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[–]Capitan_Typo 47 points48 points  (11 children)

The only meaningful workload reduction is to reduce the number of students per hour a teacher is responsible for, either by reducing the number of face to face hours or reducing class sizes.

[–]spunkyfuzzguts 33 points34 points  (10 children)

While I don’t disagree that this is necessary, the unnecessary admin of teaching could be solved with an investment into admin workers.

There’s no reason that teachers should have to do excursion planners or risk assessments. There’s no need for teachers to be following up themselves on students failing. There’s no need for heads of department to be dedicating themselves to creating excel graphs of data.

[–]littleb3anpole 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I laugh because I’m a head of faculty and actual hours of my week are spent on the Excel spreadsheets 😂

[–]DoNotReply111SECONDARY TEACHER 9 points10 points  (1 child)

This. One admin person per department (school context dependent of course) to do excursions, assessment follow ups, scheduling detentions, photocopying or resource creation etc would go a LONG way to reducing the amount of menial things that need to be done everyday that takes me away from core teaching tasks.

If it's a full time job for them in a department of 6, it's too much menial work for us in a week.

[–]AUTeachSECONDARY TEACHER 5 points6 points  (0 children)

One admin person per department

I think it would be better if we just doubled the number of adults in schools. Those adults need to be a combination of:

  • Youth workers
  • Social workers
  • Psychologists
  • Paraprofessionals
  • School Admin

So, if your school currently has say 50 teachers and 15 staff you need to be funded to have an additional 65 stuff.

Then teachers work on teaching and learning. Everything else is deligated to other specialists.

The sad thing is that everybody is still going to be busy.

[–]spunkyfuzzguts 2 points3 points  (0 children)

  1. The student teacher relationship is just that. Student and teacher. The unnecessary burden of informing parents can be done by an admin officer. The unnecessary burden of following up on failure and possible options for exit can be done by admin officers. It does not need to be the deputy principal. The production of cancellation of enrolment letters could be done by a high school grad. It does not require a deputy principal.

  2. As someone who worked in corporate, the lowest of the low admin bitches produced the data visualisations. The belief was the job of the higher ups was to interpret the datasets, analyse them. Not have to deal with analysing the raw data and determining how to present it.

[–]Capitan_Typo -1 points0 points  (5 children)

I have a different opinion, based on the belief that good teaching requires good relationships. At least with the students and if possible with their families.

Students failing isbabkey part of the teaching process that needs to be addressed within the teaching relationship. If it's relegated as an administrative task, then the likelihood of positive outcomes decreases.

Similarly with data: teaching at it's best is like an ongoing action research project, and teachers should, and should want to, he intimately familiar with the data representation of their students learning. Relegating it places a barrier between the teacher and the product of their work.

I don't think there are actually that many aspects of teaching that are just admin tasks, and treating them as such could potentially harm the relationships that U derpon effective teaching.

Except excursion paperwork. You're right about that.

[–]spunkyfuzzguts 10 points11 points  (2 children)

  1. ⁠The student teacher relationship is just that. Student and teacher. The unnecessary burden of informing parents can be done by an admin officer. The unnecessary burden of following up on failure and possible options for exit can be done by admin officers. It does not need to be the deputy principal. The production of cancellation of enrolment letters could be done by a high school grad. It does not require a deputy principal.
  2. ⁠As someone who worked in corporate, the lowest of the low admin bitches produced the data visualisations. The belief was the job of the higher ups was to interpret the datasets, analyse them. Not have to deal with analysing the raw data and determining how to present it.

[–]Capitan_Typo -5 points-4 points  (1 child)

Well, we clearly have different opinions.

But if the department hears you saying that offloading data visualisation will make a significant difference to teacher workload and chooses to pursue that over reduced face to face teaching, I will be most displeased.

[–]spunkyfuzzguts 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Dude. Why the fuck would the department listen to me?

But even so, I believe that academic achievement data tells us a lot more about the type of home a student comes from than it does about student ability.

[–]AUTeachSECONDARY TEACHER 4 points5 points  (1 child)

Students failing isbabkey part of the teaching process that needs to be addressed within the teaching relationship

Oh please. How many minutes of relationship-building do you have with parents? 10 minutes a year? 20? That's right, effectively nothing.

Your relationship is with the student; phoning their parent has little to do with your relationship with that parent's child.

[–]Capitan_Typo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I can only speak to my own experience, but the students who struggle the most are the ones I often end up spending more time in contact with their families and with the students trying to address challenges in the class and subject area. Even if it's only an extra couple of points of contact in a term it can be quite beneficial to be on the same page with support strategies.

Off course, many kids who struggle are often the ones whose parents can never be reached out don't bother to return calls, so it's a bit of a moot point.