I don’t feel like I can provide a complete discussion of the goal of my dream school without mentioning the specific goal of teacher recruitment and retention. Something that is a driving force in this whole thought experiment is the concept of increasing teachers’ job satisfaction through autonomy and control. That is not limited to … Continue reading My Dream Recruitment and Retention Policies
Educators hate cell phones. Even the most “chill,”– a group into which I would totally lump myself– finds themselves reprimanding students for technology based distraction on a semi-regular basis. And honestly, technology has changed the game in education because we as educators will never be as entertaining as the wide expanses of the internet at … Continue reading My Dream Cell Phone Policy
I often have conversations with educators about how pivotal a role the administration in any building plays in that building’s climate. It is also true that the climate of a building and the working environment of the adults doing the educating greatly impacts the education that children receive. Because that is the real work– the … Continue reading My Dream Administration
In my decade of service in public schools, I have heard many reasons and solutions to the issue of behavior management. I do not pretend to have an answer that will solve all of these problems, but I do know that the debate has caused more than one heated disagreement between educators. Differences in classroom … Continue reading My Dream School’s Student Bill of Rights
I think a lot of teachers who had the opportunity to start from scratch and design their own school would tell you that they would absolutely, positively, tolerate no standardized testing of any kind. I am not one of those teachers. I do think that there is a lot of information to be gained through … Continue reading My Dream Standardized Tests
I have been teaching high school for 11 years now, which is weird to say, honestly. When I started, I felt like a “first year teacher” for at least five years. I spent the next couple of years in some kind of mixture between impostor syndrome (wait… I’m the adult in the room? Who do … Continue reading What’s the issue?
In my dream school... 