My sister in law (Flor) is an elementary school teacher. My parents are elementary school teachers (my mother has been retired since 15 years ago, but still keeps the same mentality). Will is an elementary school teacher. I was a teacher (college level, not exactly the same).
My parents spent their entire career in public schools. Flor and Will teach in private schools. I’ve been around teachers my whole life. And regardless of public/private, elementary/college, etc. teachers are all the same anywhere. Well, related to the administration part of it.
My parents were strongly opinionated against the nepotism and corruption going rampant on the Teacher’s union; the most defining story about my father involves an election of representatives to the Teacher’s Union from the region my parents worked from. During the vote counting process my father noticed one of the counters trying to hide some votes. When announcing the results my father then stood up and said; “I think there is a mistake; let’s recount”. They did, in a more public way and whoever was trying to pull a fraud had to stop and recognize the right result. But trying to impose representatives and then trying to help only friends and all that was part of the “normal” way of doing things for those guys.
Now Flor is saying nothing has really changed in the public system. Union leaders do not care about the people they represent, only care about their own benefit and profit. Nothing new here.
The part that may be interesting is that in the private sector (where I also worked); you will see some similar things. Cliques and friendship will get the best of intentions and improvements. The school where Flor works is coping with people leaving the school because of the administration fighting the teachers. The teachers do not trust administration people and they do not help themselves because they do the same things they complain about; which is that people help only their friends instead of looking at the bigger picture. They got a new principal and administrator of the school; seems like he knows what he is doing this time, but they will suffer some reduction in the number of students.
When I worked at the college, we had similar issues. Administration positions will make almost twice the money a teacher would make. It was so ridiculous that it was better to have a part time, then complete the day with hourly wages in order to survive. I was there for almost five years and then left just before getting my seniority to become a “Profesor Titular” (kind of like tenured, but not exactly; you could still get fired).
Anyhoo. My point today was to ask about how teachers are being “upgraded” in their teaching methods. My mother was THE expert at Special education in the north of Sinaloa; same as my father now is one of the experts in teacher’s development. They stopped working with kids; they work (or worked in my mom’s case) with teachers. Ironically enough (or maybe not!!) teachers are more difficult to teach than students. They will refuse to apply the knowledge they get in the pre-lessons sessions; and then students will suffer. But at least Public Education System (SEP in Spanish) is still trying.
By the way, I wonder if Will has to go through this too (it is supposedly a requirement for ALL teachers ;^)).
See you around.
Six
5 days ago
2 comments:
The school at which I work has to conform to all of SEPs requirements. This means that, at the beginning of the school year, all the registered teachers have to attend a four day course run by SEP...except me. The problem is that the course is in Spanish and SEP don't want to know me. I am also registered as a "visiting teacher" and therefore SEP doesn't really want to waste its resources on training a foreign teacher.
During the school year we have (or have had in the three years I've been ere) two in-school training events. This is where an outside speaker comes in talk an give advice.
We have several other requirements that have to be fulfilled to satisfy SEP.
Personally I have not received any training nor educational updates since arriving here. Most of this though is my own fault and my failure to learn Spanish. I (and I am the only one who does this) do visit other classrooms and watch other teachers teach. At the debriefing of these lessons, I tend to share ideas and listen to new ideas, things I might not have thought of doing. However, as things stand, I am fairly ahead of the game. The previous school I worked in provide two in-house training days a year pus I was expected to go on, at least, two external training courses a year (with the opportunity to go on more if I could justify it). This means that, although I might not have been on a course for three years, in the last ten I have been sat through over thirty.
Of course, as you have mentioned in our post, just because I have done all this does not necessarily mean that I have learnt anything :^)
You've got that right!
SEP does not want to know about you... they may try to clon you (but only if you clon can speak Spanish! ;^))
Good for you to keep trying to learn from any source, but be careful to know too much; as the saying goes: "know nothing, fear nothing"
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