Big Brother

I had a department meeting today. My supervisor told everyone about some changes. The one change that had everyone in an uproar was this log that we have to complete whenever we leave our buildings. At first, everyone was okay with it. We all thought it was wise to keep track of when we are at meetings in other buildings, doing outside evaluations or attending to personal business for a long period of time. But then we found out that we have to log in and out if we leave our buildings for lunch. What?? People were outraged. Why is the district keeping tabs on our whereabouts at all times? I knew the answer. The support staff at the high school have been abusing their lunch breaks. The high school is large and no one keeps track of the staff and their attendance during the day. They don't have to sign out of their building, so they come and go as they please. When I worked as an intern, I witnessed people coming in hours after school had started, leaving for hours at a time to do personal business during the day, and just being away without anyone knowing where they were or when they were returning. I'm sure there were some crises that happened at the high school and there were support staff that were unaccounted for. My supervisor said that he created the log so that when he gets phone calls about his staff, he knows where they are. So basically, because a few people abused the freedom to leave the building, everyone has to suffer. Isn't that the moral of education reform? Because of some bad practices in the past, the remedy goes completely overboard and inconveniences everyone.

BBC

RTI: An Update

My district decided to roll out RTI at all elementary schools this year for grades K-2. It decided to do this by having a 2 hours inservice with every k-2 teacher, elementary special education teacher elementary school psychologist, social worker and speech pathologist. It was a packed room with a bunch of confused people. There was too much information and not enough explanation on why RTI is a different concept. That's my main gripe: So far, only special ed people have been talking about RTI. Regular ed teachers haven't been talking about it. So when they sat in the inservice, most of them had no idea what the presenters were talking about. Each school should have had its own day to discuss this. The teachers need a new frame of reference. Many times I heard teachers still using terms as "referral" and "pre-referral" and they just didn't get it.

Unfortunately, my principal is to blame for the teachers from my school misunderstanding RTI. She erroneously told them that RTI was just like our broken pre-referral system. Therefore, the teachers didn't bother to pay attention. She is in denial, and we need her to get a grip and realize that this is a paradigm shift. The old way is dead. RTI is now.

The literacy specialists are inviting a teacher from a school that ran a pilot RTI program. We hope to learn how they adjusted and what role each person played. That's the main concern from the support staff: How do we fit into RTI? If our principal isn't taking the lead, then we need to be proactive and figure out how we fit before someone tries to use us as before.

BBC