In Case of an Emergency
I thought I would continue my line of thinking from my last blog for two reasons. First, I was alarmed by the reply Tech Teach Booth wrote about. Her school had a drill and to make a long story short, it sounded like it caused hysteria and chaos. I teach in a very small school and really can’t imagine what a mess it probably was with a much bigger school. It is such a shame that the teachers and faculty were not more prepared and alerted to the drill process. I can’t imagine how the parents felt sitting in the parking lot wondering what was going on.
Secondly, I also recently read a letter sent out to all parents from my school. It was describing an alert system that they were going to be implementing starting this school year. The system is called Instant-Alert by Honeywell. This is a web-based emergency notification system that can send out any kind of message and reach a targeted audience in one fell swoop. I can’t help but think had Ms. Booth’s school had a system like this in place the chaos could have been completely avoided during her school drill.
Living in North Dakota the weather can play a tricky role in getting to school some days. Just last year we had so many late starts and full day cancellations due to snow and weather related conditions. I remember the the flood, spring of 2009, that took place in the Red River Valley. There are so many uncontrollable events that take place that can impact people getting to school or work. It is during those times that I feel so sorry for the administration. They have to spend so much extra time on the phone calling parents and teachers letting them know what the plan for the day is. Our present option to find out what is going on in the event of a snow storm or weather related delay is to wake up early and listen to the radio in hopes of hearing the schools name. Just think how simple a process this could be if a system like Instant-Alert was in place. A parent can get an automated phone call on any number of desired phone numbers, e-mail and text messages instantly. This just seems like a more reliable immediate way of handling things. Just think if Tech Teacher Booth’s school had this. It would have completely eliminated any sort of confusion that obviously took place during their unintentional chaotic drill.
I was also quite impressed at the cost for a system like this. As you can see from the comparisons made in this article, the price per student is quite minimal. I know our school is picking up the tab for each student enrolled in the system. Quite a small price to pay for peace of mind!
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
School Safety
School Safety
I have so many ideas spinning around in my head for Blog #4. The stabbing incident in a Florida high school and the murder of a Yale graduate student has spiked my interest in school safety. A comment made by my husband struck me as interesting about the Florida incident. He thought it was surprising that the stabbing was even mentioned at all on national news. It is usually shootings that we hear about, and then the news media goes ballistic (pardon the pun) about them. Why is that?
When the incident happened in Florida on Sept. 15, it was reported immediately that the school went into lock down. That brought back memories of when our rinky-dink little school in the middle of no-where North Dakota had to be put into lock down. There was a bank robbery in a near by town and the thought was that the robber(s), who were thought to be armed, might be traveling our direction. We took action as we were told, not as we had planned or practiced. We had a plan for this, I think, but never had to use it. We were all assigned a class/grade and we took them to a classroom. We locked the door and hid in corners with the lights off. My particular set of students I was with was 3rd/4th grade. They kids did not take the situation seriously at all. It was just a big joke to them. But I felt the big joke was really on us. As I sat there and looked around my surroundings we were not safe at all. There are windows on either side of the door. A lot of good that would do against a person determined to get in the room. There are windows all along the outside walls of the classroom. This would have been an escape route for us, but also a way to break-in from the outside. As I sat there protecting my classroom flashes of the Virginia Tech massacre ran through my mind. This tragedy had just taken place. I remember hearing about the professors that stood in front of the door to help protect their students from the violence. It was then that the reality of the situation hit me. If I was put in the position to put my life in grave danger, would I be able to. At the time of the bank robbery and lock down my daughter was 1 ½ years old. This was first and foremost in my thoughts. Would I be able to act as expected for fear of my daughter?
The whole situation turned out to be uneventful. The day continued on as normal. We all went about our business as usual. Until actually faced with a situation like that you really don’t know how you will react. I don’t remember reading anything like that in the job description. How do you think you would handle things?
I have so many ideas spinning around in my head for Blog #4. The stabbing incident in a Florida high school and the murder of a Yale graduate student has spiked my interest in school safety. A comment made by my husband struck me as interesting about the Florida incident. He thought it was surprising that the stabbing was even mentioned at all on national news. It is usually shootings that we hear about, and then the news media goes ballistic (pardon the pun) about them. Why is that?
