Hedgetoad Teaching

There's been much talk about paying teachers based on merit, pay for performance and about a dozen other popular euphemisms floating around. School critics love the idea and seem to, at least, promote the idea as the savior of education. The big news last week was that it doesn't work . Really, I can't comment on what other teachers do or what would motivate them. I can tell you if a bonus for higher test scores would motivate me... I would be slightly excited for about five minutes. Then I'd start to think about what I could do to bring up the test scores and get depressed. Really, what I could do that I don't already do? More practice tests? No more novels... just short passages? And since I no longer teach classes which take THE test, does that mean I'm ineligible and I should demand to teach at least one of those classes even though it would mean reduced access to shared resources for all and huge increase in work load? After all, I MIGHT get a bonus at ...

It has been a very busy few weeks. I have four preps this year (because I’m insane!), no extra time to do RTI stuff and two toddlers who must be exercised to the point of exhaustion if I want them to go to bed before midnight. Also, they are no longer sleeping through the night. I may go insane. Already behind in grading (I’m sure you’re stunned) and I was greeting first thing with an scheduling snafu. Not many people we happy, but I ended up handing off Math RTI stuff to the math department! Someone else will doing the data tracking, meeting attending, etc. Nice for me. Have sneaky suspicion that I will be expected to enter in behavior data into special RTI behavior tracking thingy-mah-bob. However, have not been trained to do this. Another staff member was trained last year, but never was actually able to do it because.. wait for it… no password to access thingy-mah-bob was ever given to anyone in our building, despite months of begging. Need tips on how to dodge and avoid. Wat...

Last month, I thought I would get a jump start on planning for the coming year – with vacation and home improvement projects being in August, I might not have enough time. Now, looking over what I’ve written, I can’t figure out what I wanted to do! What survey was I planning? Oh crap! Might as well start over.