Why did you become a teacher? I don’t know you, but I am going to go out on a limb and guess that you didn’t do it to shuffle paperwork. I am also going to take as a given that while you think measurable achievement is important, you didn’t take all those graduate courses to become a glorified test prep teacher.
Do you have an incredible idea for a project? Start it today. Ignore the voice in the back of your head telling you that it’s impossible, that your principal will have a caniption, that you might fail. Do something that inspires your students. Do something that delights you.
Be the teacher you set out to be when you first got into this racket. If it blows up in your face, you can always go back to the test prep song and dance.
And if you’re already one of the incredible teachers doing this on a regular basis, please do me a favor and check in on the teacher next door.
Can something as simple as rearranging a school’s schedule have a profound impact on student success? According to an article printed recently in The New York Times, it can.
Some experts think it can, and now some schools are rescheduling recess — sending students out to play before they sit down for lunch. The switch appears to have led to some surprising changes in both cafeteria and classroom.
I won’t regurgitate the content here; it’s worth reading. There are a few cool things going on in this article. First, schools who have shifted recess before lunch have all noticed the same phenomenon: meteoric improvement is possible through relatively small changes to the status quo.
There is another part that I want to draw your attention, however. The article repeatedly mentions how wasted food was cut down, instructional time was added, and student disruptiveness was down. The schools profiled in this article are using data effectively. They’re not just collecting binders and binders of data. These schools came up with a hypothesis, tested their hypothesis, and measured the results. It’s the scientific method.
A lot of schools just collect data for the sake of collecting data—without an actual goal in mind. They believe that storing massive amounts of these records will drive their instruction. Blindly collecting data, is taxing on teachers and administrators and ultimately more likely to overwhelm them. Data are exponentially more effective when their be used for a targeted purpose.
