snowy

I didn't mean to imply that all public school teachers are lazy. I spend a lot of time around the public schools and have had an opportunity to observe a lot of different kinds of teachers. Sure, there are lots of teachers who work very hard, but there are also those who don't, just like in any field. NCLB enables already lazy teachers to be even lazier, because they don't have to think critically about their pedagogy, their lesson plans, or even the curriculum, because it all goes towards the test anyways, right?. It is now handed to them in one federally-mandated package (with obvious tweaks at both the state and local level), and they only have to work towards the goal of satisfactory test scores, not actual learning. I met one teacher last fall who made me sick to my stomach--she refused to teach her 6th grade social studies class because the teacher's edition of the required text had not arrived yet, and it was six weeks into the school year. She said she absolutely had to have that text, or else she wouldn't know what to teach. So they had study hall instead.

Good teachers always think critically about the methods they use and self-reflect on how to become a better teacher. That was one of the most important lessons I've learned over the course of my observations, from a veteran teacher who works his ass off everyday for the sake of his students, trying to figure out new ways to reach them. He's been in the classroom for thirty years, but he's still thinking about what he does and how he does it. For most good teachers, NCLB is irrelevant and a waste of time. They don't think about it until the kids get taken out of the classroom for a week of testing.

And I don't know where teachers only get 15-minute lunch breaks. Around here, teachers get 30-45 minutes.

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If I am not better, at least I am different. --Jean-Jacques Rousseau