rants.

When talking about not wanting to mandate play the superintendent said, 

Superintendent Nikolai Vitti, however, says he won’t support an across-the-board directive telling teachers how and when they can take their classrooms out for recess.
Instead, he distributed an email last week to elementary school teachers and principals encouraging each school to make time for both the currently mandated 150 minutes of physical education, as well as a more unstructured play time for children kindergarten through fifth grade. Parents also question whether students get anywhere near the 150 minutes of physical education.
“At this point, I don’t feel comfortable putting constraints on our teachers,” Vitti said. We have to overcome and address this fear that I think exists within the district of teachers not having autonomy to take their kids out when they feel it’s necessary. We have to challenge that and recognize the research that kids will actually perform better in math and reading if they get exercise.”
Money could also be a factor. Prior to last year, pay wasn’t tied to student gains. Now, the district determines salaries based on teacher performance - and one way of determining performance is through state testing.

That, Vitti said, leads teachers to become more possessive of their classroom time.
Did you notice he admits teachers are afraid, he says it right there. Well sir, why are teachers so afraid and exactly what do you plan to do about it? In case you have your hands up and are wondering why, they are afraid of you and your underlings. They are afraid of their principals too because they are afraid of you and pass it down and fear makes people act in a manner that they usually wouldn't. Instead of wondering why teachers are afraid, look in the mirror and then fix it. 
Then a reader had a great point I wanted to bring up earlier in the week but I was distracted by Shinegate.
From a reader
I do not know why - but I was shocked to see Vitti spin this as a 'blame the teacher' scenario. I too almost spit out my beer (milk?? yuck) at his fictional narrative that he does not want to dictate what teachers do in their classroom. Well he is now on record... "Mandating doesn't solve problems. It creates other problems." BOOM!!! I am bringing this article to every district-run meeting from now until the end of Vitti's term.
He did blame teachers there, he said many were to busy worrying about their end of the year scratch to take kids out.
But look at her other perhaps even bigger point as by now we are all used to hearing what the super thinks about teachers.
Mandates, he is against mandates, I know most of you think he's not, you get them quite often but hey he said it right. 
But he wouldn't just be saying things he just thought sounded good to the public would he, would he... crickets...Beuler?

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