Comments on: Do our systems support our goals?

By: Pat

Pat — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 22:35:10 +0000

As I prepared my students for the workplace, I went out to talk to employers in many different fields. All of them wanted me to teach my students how to work as a team. They felt that was more important than perfecting an actual skill because they felt the employee could learn that on the job better than I could ever train them in the classroom. But employers did not have the time to teach someone how to be a team player. As I looked around at my colleagues, I realized that some of them needed to learn these skills also so now when I teach my college level courses, this is one of the things that I stress to teachers, that they make sure this is a skill that they learn and perfect.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 02:07:12 +0000

Hi Carolyn,

This type of writing has dominated my thinking lately, and your post speaks to a conversation I had on Thursday with a relative stranger. Organizations often neglect to share with their employees, or in our case, teachers, the reasons we do things. I am not talking about making changes to increase test scores or to increase student engagement–those are all outcomes. But each school must define itself via an ideal, rather than be defined by the outcomes it seeks.

We are not, as Carlson and Wilmot suggest, equipped for the next change. To do that, we must define who we are as a school/district.

By: a. woody delauder

a. woody delauder — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 22:23:44 +0000

I am a fan of decreasing the school day for children… Cutting down the school day from 7 hours to 5 hours is not too much ask. Imagine what teachers could do with this extra 2.5 hours in our day. This time could be used for teacher collaboration and we wouldn’t have so many students falling asleep at the end of the day. Why do students need to be in school for 7 hours?

This collaboration time could be used for a multitude of sharing sessions. This is what we need… Sharing, not Telling.