When the incident happened in Florida on Sept. 15, it was reported immediately that the school went into lock down. That brought back memories of when our rinky-dink little school in the middle of no-where North Dakota had to be put into lock down. There was a bank robbery in a near by town and the thought was that the robber(s), who were thought to be armed, might be traveling our direction. We took action as we were told, not as we had planned or practiced. We had a plan for this, I think, but never had to use it. We were all assigned a class/grade and we took them to a classroom. We locked the door and hid in corners with the lights off. My particular set of students I was with was 3rd/4th grade. They kids did not take the situation seriously at all. It was just a big joke to them. But I felt the big joke was really on us. As I sat there and looked around my surroundings we were not safe at all. There are windows on either side of the door. A lot of good that would do against a person determined to get in the room. There are windows all along the outside walls of the classroom. This would have been an escape route for us, but also a way to break-in from the outside. As I sat there protecting my classroom flashes of the Virginia Tech massacre ran through my mind. This tragedy had just taken place. I remember hearing about the professors that stood in front of the door to help protect their students from the violence. It was then that the reality of the situation hit me. If I was put in the position to put my life in grave danger, would I be able to. At the time of the bank robbery and lock down my daughter was 1 ½ years old. This was first and foremost in my thoughts. Would I be able to act as expected for fear of my daughter?
The whole situation turned out to be uneventful. The day continued on as normal. We all went about our business as usual. Until actually faced with a situation like that you really don’t know how you will react. I don’t remember reading anything like that in the job description. How do you think you would handle things?
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Top-Notch Teachers Found to Affect Peers
Top-Notch Teachers Found to Affect Peers
This article struck a chord with me. It made me think about my first year of teaching. I came to a small town for my first teaching job. It was a small school with maybe 20 faculty members including ancillary staff. I was the only rookie among a staff of veteran teachers 20 years my senior with that much more experience than me. None of them were music teachers with me, but that didn’t matter. I knew subject matter. They taught me how to be a “teacher”. The quality of our school was impeccable because of the staff and their investment in the school. They had the respect of the kids. They had the respect of the community. They had the respect of their peers. Their level of professionalism was unparalleled. I easily adopted their ways. It was clear they had an affect on me personally and professionally. This all took place almost 2 decades ago, in the days when signing bonuses or merit pay were not even really heard of. Monetary incentives were not necessary then. The incentive I got was to be as good a teacher as my co-workers. That was the ultimate payment. If a monetary incentive for achievement had presented for the group, it would have been easy to accomplish with a faculty like the one I was part of.
Fast forward 10 years later when the dream team retires. That is when things changed drastically. We had 8 faculty members retire, including a superintendent that had been at this school for 38 years. All the retirees had to be replaced. They were replaced with young teachers, right out of college, with the same issues I had when I started. The difference was they didn’t have an abundance of veteran teachers surrounding them. They were also being hired during a time when teachers in certain fields were hard to come by and signing bonuses were now being considered and used. Two things about this scenario really bothered me. The caliber of our school plummeted as a result of a majority of rookies on staff, possibly through no fault of their own. They just didn’t have the influence of experience. The other thing was that I had now been at this school for over 10 years. Clearly I was a tenured teacher who was working hard to climb the salary ladder. In comes rookie in a critical area and can get paid more than me just because of the field they happen to be in. It really gave me ill feelings.
I have to agree with the article where it says individual merit pay or signing bonuses only create friction and competition to work independently. I agree with merit pay and signing bonuses, but for the right reasons, something like Katie Denison suggested in at the end of her article.
This article struck a chord with me. It made me think about my first year of teaching. I came to a small town for my first teaching job. It was a small school with maybe 20 faculty members including ancillary staff. I was the only rookie among a staff of veteran teachers 20 years my senior with that much more experience than me. None of them were music teachers with me, but that didn’t matter. I knew subject matter. They taught me how to be a “teacher”. The quality of our school was impeccable because of the staff and their investment in the school. They had the respect of the kids. They had the respect of the community. They had the respect of their peers. Their level of professionalism was unparalleled. I easily adopted their ways. It was clear they had an affect on me personally and professionally. This all took place almost 2 decades ago, in the days when signing bonuses or merit pay were not even really heard of. Monetary incentives were not necessary then. The incentive I got was to be as good a teacher as my co-workers. That was the ultimate payment. If a monetary incentive for achievement had presented for the group, it would have been easy to accomplish with a faculty like the one I was part of.
