Construction of School Administrators

Three things I learned are:

1) In the article it talked about teachers having quite a bit of choice on how they teach. Teacher do have to follow a prescribed curriculum however, lesson plans, teaching methods, discipline approach, etc. the teacher has a considerable amount of choice (p. 184).

2) New and experienced teachers may feel isolated as teaching remains to do that. Teachers spend most of the time with students leaving little time to interact with other adults (p. 185).

3) The hiring process for teachers has common elements but varies across schools and districts. In some areas, during the hiring process time may be used to gather staff opinion or community views, and to think about the kind of person wanted for the position (p. 190).

Two Connections I made are:

1) When it talked about teachers having a considerable amount of choice for having to follow the curriculum I have experienced in one of my classes creating a unit plan. As this is new to me it seems overwhelming that in the elementary curriculum it does not have a recommended list of books for grades in ELA, etc. However, once I have planned a few units and gained more knowledge I think I will enjoy the freedom of being able to meet the criteria needed from the curriculum but doing it in a way that meets the student’s needs.

2) I have never thought about teaching being an isolating job however, after specifically thinking about this I can see how it is now. At first, I thought more so elementary teachers are more isolated than high school but I think both are in the sense that you teach students for most likely 6 periods a day, have to take a turn on supervision, extra-curricular activities are often done on your own with the students so unless teachers are team teaching or have PD, meetings most of your day is very isolated with students.

One question I still have is:

When first becoming a teacher and starting a new job how do you try to fit into an already formed setting where it feels like people are not approachable for help?

One thought on “Construction of School Administrators

  1. You asked a very thoughtful question, Laura. However, I can’t imagine having no support from any teachers. As many of the teachers understand where you are coming from and know that the first couple of years are the hardest. When I worked as an Educational Assistant, the teachers work together and support one another with basically everything. Therefore, if they didn’t then they wouldn’t have a very good school system. When I worked as an EA I was 18-19 years old and many of the staff members were in their early 30’s to even late 50’s. I made many close relationships with all the teachers and in fact, a teacher I became the closest to was 52. I don’t think teachers will ever be not approachable since they understand how you feel and you will make friends with many of the staff members.

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