DHS had a pep rally scheduled for Friday 9/21; the last period of the day was going to be eliminated so that the entire school could attend this event. Student-athletes, cheerleaders, and band members were to be excused for the last two periods of the day; here, they would have time to prepare for the rally.
Unfortunately, bomb scares and school cancellations forced us to move the Thursday football game to Friday; due to the Jewish holiday the game had be completed prior to sundown. Dumont High School had a half day, the pep rally was rescheduled and students were dismissed at 1 PM. It was fun, we watched the game and the afternoon classes lost 1 day of instruction.
Now the rescheduled pep rally will take away another couple periods of instruction. Adding to the deletion of instructional time will be training sessions for the new power teacher grade book. Thus far, we have used two periods (while substitute teachers issued busy work); in the next week or two we will be engaged in three more training sessions. Teachers need to learn this program before progress reports are mailed out. The marking period has just begun and the interruptions have been plentiful.
Well, at our school I am sure that the millions of field trips, captains breakfasts, drug assemblies, holocaust assemblies, and other education and non education events will add to the deletion of instructional time.
The 180 days video we watched in class the other evening was not only amusing but accurate. Book distribution, class info., assemblies, rallies, picture day, exams, reviews, standardized tests and the many other scholastic events leave us with a handful of days. Professor Bachenheimer's video concluded with 65 days of school.
It don't know if the events get in the way of school or if school gets in the way of the events. I do know that it feels like 65 days or less. How do we fix this problem? Which of the above mentioned activities do we delete? Should we just extend the school year in order to have more time for instruction? Will that get in the way of other "stuff". Are we trying to fit our life around education or are we trying to fit education into our lives?
We do not have enough time to teach and learn; in my opinion, there are two ways to increase the of amount time dedicated to "actual" instruction. Removing some of the above mentioned events except testing would increase time on task but deteriorate school culture. Some of those time consuming activities are important in establishing a family-like atmosphere in the school. Another way of increasing the amount of time on task would require extending the school year. Here, more time would be available. How would the community respond to this?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
The community would not respond favorable to increasingly the school year, no matter how persuasive the reasoning. After all, summer vacation is a part of American culture. Regardless, even if it was possible to extend the year, there would just be more reasons for pep rallies - just think of how great 4th of July's would be!
Sometimes I think teachers are our own worst enemy. Instead of students having a day off for our professional development day we could just come in on a Saturday. Instead of a Peprally during school, we can hold a mandatory after school rally. We could stop observing religious days and come to work. Instead of bringing in subs so we can learn new material, how about an at-home computer tutorial? Field trips will be during the summer. And all assemblies will be either before or after the school day.
So I think to answer one of your questions, we are trying to fit education into our lives...the lives of teachers, students, and parents.
School has landed to job of being all things to all people. Counselor, health care, ethicist, skill builder, current events, safety, sports, fitness, protector, etc etc. At some point, the main purpose for what school has been created for (learning) is minimized, hence the standardized results are too. No Children...and no activities left behind.
Something has to give somewhere. Maybe we should give more thought to prioritizing the events that of course we cannot eliminate completely out of the school year. It really seems that teachers are being asked to be magicians who can do it all have no reason to complain.
Post a Comment