-> -> I happen to believe that schools act in a cocoon, separate
-> -> from reality much of the time
-> SK> It might be interesting to hear you elaborate on the reasons for
-> SK> this belief.
-> Here are some incidents from just this week (understand that
-> this is a definite pattern).....
->
-> School was cancelled for reasons of weather (good idea with
-> the icy roads).  Virtually every worker in every profession of
-> every industry was expected to be at work in our region.
-> These are the people that pay Wisconsin level property taxes
-> (about 70% to education...$1350/yr on a 50,000 house).  Those in
-> education, who regularly complain about lack of prep/free time, are
-> not only not expected to arrive for work, but are
-> incredulous when I've dared bring up the topic.  School
-> districts should view these days as opportunities for bonus
-> inservice, staff group projects and any number of meaningful
-> activities.
I must say, that I'm surprised to see that the teachers are actually
required to show up for work on a day where school was cancelled due to
weather. I thought that it was normal in areas where "snow days" were
called, for the school days missed to be added on at the end of the year
(or, extra days are already scheduled in to the school calendar, for
just such a case -- I live in Sunny Southern California and have no
personal experience with snow days). In that case, requiring the
teachers to show up for work is adding work days to their calendar?
I guess at your school the missed/canceled school days are not made up?
(We've had days of school cancelled due to heavy rain here in SoCal. We
don't make such days up.)
I can see your point, that this is different from what most working
adults deal with. But, as Ron McDermott has already pointed out: it
would be next to impossible to schedule a meaningful inservice or
workshop on that short of notice.
I suppose, were I in that situation, that I might want to go into work
to get some prep work done. But usually I can do that just as
effectively at home. My physical location doesn't matter that much.
Why do you think that teachers should have to report to the physical
plant on such days? Just because everyone else in other professions has
to? That doesn't seem like such a good reason. There must be a better
-> I participated in a committee meeting dealing with tech issues
-> for the district.  The staff members in charge of the meeting
-> scheduled it on the one night that our city has a city-wide
-> winter outdoor celebration, pioneer parade, etc.  They were
-> oblivious to the community calendar and activities.  The
-> meeting was billed as a dinner work meeting, beginning at
-> 5:30.  The committee has 24 members and 18 showed up.  School
-> staff had two 10" pizzas delivered with warm sodas!  This last
-> point sounds petty, but it demonstrates the "rectal-ocular"
-> mind set of these people.
Well, I don't know as I'd take that as representative of all educators.
You just have some pretty poor planners in the school you are associated
with. We pull off some pretty swell shindigs at our school.
-> They then proudly announced the purchase of 8 more Macs at $2200 per.
-> I decided I couldn't
-> take any more (I'm not a troublemaker and step very carefully
-> as my wife is an administrator in a neighboring district).
-> After the meeting I showed the tech staff a news article
-> showing that Apple now only had 3% of the personal computer
-> market, over half of those sold went into schools, half of the
-> balance were sold to people with school-ties who felt
-> compelled to use the platform that their school used.  When I
-> asked where these students were ever going to run into another
-> Mac in their lifetime, the responses were absolutely inane and
-> focused more on "the teachers are accustomed to the Macs and
-> there'd be hell to pay if we tried to change".
Again, I understand your point. Our school just got a new multi-media
computer lab this year: All Wintel/PC machines, not Macs. But, just
suppose that the machines would sit around unused if they were not Macs.
What would be the point of spending the thousands of dollars on them?
I suppose the teachers should be more flexible and learn how to use the
Windows machines. Nowadays they're not much different than Macs (if
they're running Win95). What the staff probably needs, is training and
support to help them make that transition. Is the school willing to alot
funds for such training/support? (You could probably fund quite a bit of
training from the savings found by buying Win95 machines instead of
Macs. Ah, well.)
I hear you loud and clear. I work with people like that. I guess some
people in education do think they live in a separate universe from the
rest of the world. But please don't think that ALL of us educators think
that way!
Sheila
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