Top Ten Things That Really Bug Teachers

I have been asked by my friends at Education Action to come up with a list of things that really bug teachers. I admit this list is a little personal although I have consulted with a few other teachers, a little secondary where I spent most of my teaching life although I did six years of elementary, three community college years and three, (one course) at university. The list was open ended but to entertain myself I adopted the David Letterman “Top Ten” format so the list builds to a climax. I consider this to be a work in progress so please write and tell me if I missed a critical one or if some of my reasons are off the mark. I can take it, really I can. Here we go; I’m reading these from little blue cards. A little music from the Paul Shaffer Band if you please.

Number 10 – Paper work

Endless paper work, every trip to the mail box has a new form to fill out to meet a new demand from the Ministry or the Board. The paperwork involved in taking a bus load of kids to the museum is now so onerous it actually acts a disincentive to organize a trip. The same is true of most activities like coaching a team or anything similar. Talk about killing the incentive to do anything creative.

Number 9- Standardized tests

They really don’t help classroom teachers even a little bit. They cater to a know-nothing mentality that associates low scores with failure or laziness of the local staff or administration when, in fact there is no relationship whatsoever. It is much more difficult to work in a low scoring school. Many of our best teachers and principals stay in difficult schools year in and year out and get nothing but abuse from the press, parents, and politicians for their efforts. The tests depress teachers and cause low scoring elementary kids to quit trying and high school kids to drop out.

Number 8- Head in the sand administrators

You know the type, if they are in the building at all they are in their office and never venture out to the halls, the cafeteria, the yard or playground. When it comes to a staff meeting, the teachers and support staff feel the principals are talking about some school they have never heard of.

Number 7 Lack of resources

Of course the textbook budget never covers the number of books required, that is almost a given, so late June and early September are spent taping books back together with library tape and scotch tape but if it only ended there. There are shortages of photocopiers and paper, about half the phone lines necessary, projectors for laptops forget it. Teachers are buying their own. What business doesn’t supply the tools its workers need? Teachers need free laptops renewed every few years. You heard me.

Number 6- Lack of Support

Lack of support from administrators on student’s lateness, truancy and behaviour issues really undermines teachers. This is accompanied by a second guessing that is really off putting, “Tommy says he was in your period 2 history class. That wasn’t him you saw outside smoking a splif. It is an obvious case of mistaken identity.” They deny behaviour problems, drug problems, lateness problems or use the classic- if your program was more exciting the kids would never cut class. As if. Admission of problems means somebody has to actually do something about it. They don’t like the sound of that.

Number-5 Class size issues remain

 Yes Ontario and some other provinces have addressed primary class size to an extent but they have squeezed the balloon in one place causing it to expand in others. They will try every trick to jam one more kid in a class in those places that have legislated or negotiated maximums and make the teacher make an issue out of it. The teacher has the windowless room in the basement with the pipes next year, no connection.

Number 4- Deadlines that don’t work

Totally unreasonable exam and reporting deadlines that make thorough marking, calculating, and recording almost physically impossible without doing “all nighters” the weekend before the reports are due and at the end of all of that someone points out, “you made a mistake on Mable’s report card”. With any luck there are no sharp implements handy.

Number 3- Mollycoddling students

Mollycoddling students with mark disputes, credit light credit recovery programs, no penalty for late assignments (what does this teach them? is this Character Education?). This is combined with no ability to give 0 as a mark even though you couldn’t pick the kid out of a line-up. A spin-off is caving in to hovering parents who apparently know their son/daughter better than you do and if they say their child did hand in the missing assignment then you must have lost it. So what if this all causes the graduation rate to go up. If you blow hot air on the thermometer the temperature goes up but the room is not warmer. No more, probably less education has taken place.

Number 2- Curriculum Overload

Wildly unreasonable curriculum and program demands with a never ending list of outcomes, expectations, strands, rubrics, look for’s and this is all before we really enter the coming world of Differentiated Instruction meaning you need at least four lesson plans for each class. “What about visual learners, auditory, what about the ones who are ready to move on, they can’t get the same lesson as the ones who have more difficulty”. Google it if it has not come to a school near you. This one ought to accelerate the retirement rate that the state of your RRSPs has slowed down.

 When it comes to PD there is a widespread belief among teachers that the people in charge of PD for the board don’t actually know any more about the topics than they do. The eye rolling at most PD sessions confirms this view. That is why there is a much greater need for teacher initiated PD.

And the number one thing that really bugs teachers!

Ministry and board policies that show a complete lack of respect for teacher professionalism.

This comes in many forms but among the many are demands that teachers patrol hallways, supervise lunch rooms, meet buses, supervise elementary recess, stuff envelopes with report cards, do an inordinate number of on-calls because the board won’t hire enough substitute teachers, and to encapsulate, treat university educated professionals as glorified baby sitters. Teachers are often placed in dangerous situations that other workers can refuse to do like working alone with very dangerous students.

Secondary teachers are herded into ‘bull pen’ offices whereas community college teachers usually have individual offices with their own phone line. They are not given the technology required to do the job so they are forced to buy it themselves. Try this job without a laptop today. Every other profession can write off home office space and equipment but teachers are specifically excluded from this. They are expected to call home regarding problems but try getting a line on a prep period. If teachers threaten to strike they are told to “act like professionals” but why would they when the board refuses to treat them like professionals on a daily basis.

When it comes to things like department structure just as an example, teachers are almost unanimous that a traditional subject based department structure is needed. Boards demand “dancing through walls” “breaking down silos” departments. This means science merged with math and maybe tech, English merged with Modern Languages, and so on. The board insisting they know more in these instances simply brings them into contempt with teachers and saps the credibility of ‘higher ups’.