On Friday, we had a teacher workday and our Principal, Mr Sears, sent out a Twitter image for all the teachers to ponder and write a reflective response. The image he captured was a tweet from Principal Kafele and it did provide some food for thought.
Every day we show up at a school and look at what we are being mandated to accomplish and we know it is NOT in the best interest of the kids. It is in the best interest of accountability, but let us not travel down that road because that is a distraction from what I believe is the real point of this tweet from Principal Kafele and what my Principal wanted us to take away from this activity.
When we walk into the school tomorrow we know the pressure will be ramping up as we prepare to walk into our Testing Window. The reminder that the only thing that really matters in the media and political spectrum when it comes to education are those scores. However, the only burden the kid should have to bear is sitting and doing their best on the required tests NOT listening to their teachers’ stress about the tests … or even worse the berating from their teachers for not achieving the score that is needed to make “satisfactory progress”.
Our stress is NOT the kids’ stress.
When they take away a planning period for a conference … meeting …
It is NOT the kids’ fault.
When they have a special assembly that takes class time away from the kids who you think cannot afford to miss any more class time.
It is NOT the kids’ fault.
The system may be broken but …
It is NOT the kids’ fault.
MSTRDILL 