I can’t read Chapter 2 of Inside/Outside without feeling my chronic exhaustion as a teacher. I do not exaggerate. I am the only music faculty at a high school of 650. Each school year is a 10-month marathon of engaging students to deliver curriculum (mostly as musical repertoire), and pulling off a string of concerts and extra-curricular music events, and attending to the maintenance of an entire school music program. Central administration and the Board of Education have taken good care of me as an employee in most respects but one: getting me some help!
I’ll be watching closely to see what suggestions arise in the various pieces of literature we read here to address my situation. I am sure it is not a situation I suffer alone; with the continued cutbacks in the arts we see in education, so many committed teachers shoulder a heavy burden. How are we to read about these in-depth examples of teacher research and wonder how we will even begin to implement them?
Carrying nine graduate credits while continuing to work my second job in the summertime is a walk in the park compared to what I do each and every school year. It’s actually hard to not be offended at the idea that there is still more I can do. Yet I recognize this is true.
I do grant that the reading also does touch on this point: that teacher research should be a means of imparting sanity to a teacher’s chaotic world. I would go further. My own ambition to improve my practice has largely come from an instinct to want to make my hard work as meaningful as possible. Better practices mean that student experience and my experience are better. To me this just seems like common sense. Why wouldn’t I want to be the best teacher I could be?
Collaborative work, and research, among teachers is problematic and has been problematic for me. The reason is obvious. As an institution we’re set up to work mostly in isolation from each other. With the increased paperwork demands on me and all public school teachers in recent years, I get out of my own classroom less and less.
It might be useful to compare the reflective practices of my two professions: teaching and professional performing.
Frankly, I find it astounding that teacher research, that these various means of being introspective and critical of one’s own work as a teacher, is something that any of us need a specific invitation to do. This seems like common sense to me. Why wouldn’t I do this to the best of my ability each day? I’m astounded to be introduced to all of this literature on the topic. I had the same reaction when I was given Charlotte Danielson’s book as well. The whole thing just seemed to be a long-winded expansion, with charts and graphs and rubrics, of “keep caring about your job and trying to improve.” Have so many of us been this asleep? Or are we just battling a poor public image as a profession?
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