Her father and I did all we could to prepare her: clothes, school supplies, some summer “school work”, a number of talks about boys, peer pressure, “mean girls” and more. We made it a point to watch some of the classic coming of age films with her and discuss the fact and fiction components of it all, but one thing we couldn’t really prepare her for was the expectations that would be put upon her by her new teachers.

My husband and I lamented the hand-holding and low expectations we saw in elementary school and have long worried about our daughter’s ability to adjust to the higher expectations she’d face in Grade 7. I’m not simply talking about more homework and a faster pace, I am referring to the changing of classes, the start of note taking, and the like.

This week we have found that our fears were well founded. After only 2 days of school, my daughter is already feeling overwhelmed and unprepared. She has yet to come up with a notebook/folder system that will accommodate her schedule. Half of the school supplies we bought are the “wrong ones” (although they are very mainstream items). And, I can’t help but wonder if this could have been avoided by two things.

1) An orientation day for new students. Our district does not bring the Grade 7 students into the middle school until the first day of school. Aside from a schedule and bus information, we received no “heads up” about what would be needed or expected during the first week of school. My understanding is that many other towns hold orientations. And our local high school does too. But, the middle school is treated as just another grade.

This would be fine if it weren’t for the disappointingly low expectations of the Grade 5 and Grade 6 teachers in our district. After watching my daughter breeze through Grades 1 – 6, I can’t help but lament the time wasted and opportunities missed to better prepare her for middle school and to have taught her more.

2) Being a student in Grades 5 and 6 should be treated less like a significant accomplishment deserving of reward and special treatment, and more like a transition period with high standards and a curriculum more like what students will see in Grades 7 – 12.

My daughter will adjust as she always does. But it pains me to see her struggle and frustrates me to know it’s an unnecessary headache for her. She should have been better prepared by her school, but the sad thing is that her elementary school and middle school won’t even compare notes so her fate is destined to be suffered by many future classes of students, just as it has been for many in the past.

• 6 of the 10 teachers said they had stopped recording new grades for their students by May 20
• 8 of the 10 teachers said they had stopped teaching new material by Memorial Day
• When given asked to identify the least academically productive month of the year, 10 of the 10 teachers chose “June”.
• 4 of the 10 teachers included comments in their responses saying they felt the wasted month(s) were justifiable because “it’s too hot to get anything done,” “the kids are shot,” “we covered everything anyway,” or “it’s always that way.”

If an employee spent 10% of his workday browsing the internet instead of working, he would likley be fired. If a store manager shirked her responsibilities every other Friday and let the employees just hang out and play instead of working, she would be fired. Why is our elementary education system allowed to waste 10% of the school year.

Add to this the time spent remediating weaknesses at the start of the next school year and you have to wonder what might be if time were used more efficiently in schools.

We recognize that recognition assemblies, field trips, spelling bees, science fairs, etc., have some educatoinal value; however, it would be difficult for any objective person to look at the difference in productivity during October and June and not question what more could be done.

What were your experiences with what goes on in schools during the final weeks of the year? Please share your thoughts below.

Now that that’s out of the way, I feel a need to say that younger teachers are overrated. I’m not saying that they don’t have the potential to become excellent educators one day, but the buzz and preference to have a “new teacher, just out of college” is unfounded.

I understand that movies like Teachers and most television shows depict teachers over the age of 50 (which I am not) as sleepy, unmotivated, uninformed dinosaurs whose apathy and stubbornness impedes the education of our youth. As a foil, young teachers are depicted as being able to reach students in innovative ways and to be able to make the most dry subjects fun and interesting. While I understand the source of those stereotypes and cannot say there are no individuals who fit them, I must emphatically declare that it simply isn’t the case.

When I was first hired as a teacher, I liked to think I fit that stereotype. I’d just spent hundreds of hours studying the latest incarnation of my state’s standards and the national guidelines. I had drafted pages and pages of highly detailed lesson plans and familiarized myself with all the latest ideas on how to make learning productive and fun. I was hip (I used AIM and watched all the right TV shows). My student-teacher experience was positive, but in hindsight very sheltered. My cooperating teacher ran interference for me on much of the bureaucracy involved in being a teacher, and much of the planning that goes into a school year was already done long before my 8-week stint began.

I began my first teaching job, as one of a handful of young teachers. We “new teachers” stuck together and truly bought into the hype that we were somehow a better option for our students: that we understood our students, the material, and how to teach, better than our older peers. Our gung-ho ideas and right-from-the-movies enthusiasm ran into several obstacles, which we blamed on our older colleagues. With more than a dozen years of experience, I now see that our frustrations were misdirected and our perceptions of our peers were wrong.

