More Coffee, Please

Talking to my replacement the other day, I realized I had made a few mistakes, damaging the ability of the department to work together as a team. Some things, apparently, are only visible in hind-sight.

It wasn’t intentional. For whatever reason, MRHS has had a hard time hanging onto teachers for the junior year. A year after I was hired to teach in that position, another teacher left. I took some of his top classes—who better, since I’d had experience? Not long after, the teacher with the honors class left, and it was once again natural to take that course.

I had a dream schedule. I taught two sections of a senior elective I designed, two sections of college level English, and an Honors course. In less than 6 years, I’d managed to divest myself of every low level class, and build a schedule which any teacher would envy.

Along the way, I made it harder for every other teacher in the junior year. I had an over-abundance of upper level classes, leaving them with the bulk of the lower ones. It meant that my fellows in the department had wildly varied schedules. Last year, there were five teachers in the junior level, all struggling to teach the same books, and all their classes doing wildly different things.

A good friend in the department had one junior college level class…and the rest were sophomores. Another teacher had the same, though the rest were all seniors. It made more work for them, and the kids suffered because of it. We had four teachers creating four different classes. End up with teacher “A” and get one curriculum. Get teacher “B” and receive something radically different.

Even worse, my schedule wasn’t one anybody else could easily do. By the time I fell into the classes I had, I’d designed the junior curriculum, designed the elective I was teaching, and taught all the material at least twice. I’d taught both for a very long time, so having a full load of college level kids was no problem at all. I didn’t have all that much prep work to do, so grading the endless papers was my biggest time problem. Thirty hours a week of grading was a challenge, but I could manage.

But a new teacher, new to the courses, has to prepare for classes, prepare materials, and then grade papers. I have every confidence he can do it—but it’s not fair to ask him to, and it’s not right to deny others the courses which will make them better teachers. A schedule should be designed that it can reasonably be taught without half a decade’s experience.

Whether it was meant or not, I allowed the worse elements of the spoils system to dominate. Rather than designing schedules which served our kids best, we allowed teachers to seize good classes based only on being around when someone else left.

Teachers shouldn’t be pirates, taking from others’ schedules. They also shouldn’t be vultures, picking from dead carcasses. A schedule for a teacher should be based on what makes sense, what will lead to a strong team and a strong department, and not on the gradual accumulation of “good” classes.

This is even more important in a school looking at losing accreditation and looking at the possibility of a third year without a contract. The school must look at the possibility teachers will be hired fresh from college, stay a year or three, and then leave.¹

Preparing for that possibility, as well as having the courage to design a schedule system which is fair, logical, allows for teams, and not based on the spoils system, isn’t going to be easy. Teachers control nothing in their day, and quickly grow proprietary over classes because of it.

Worse, this would go against every element of human nature. Teachers will hate the idea. Nobody likes the idea of change. The hardest thing in the world is to give up that which will make our lives easier, but we should be willing to give up and to change if it will lead to a better school. I know I was focusing very much on what I wanted to teach and what I would be good at teaching, not what was good for the team.

A couple thoughts, if I could do it over again:

Teacher Schedules Should Include Two Grades

A teacher of Freshmen should also teach sophomore courses. Sophomore teachers should teach some juniors.

The best thing for my junior classes was teaching a senior elective. It suddenly became very clear what I needed them to know and be prepared for when I was actually teaching the course they would have the next year. Likewise, my sophomore courses were better because I taught juniors.

“Stacked” courses also allow a teacher to have the time to form a relationship with the kids. A good chunk of my sophomores I had again as juniors, and when they opted to take my senior elective it was one of the best classes I ever worked with. We had formed a relationship, and it meant we learned more, and had fewer problems because of it.

Every teacher and every kid should have the same opportunity.

Every Teacher Should Have a Senior Elective

In many ways, senior electives are the some of the best classes that can be taught. Not only is it a chance to design a class around a teacher’s own interest, but it’s also a chance to see our students as the adults they will be. I’ve always felt bad for teachers of middle and elementary students, as they never get to see the end product we strive for. The goal of the school system is a graduating senior, and every teacher should have a chance to teach one.

More importantly, senior electives should not be defined by the narrow interest of what’s been decided before, but by the interest of the teacher in charge of the course. I liked teaching Crime and Punishment because I like ethics and the law. I would have liked to teach a science fiction course, would have liked to teach a writing course…but don’t make me do a poetry course.

