An Appraisal of Common Demands - Part 1

This Tweet is the impetus for this post, although it's not hard to find similar postings out there.
The first part of this Tweet is dead on.  Many professionals don’t need the influx of advice, training, and tasks that are foisted upon them.    It’s the needs that I want to address, I’ll do a few here and few on a future post to keep the length manageable.

Support is a no-brainer.  Classrooms don’t exist in a vacuum. There needs to be competent, dedicated people who want to support the classroom and not just check the boxes.  At the risk of overgeneralizing, many support staff and admins are not effective.  This is either by their own lack of effort and initiative, or having their hands tied by regulations or faux expectations to regulate numbers.  Teachers can have a hard time with a handful of students where a modicum of support will help greatly.

Class size and wages are intertwined in a rather perverse manner.  Ideally lower class sizes would help with instructional needs and the aforementioned support.  Unfortunately, that works inversely with the wage issue.  Fewer kids per class = more teachers.  More teachers = lower funds for salaries.  Because they are existing with a finite pool of tax dollars there’s not way to adjust the equation for the better.  (Note: a “Fair” wage will be discussed in greater depth in another post)

Check out this topic's accompanying episode of The Free Thinking Teacher Podcast.

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