Once my ego fell in check, I began to look more closely at what my older colleagues were doing. They were using some of the older, familiar techniques I grew up with, but there were some new ideas mixed in there. They were not resisting change or fighting against the progressive ideas bandied about in college – they were picking and choosing what they felt were best for their students. Using their experience as educators, their understanding of their students and the community in which they taught, to craft a teaching style which met their students’ needs. They had seen many “latest trends” come and go in their time as teaches, and knew better than to try and shift everything which each new journal publication. They were not ignoring what I had learned in college, they were adapting it… taking ownership of the suggestions and implementing them in a more effective way than I or any of the younger teachers were doing. What I had at first considered to be stubbornness, I now saw to be confidence and (again) ownership of their methodology.

By contrast, I look now at the teachers who are just coming out of college, and I cringe. They do things in their classrooms because someone told them to, not because they truly understand the reasoning behind it. They do not have the comfort, confidence, or wisdom to customize what they have been told to best fit their teaching situations. When something is challenged by a student or parent, they run to an administrator – most often because they cannot justify their actions. They genuinely do not know WHY they are doing things the way they are.

The younger teachers are happy to jump on any suggestion from an in-service day or workshop, and do not think twice about the consequences for students when you change style and focus abruptly. They have not yet seen the ebb and flow of support for various education movements, nor do they realize that the models sold by these traveling in-service salesmen speakers are purposefully generic and made to fit all schools on the surface, but none perfectly without some customization.

But the outside public doesn’t realize this. The thought is that these younger teachers are far superior to the burnt out, older teachers. I do not think there are nearly as many burnt out teachers as the public thinks, and I would contend that many of the not-so-good teachers have moved into administrative roles and are no longer in the classroom. I’ve seen more than ten colleagues who my peers and I felt were not strong teachers (I wouldn’t want my children to have them as teachers) go on to become vice-principals, principals, and department heads.

I would further contend, and I may well have been guilty of this 13 years ago, that the younger teachers are making it harder for the older teachers. It’s easy to sell out others to try to make yourself look good, and when you’re chit-chatting with the principal it’s easy to throw those veteran teachers under the bus for not rushing to support the latest administrative effort. Sitting squarely in the middle, age-wise, I see how little voluntary interaction there is between the younger and more senior teachers. I see the veterans shake their heads at the arrogance and quick-judgments of the newbies, and I feel badly for the veterans that they are stuck with this unfavorable image by so many.
If I had kids, I would not want them to have any teacher with less than 6 years experience. I share that advice with my neighbors and relatives all the time, but continue to see them clamor for the class with a student-teacher or the new hire from the teachers college down the road. I’m sure their children will turn out all right, but I strongly believe they are worrying about the wrong aspect of the education process. Instead of fighting to get your kid out of the class with a 22-year veteran because the son of a guy you know from the gym had bad things to say about her, fight to restore the school band or to see the school put a working pencil sharpener in each classroom. Contest the way winners of a county championship are each bought a $50 jacket (in addition to their varsity jacket) by the school when your school cannot afford to have their textbooks rebound.

There may be some brilliant young teachers, but you will find that they, like their peers, only get better with age and experience.

For some reason, my child’s school district has decided that we need 4 opportunities each year (not including make-ups) to buy a photograph of our child in front of a photoshopped patriotic or tropical background.

Honestly, my suspicion is that someone in the district has close ties to the photography studio. I find it hard to believe that these “$18 for two 5×7 photos and 6 wallet-size” are the result of a bid process or that anyone truly believes this many photo ops are necessary. I’m equally suspicious that the school receives a small “finders fee” from each photo package sold. I see no other justification for why these  photo ops are more heavily promoted than school band concerts or back-to-school night. I’d rather have more information about my child’s next science test than to already know the school picture dates for 2012 and 2013.

I admit that I do want to buy the class group photo  (at least until my child was in middle school); however, I also wanted the format to be similar year to year. I buy these photos to record the progression of time and would have preferred Grades 1 – 6 to have been the same size photo, taken from the same approximate angle, on comparable weight photo paper.  Sadly, this is not the case. But hey, what can I expect when I’m only paying $12-15 per photo, right?

