TLN Teacher Voices

Top 5 Reasons Teachers Don't Get Involved in Education Policy

Teacher Ariel Sacks blogs at the TLN website under the banner "On the Shoulders of Giants." In a recent post she identifies the top five reasons teachers avoid contact with education policy -- and refutes each one. Here's the first:

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Recently on the Teacher Leaders Network, I landed in a discussion about the many great teachers we know who, for a variety of reasons, stay far away from education policy.  In this post, I'm trying to respond to what I see as the top five reasons teachers tend not to get involved.

One: It's not my job to be involved in education policy.  

My Response: While it's not in our job description to be involved in education policy, it is in our best interest to voice our perspectives, because policies directly affect the conditions of our work, our ability to do our best for our students, and our willingness to stay in teaching. 

Historically, teachers have been the recipients of policies written by outsiders, higher up on the ladder than we are. We experience the results of decisions and usually have plenty to say about how they play out in our schools.  How many times have you issued some choice words about the latest education legislation at lunch with a group of colleagues?  Why not hone that message and share it with a wider audience?  Also, if the policy makers are at the top of the education pyramid, who does that leave at the bottom?  Students and parents.  And that's just not right.  We need to challenge the current hierarchy so that the people who matter most in American public education, students, parents, and teachers, have a bigger voice. Teachers, especially, who are most directly responsible for the' education of students, need to be heard on the issues. 

via teacherleaders.typepad.com

Backward Education Funding

TLN blogger Renee Moore (TeachMoore) writes of miguided education funding priorities and their impact on those citizens who most need access to a quality educational experience:

As our state and federal governments put less funding into education generally, they insist that our nation must rise again to the top of global educational attainment. The Secretary of Education proclaims we must learn to do more with less. I know I'm not alone in finding that statement deeply disingenuous, if not downright insulting to those of us who have never been given proper or equal resources with which to educate the children for whom we are responsible. 

When children at one elementary school in town can have a library with books and computers, while those across town have to settle for some donated older books on a cart — when one high school has a fully functioning science laboratory where students can engage in hands-on learning — while at the other, teachers have to buy a single lab kit out of their own pockets to show their classes an experiment — as long as these and many other inequities are allowed to continue unchallenged, we are lying to those children in those poorer conditions when we tell them we value them or their education.

Read her complete post at teacherleaders.typepad.com

A Long Journey to a Balanced Life

The Well Balanced Teacher
by Mike Anderson
(ASCD, 2010)

Reviewed by Kristen Sluiter
Fifth Grade Teacher (WA)

New Millennium Network

In the spirit of full disclosure, it took me months to finally finish Mike Anderson's The Well Balanced Teacher: How to Work Smarter and Stay Sane Inside the Classroom and Out. Anderson taught for 15 years and shared that around his 5th year he realized he was working more than in his first year. In my fourth year of teaching, Anderson’s observation was one I’d recently happened upon, too.

One of the main reasons it took me months to finish this book was that, frankly, the first chapters did not resonate with me. I was looking for advice on how to set up a weekly schedule to balance my needs as a person and my needs as a teacher.

Each chapter takes on a new topic about how to create balance in one’s teaching career. By chapter 3 entitled "Belonging: Becoming an Integral Part of a Community," I was fed up. The previous two chapters were about the importance of managing stress and meeting my most basic needs like sleep and nutrition. As far as I was concerned, I didn’t need any more ho-hum reminders that eating well, keeping an exercise log, feeling safe at school, finding a way to disconnect from school, and getting enough sleep were key.

I dismissed the book for months as I struggled to find my own routine for balance. After discovering for myself that it takes small steps to create balance (and sometimes in the most unexpected ways), I picked The Well-Balanced Teacher back up again to give it another try.

As I neared the end of the book, I finally engaged. It was in the very last chapter, "Balance: The Importance of Balancing Our Time and Energy," that I found what I needed. It had sample schedules of two different teachers with varying needs/lifestyles. And it offered solid advice that anyone who might be struggling could get behind.

To paraphrase, it acknowledged that there isn’t enough real time for all we need to do but that if we carve out time for nonnegotiables, figure out what to eliminate, learn to say no, work more efficiently and leverage the strictness of our schedules, we might just have it made.

And there in the Afterword, was a note from the author that validated what I’d figured out in the months away from the book: Take small steps and start now.

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