"They want teachers who are 'yes' men, teachers who will carry our the mandated curriculum. Not visionaries." So, before I continue, is anyone else feeling anger pulse through their veins? Is anyone else wishing that they had the power to make their own school and higher their own visionaries? I know I am somewhere on that train of thought... wondering what fool would buy into this.
Let's run with this idiom: "train of thought".
What is the point of education if it can't gain power? If the students that spend their days sitting in these classrooms, swallowing whatever information is force fed to them without any time to mentally "chew" and to process what they've heard, how can this student gain power? I mean, we don't put rocket fuel in our cars assuming that its going to power it in a better way. It won't work. A rocket is a rocket while a car is a car. Students are students in the same way.
If we as teachers are going to allow administrators to demand that things be done in a certain way, but then also watch as they demand that we produce on a greater and greater level that is based less and less on our actual improvement in practices and techniques, then we are allowing them to fuel our cars with jet fuel. Its not going to work. This is not how people learn. When we get into college we are expected to take everything on the fly. Experience is our teacher once we leave the high school classroom. Why would we not be taught how to innovate for ourselves before it becomes vitally important.
We need to create for the teachers and we need to invent new ways for this knowledge fuel to help the machine that it is intended for. Don't leet principals tell you that sticking to the curriculum is the only way. Begin inventing now and continue to invent.
To all my future teacher colleagues: be brave and create.
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