School Based Management

When I first started teaching, I was hired by a "group of teachers. " The system that our county had implemented was called "School Based Management." Not only did the teachers do the hiring, but they also did their own scheduling and everything was managed from the ground up. It was a great system! Then later, of course like all good things, it dissolved. It was eventually taken over by a top down management system, and I think all that was good went with it. 

When School Based Management existed, the teachers who knew about the subject topics could ask pointed questions during their interviews with a prospective future employee. The questions came from a group and the group made the decision. Nobody knows a subject better than the teacher who teaches it. Many administrators become so, because they always planned to be in management, not because of their love for teaching or the subjects they teach. 

One time I had a student transfer from another Social Studies class where the teacher had told him the incorrect number of members in Congress. I was astonished that a teacher could be so inaccurate in such a simple and important Social Studies fact. By his third year in the classroom, this same teacher applied to be an administrator and became one. Hiring new teachers would be his next responsibility, really? 

In School Based Management, the scheduling was great.  All the teachers in a department would get together and make a big chart to be filled in with teachers' class periods. The school would give us the student count and the class periods they would like for each subject. It would take a couple of hours, but by the time we were finished, we had the class schedules and every teacher had input in the master schedule. It is a shame we had to say goodbye to this system, and maybe one day they will bring it back, but for now it is only a dream.

ADHD and sleep!

There is so much talk and research on (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) ADHD, that as a teacher I find it hard to believe society has changes so much, and that this change has constituted such an increase in cases that we have today. The New York Times article written by Dr. Vatsal G. Thakkar suggested that more children are staying up late and sleeping less, and this could be one of the causes of ADHD or its symptomatic behavior.

I would agree, not enough sleep can making anybody have a short attention span or just be edgy, and Thakkar brought up a good point worth research. In the past, it has been suggested that the RF waves from cell phones could also be affecting the increase in ADHD numbers. We also have the ongoing debates on whether modified foods are contributors, or if certain common ingredients found in foods have an adverse impact.

I believe we also have to look at society, not just material causes. In the past, parents disciplined more, and in ways that demanded respect. A lot of ADHD behavior is similar to same behavior a disobedient child would have. Children will try to get away with misbehavior at times, and if the child is being reared in an environment where there is a never-ending forgiveness by the parent, and no structured discipline, then bad behavior will follow. There is also learned behavior. If at home the child sees a parent stressed and acting out, they too will behave the same in response to their school’s daily pressures. 

I know many think “society” should be responsible in helping rear a child, but that just would not work very effectively  How many times in the news do we have to see how children have been kidnapped and held away from school or others and no one knew?  Homes can be isolated islands that provide each child their own unique outlook and experience, and being able to monitor each child's daily environment would be impossible. 

The Evolution of Education

I started teaching in 1990, and boy have we come a long way. That was the time of written grades and video tapes for movies, what we considered advanced at the time. Thank goodness there is still technology that can preserve the hundreds of videos I amassed through the years as an educator. Now there are DVDs and we computerize all  grades and feedback. 

The question you want to ask is: “Have we downsized humanity?”, that personal touch that made us human and able to feel. Today, schools are very preoccupied with standardized tests, along with teacher and school performance, when ultimately the performance is the students’, and the hope that the parent maintains an integral part of that education. It seems like society today feels a need to compensate for bad parenting in our schooling system. By bad parenting, I mean a parent who isn't involved, and doesn't want to be either. This seems to be more of a “child rearing” problem. You need a license to drive, to fish, or to do just about anything in this world, yet to have a child and be responsible for he or she; that is not monitored. Society then is forced to compensate for that loophole.

Today the classrooms are filled with phones, I pads, and computers. In some cases a professor can be put in a classroom and have no idea what each student is really doing behind that screen. Does he care? I don’t think he or she can afford to. If the “system” dictates it so, and Okays it, then it is so. To frustrate yourself over the rules, or go up against change, will deem you a dinosaur.

When I began teaching, I remember that Apple wanted to infuse their computer system into the world, and they know the best way to do it was through the “children.” So they gave computers to schools and teachers, yet I was resistant. I liked my pencil and paper. Eventually we were all dragged into it. We succumbed to the fact that even the students knew more than us when it comes to new technology. 

I remember in graduate school in 1990 when a professor took the class to his office to see him “talk on the computer” to some person in South Korea; we yawned!  I remember in 1995, when one of my students came up to me with a paper that had pictures printed on them, and I was: “How?” I remember around 1996 the librarian saying, “Marilyn, you have to come upstairs and try the “internet”.”  I was freaked out by the way she just clicked about it, and I was sure I could never learn. What a mistake, I later became a web developer. So what is next in education? We don’t know, but this time I can’t wait to see.