Fast forward 10 years later when the dream team retires. That is when things changed drastically. We had 8 faculty members retire, including a superintendent that had been at this school for 38 years. All the retirees had to be replaced. They were replaced with young teachers, right out of college, with the same issues I had when I started. The difference was they didn’t have an abundance of veteran teachers surrounding them. They were also being hired during a time when teachers in certain fields were hard to come by and signing bonuses were now being considered and used. Two things about this scenario really bothered me. The caliber of our school plummeted as a result of a majority of rookies on staff, possibly through no fault of their own. They just didn’t have the influence of experience. The other thing was that I had now been at this school for over 10 years. Clearly I was a tenured teacher who was working hard to climb the salary ladder. In comes rookie in a critical area and can get paid more than me just because of the field they happen to be in. It really gave me ill feelings.
I have to agree with the article where it says individual merit pay or signing bonuses only create friction and competition to work independently. I agree with merit pay and signing bonuses, but for the right reasons, something like Katie Denison suggested in at the end of her article.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Should Teachers Rule the World (or at least the school)?
Should Teachers run the school?
After reading chapter one from “Teaching Strategies, a Guide to Effective Instruction” I contemplated what I could blog about. I kept coming back to what had caught my attention right off the bat when I read it. The section about decision making and responsibility has always been a concept I have had an opinion about throughout my teaching career. I had just read an article in the Minneapolis StarTribune over the past weekend geared toward the same line of thinking. It has long been my personal theoretical idea that teachers and students should be left alone on a deserted island for the duration of a student’s education, to be as far away from parents and administration as possible. I have had so many experiences that if the teacher and the student would be “left alone” life would be good. Some how letting the teacher teach and the students learn sounds so ideal. Outside of my reality show-esque thinking, a more realistic opportunity is on the forefront. Minnesota is actually following through with a reform that is relinquishing power over to the teachers. A question can be posed than, that if teachers are in power would there be more accountability for student success? Would that improve learning and the whole educational process? I sort of feel like this is one of those no-brainers where you smack your self in the forehead and say “duh”. How could it not lead to more academic success. There would be no interference from administration that the teacher could actually just teach. I have often been posed the question “do you like/love teacing”? My frequently given answer is: “I don’t know, it has been so long since I have taught, I couldn’t tell you. I find that I am so often dealing with the proverbial bureaucratic red that my art of teaching is lost. Here is where my reality game show would come in. The premise would be teachers and students stranded on a tropical island (just for added flair) and you are eliminated based on who learns the least!
I was amused by one of the comments left by a reader that said this is a bad idea because leaders need to be clueless. That is clearly not the definition of a teacher. I liked this comment but look out if you continue to read the list of other comments. It was very negative towards teachers and teacher unions. I guess maybe I missed the boat with the involvement of the union as one of the governing bodies. I was really just focused on teachers being in charge. Clearly there is a strong opinion out there about unions and teachers in general. That is an idea for a future blog. For now I will just live in the delusional moment where teachers can be in charge.
After reading chapter one from “Teaching Strategies, a Guide to Effective Instruction” I contemplated what I could blog about. I kept coming back to what had caught my attention right off the bat when I read it. The section about decision making and responsibility has always been a concept I have had an opinion about throughout my teaching career. I had just read an article in the Minneapolis StarTribune over the past weekend geared toward the same line of thinking. It has long been my personal theoretical idea that teachers and students should be left alone on a deserted island for the duration of a student’s education, to be as far away from parents and administration as possible. I have had so many experiences that if the teacher and the student would be “left alone” life would be good. Some how letting the teacher teach and the students learn sounds so ideal. Outside of my reality show-esque thinking, a more realistic opportunity is on the forefront. Minnesota is actually following through with a reform that is relinquishing power over to the teachers. A question can be posed than, that if teachers are in power would there be more accountability for student success? Would that improve learning and the whole educational process? I sort of feel like this is one of those no-brainers where you smack your self in the forehead and say “duh”. How could it not lead to more academic success. There would be no interference from administration that the teacher could actually just teach. I have often been posed the question “do you like/love teacing”? My frequently given answer is: “I don’t know, it has been so long since I have taught, I couldn’t tell you. I find that I am so often dealing with the proverbial bureaucratic red that my art of teaching is lost. Here is where my reality game show would come in. The premise would be teachers and students stranded on a tropical island (just for added flair) and you are eliminated based on who learns the least!
I was amused by one of the comments left by a reader that said this is a bad idea because leaders need to be clueless. That is clearly not the definition of a teacher. I liked this comment but look out if you continue to read the list of other comments. It was very negative towards teachers and teacher unions. I guess maybe I missed the boat with the involvement of the union as one of the governing bodies. I was really just focused on teachers being in charge. Clearly there is a strong opinion out there about unions and teachers in general. That is an idea for a future blog. For now I will just live in the delusional moment where teachers can be in charge.
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