Other teachers are different. Every teacher should design an elective according to their interest, and they should have a chance to teach it. Kids will choose from what’s available that year, just like they would in college. Even better, for many of our kids, it may be a chance to connect with a favored teacher from a previous grade, or to avoid a teacher who they don’t get along with.

But how is this teaching in a combat zone? So far, none of this has anything to do with any sort of real change. Teachers would have a senior elective. They would teach across two grades. We have teachers who do that now. Where’s the shift? How does this help with new teachers arriving in the building?

Here’s the rub, the thing which will cause the most howls: Teacher schedules should rotate on a yearly basis.

Most teachers will instantly resent this for a number of reasons. First and foremost are the ownership issues outlined above. Teachers want the best classes, and they then want to keep them.

I very much understand. The hardest thing in the world for me to do was to give up my senior elective, but I’m also glad I did so. Teamwork can’t happen when everyone is scrambling for the spoils, and this will remove that kind of anger and frustration. Everyone will teach an honors class. Everyone will teach the lower levels as well.

In addition to removing the issue of “who got what” is also means that teachers will never be content to leave a kid where they find them. Nothing is worse than a teacher who, through long acquaintance with nothing else, allows his/her standards to settle, to not push every kid to be the best. I constantly adapted material from my upper level classes down to my lower ones, to the extent that I was teaching more and better material to lower levels in my last few years than when I taught my upper levels in the first few years.

If I had stayed at MRHS, then my College Prep classes would have gotten a good taste of what I did with my honors classes this year. At Monadnock Community Connections School every kid I run into gets a little of what I would have taught in AP Composition. There’s no reason to deny every kid this, and the only way to do it is to continually ask teachers to stretch, to grow, to get outside of their comfort zone and be willing to try something new.²

It’s uncomfortable. We don’t like it. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it.

A sample schedule might look like this:

The biggest benefit to a school facing teacher retention issues is everyone will end up cross trained across a grade level team. A teacher will come in on year “A” as a new, inexperienced educator. Schedule “A” will be as “normal” as we can make it—not a collection of random classes left from the carcass of another teacher’s schedule, and not with a single token “good” class to make some attempt at fairness. Ideally, it should contain the fewest number of preps—two would be ideal. There will also be one class which will be team-taught with another, more experienced, educator.

Schedule “B” would be similar. At least one, but better if there were more, of the classes would repeat from the previous year. At this point, the teacher would have had at least one year of teaching under his/her belt, and this is also the year when they would get the chance to teach a senior elective.³

In the third year, an honors or upper level course in that grade level would be taught. There would also be senior electives. In a worst case scenario, this teacher is now the “experienced” teacher in the team, so he or she will also be team-teaching one class with the year “A” teacher.

This breaks down around the junior/senior level. For one thing, there are usually fewer students. Traditionally, many students leave for alternate programs around their sixteenth birthday, or drop out.

There’s also the appearance of classes which require more training. The combination means there will be a higher concentration of senior electives, and this could be a cause of concern—again, senior electives are the “picks” and the joys to teach. On the other hand, nothing says that the teacher with the most senior electives—the department chair—needs to keep them.

The department chair should rotate as well. More on that later.

1 Three years is about as long as I can imagine the average new teacher lasting without a contract or without a raise. In the first year, they’re too happy to have a job to actually worry about how much they’re making. In the second, it dawns on them how much they’re not making. After the third, they can’t afford to stay any longer. At this point, I’ve just gotten word that negotiations have broken down and there’s an appointment for mediation on November 2. It doesn’t look great to have a contract for March.

2 Admittedly, there are drawbacks. I personally feel like I’m better with upper level kids, and there are many who are better with lower levels. So the argument will be focused around teacher talent: One teacher is “Soooo good” at some level or class. But that doesn’t mean they should be allowed to stay there. If a teacher can’t do any level or any job, then they need to be removed—they’re not a part of the team. Every Marine a rifleman, and every teacher capable of any work. Likewise, it will take longer for a teacher to really get a class—they’ll teach an honors class only once every three years. On the other hand, they’ll have plenty of time with other classes, and plenty of people to ask questions of inside the department.

3 Ideally, this senior elective would be one that the teacher designs himself, catering to his strengths, and focusing on his interests. However, given the time it takes to design a class, and deadlines to submit to those above, this may not be possible. So the first year a new teacher is in the building they may teach a class that someone else is teaching thier first year…which is great. They should be ecouraged to go see it, meet with the teacher, and if there are questions, there will be a source of knowledge in the building.

Gregarious

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