The meeting was a waste of time, of course. No one had anything productive to say one way or another, just some vague sniping ("Don't we do this already?") and no one was willing to go out on a limb with me and say the grading burden is unmanageable... until we were on our way out to our cars after the meeting was adjourned. Then I heard, "Wow, it would be great if they would drop the requirement for 8th grade next year." Gee, maybe if you had said that at the meeting and given the district reps the impression that you agree with my proposal? All that ended up happening was kicking the can down the road to April 1, for some reason no one could clearly articulate. The decision is, of course, not up to us, and the initial word is, "I doubt that will happen. We were founded with the idea that would do science fair," which is of course the best reason to do a science fair, ever!
I won't go so far as to say everything is backwards, but our curriculum development starts and ends with standards, and standards are not objectives. If we're not specifying what it is we want our students to learn, we're wasting everyone's time with random stuff that has no purpose (like the science fair.)
There was some other interesting/vaguely disturbing news about new textbooks next year, which I'm still processing, but mostly I'm just trying to put it all out of mind since I can't do anything about it. I'm burnt out and already feeling negative, and the tail end of this illness is hanging on and making me crazy. I wasted enough time on it, and I feel I should've known better than to try.
Way too much work to do, no motivation to do it. Not a good combination.
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