The individual “headshots” are another matter. I don’t mind buying one per year (although, again, they are very overpriced). However, I do not appreciate my child being pressured to dress nicely for a second and third “picture day” on which I do not intend to buy the photo. I do not appreciate the letter home telling me (generically) that I may not have realized how much my child has grown and their appearance changed since October December March and that I need to spend $20 or more so that the school-endorsed photographer can save me from my own apathy

How about you send me a letter telling me about how my child is performing academically or behaving? My child brings home five half-completed pieces of artwork each year and somehow gets a B+ in Art. Why not send a letter home explaining why the artwork isn’t complete or even what it was intended to be when it was finished?

I see that another parent has already posted on this site about the burden of fundraising. Many of her points apply here.  I say add school book fairs and picture days to the list of  things that need to be reconsidered. This parent’s bank account can’t take the strain.

[For the record, we will NOT be buying "Package G" today. My child was quite insistent about dressing for school picture day and very upset to learn that we were not going to be making a purchase. As a compromise we took a photo in our living room which I will Photoshop to have some exotic background. I'll print out a couple of 5 x 7 and 8 x 10 photos, maybe some wallet size too... for a total expense of $1.93. Maybe I should look into the school letting me be the photographer for a fifth school picture day.]

The district’s recommendation was that if you must give a student a hug, it should be the sideways, one-arm hug where the only contact is a pat on the back. The inservice leader said the “high five” was preferable and that if a student came and hugged you, you should tell them to give you a high five instead in the future. While I understand the district’s reasons for implementing these guidelines, I found myself disagreeing with them (especially at the elementary level).

Let me preface this by stating that the majority of my teaching career has been spent teaching students in grades K – 3. When I was teaching elementary school, my students hugged me all the time, and I hugged them back. My class was like a family; after all, we did spend 6 or 7 hours a day together for ten months of the year! My students often spent more time with me than their parents. In my classroom, we developed an atmosphere of respect, caring, and appreciating others’ differences. Students felt safe to take risks. And if they needed a hug, I gave them one!

Sometimes that hug from their teacher may be the only hug a child will get all day. Some of my students came from very dysfunctional families – parents may have been in jail, or there may be alcohol and drug abuse in the home. Sometimes the parents are so busy working to provide for their families, that they just don’t have time for their kids or don’t realize a hug was never given.

I believe that all children need to be loved and nurtured, and that the role of the teacher is not just to educate. Often, a teacher takes on various other roles in children’s lives: a nurturer who cares and gives hugs, a mediator/referee between those who are having a disagreement, a cheerleader to provide encouragement and remind them every child that they can do anything as long as they set their mind to it, a counselor when they need guidance or just someone to talk to, and sometimes even a provider for a child who may have come to school without eating breakfast or needing a sweater on a cold day (I know one teacher who bought new shoes for one of her students when they had outgrown their old ones and the family couldn’t afford to buy new ones).

I am a loving, caring teacher. I am proud to say that I hug my students. As a parent, this is the kind of teacher I would want my children to have. All of their best teachers have been “huggers.” My students hug me because they know I care about them. Why wouldn’t this be a characteristic we want in our teachers?

• All three children reported having worked with substitute teachers on 10 or more days this year. This does include substitutes filling in for teachers other than their primary instructors (art, music, physical education, and others).
• Two of the children each reported at least one instance where part of the day that their permanent teacher returned was spent allowing the class to “finish the movie.”
• None of the children felt the movies they watched should be described as “educational.” No Donald Duck in Mathland, no Phantom Tollbooth, no movie versions of a book they were reading in class at the time, no old VHS copies of Square One or 3-2-1 Contact, not even Sesame Street or Dora the Explorer were reported as having been watched. The list of movies watched included Horton Hears a Who (the Jim Carrey version), Beauty and the Beast, Cars, The Incredibles, Monsters Inc., and two episodes of Sponge Bob Square Pants.
• All three children each reported that their classrooms contained televisions hooked up to computers and that they had previously watched academic video streamed from the pc to the screen by their permanent teachers.
• Two of the three students have more than one permanent teacher in their classroom on a daily basis.

We recognize that it is often difficult for a substitute teacher to maintain the flow of the permanent teacher’s instruction. However, we are not talking about asking a retired electrician to fill in for an Advanced Placement Calculus class (which we would contend could still be a productive day for those students).

Our unscientific study reveals an unfortunate waste of fairly limited class time,  and we can see how this sets up expectations on the part of the students for unproductive days with substitute teachers in the future.

What experiences have you or your children had with substitute teachers?  Please share them below.