Slackers
Workday - 8:00am-3:45pm
In today's post I'm going to address the issue of slackers. No, I don't mean myself for not blogging for two weeks. And no, I don't mean students either. I'm talking about slacker teachers.
I'll stick to just one related anecdote today, though.
Every day I bust my ass making up lesson plans. This semester being the first time I've taught all of the courses I'm teaching, I'm making up notes from scratch. I realize that I'm a younger teacher and I have to pay my dues. I can't wait until 5 (or so) years down the road when my resources will be brimming, and I can slack off like the rest of them! Hahah.
But what about teachers who never paid their dues? Well, frankly, it's none of my business. I'm not going to get my shorts in a knot because someone out there found an easy street where I did not. It's their prerogative.
It does, however, become my business when their slacking affects me.
I have a colleague who is teaching the same math course that I am. Not long ago when she returned from a lengthy maternity leave, she asked another teacher for her notes for teaching this course. This other teacher wouldn't give them to her. Then she found the best student from that teacher's last class and photocopied her notes from that kid.
As lazy as you may (or may not) think that is, I wouldn't even condemn that if she were just using the notes as a guideline. Even I would love to get my hands on someone else's notes from this course to help me make my own. And, hell, I wouldn't even think it so terrible if this teacher used someone else's notes word for word, on the occasion, writing them on the board for her own students.
Of course, she used neither method.
The teacher keeps these notes that she neither devised, nor even wrote down herself, in a binder. Every year she simply makes photocopies of them to hand out to each student to have for themselves and voila, she's magically "taught" the course. Because of her pedagogy, she can also zip ahead full chapters past the rest of us.
How does this affect me? Soon enough, my students are finding out how things run in other classes from their peers. My problem is, what do I tell my students who ask me why their friends are so far ahead of our class? Nevermind the fact that I'm on schedule, and sometimes even a day ahead of yet another teacher of this course.
What do I tell my students who ask why I can't just give them photocopied notes? I can't "sell out" the other teacher, obviously. I'm stuck simply telling them "that's just not how things are done".
It's one thing when other teachers are unprofessional, but entirely another when their behaviour reflects negatively on the people who are actually doing a good job.
In today's post I'm going to address the issue of slackers. No, I don't mean myself for not blogging for two weeks. And no, I don't mean students either. I'm talking about slacker teachers.
I'll stick to just one related anecdote today, though.
Every day I bust my ass making up lesson plans. This semester being the first time I've taught all of the courses I'm teaching, I'm making up notes from scratch. I realize that I'm a younger teacher and I have to pay my dues. I can't wait until 5 (or so) years down the road when my resources will be brimming, and I can slack off like the rest of them! Hahah.
But what about teachers who never paid their dues? Well, frankly, it's none of my business. I'm not going to get my shorts in a knot because someone out there found an easy street where I did not. It's their prerogative.
It does, however, become my business when their slacking affects me.
I have a colleague who is teaching the same math course that I am. Not long ago when she returned from a lengthy maternity leave, she asked another teacher for her notes for teaching this course. This other teacher wouldn't give them to her. Then she found the best student from that teacher's last class and photocopied her notes from that kid.
As lazy as you may (or may not) think that is, I wouldn't even condemn that if she were just using the notes as a guideline. Even I would love to get my hands on someone else's notes from this course to help me make my own. And, hell, I wouldn't even think it so terrible if this teacher used someone else's notes word for word, on the occasion, writing them on the board for her own students.
Of course, she used neither method.
The teacher keeps these notes that she neither devised, nor even wrote down herself, in a binder. Every year she simply makes photocopies of them to hand out to each student to have for themselves and voila, she's magically "taught" the course. Because of her pedagogy, she can also zip ahead full chapters past the rest of us.
How does this affect me? Soon enough, my students are finding out how things run in other classes from their peers. My problem is, what do I tell my students who ask me why their friends are so far ahead of our class? Nevermind the fact that I'm on schedule, and sometimes even a day ahead of yet another teacher of this course.
What do I tell my students who ask why I can't just give them photocopied notes? I can't "sell out" the other teacher, obviously. I'm stuck simply telling them "that's just not how things are done".
It's one thing when other teachers are unprofessional, but entirely another when their behaviour reflects negatively on the people who are actually doing a good job.
