Wednesday, December 01, 2010


Yesterday, my principal sent out a mass email to the teaching staff. The following is an excerpt:

Update your grades every week. (No excuses or exceptions.)

Notify your respective office when you assign a lunch detention, and
make sure the student is clear about whether or not s/he has lunch detention.

Take roll in the first ten minutes of every class.

If you're going to make an issue out of tardies with a student, be
sure to track them properly and follow the tardy policy that is
posted throughout the school.

Keep your students in class from bell to bell unless it's a bathroom
emergency. If you send a student to the bathroom, give them a pass
and be sure to track how long they're gone. If a student asks over
and over again every day to go to the bathroom, tell him/her no.
Teachers perpetually complain about their being perceived as non-professionals, by school boards, adminstrators, parents, and the general public. We want our personas to exude this holier than thou level of respect among these groups.
Yet, we have to be reminded, told, DIRECTED to do these basic things each day in our classes?? SERIOUSLY???
All those items seem to obvious, so critical to the success of a teacher, I find it astounding to think enough teachers are neglecting those tasks that a mass email is needed.
If we want to be treated professionally, don't you think the first step to accomplishing that goal would be our acting professionally? Do your job, do it well, and everything else will fall into place. If you can't manage to take attendance, keep grades up to date, keep track of tardies and students, then you are in the wrong profession. THOSE are the easy parts of the job!



1 comment:

Colleen said...

Applause. Today my 15 year old beyond-well-behaved daughter was called out of class to the principal's office. (which as I am sure you are aware, gave the girl a HEART ATTACK) The principal told her that one of her teachers reported that she was not in class on Monday or Tuesday, but was in school, so where was she and why was she skipping class? She was IN the class. Went to the teacher who reported her "missing" and said, "Umm... I was sitting right in front of you, both days." Teacher says "oops... not sure what happened there, must have been a mistake."

Oops!? For some kids, it's no big deal and they just move on with their day and forget about it, but for other kids... like mine... TOTAL ULCER/HEART ATTACK/STROKE... unnecessarily.