Let Teachers Teach
Posted: August 29, 2012 Filed under: Education | Tags: Education, hands in the pot, Instructional Specialists, KISS Principle, Learning, Methods and Theories, Teacher, Top Heavy Leave a comment »A quagmire has surfaced throughout our educational system due to one underlying factor, “Mistrust”. When there is “mistrust”, I can assure you there will be too many hands in the pot. When there are too many hands in the pot, very little is accomplished and the objective seldom gets done.
Our instructors in public schools are micromanaged to the umpteen degree. And as a result, the focus on accountability has taken precedence over the main objective, “Teachers Teaching” and “Students Learning”.
The emphasis for recreating the wheel on the “latest” methods for instruction occurs so often that it leaves instructors “spinning” without knowing which direction to follow.
From the top there are administrators who tie the hands of good teachers by insisting on their latest methods and agendas. They have to come up with new methods simply for the sake of validating their position. Then they produce more record keeping to make sure instructors are following their methods. They in a sense continue to “throw out the baby along with the bathwater”. By insisting that everyone get on the same page with their specialized teaching methods they create a mountainous obstacle to the “art of teaching”. The reason it does not work is the fact that micromanagement encumbers the instructor to the degree that good teachers have to work around an array of obstacles in order to teach.
Somehow we need to get back to weeding out the top heaviness and get back to the “KISS” principle before the whole institution topples over. DF
