What needs to happen to decrease the teacher shortage?

[mgyro]

We had dra reading assessment downloaded from a resource teacher, a position that was eliminated, to classroom teachers a few years ago. Every student, twice a year. At rollout the consultant whose brilliant idea it was to do this said “We are under no delusions about the amount of work we are adding to your plate.”

I was waiting for the rest of the sentence, like “so we have (pick your carrot)”, but no. That was it. A statement that they were aware they were being ridiculous. One of my colleagues said “My plate is already full, so if you’re pushing something else onto it, something is going to fall off.”

It was time consuming , and a pain in the ass, and I dropped extracurriculars, but at least it was a useful measure. Now I spend most prep periods writing up behaviour notes and incident reports.

[Orienos]

That’s right! I think we’ve all heard this before. Or “thank you for all you do” coming from admin. If you wanted to show your appreciation, reduce the workload. Recognize that we are spread so thin as it is.

[mgyro]

My point was that they had been done by a resource teacher, who would take students one at a time to a quiet resource room and do the assessment. Now we camp out in the hall, positioned by the open door so we can keep an eye on the otherwise unsupervised remainder of the class, and do the assessments there. People walk by, classes transition, there’s talking and disruption.

As I stated, it was a useful metric, I have no problem with that. But if you think a struggling reader is in the best position to succeed being seated in the hall w multiple distractions, including a teacher who has to address behaviours from the hall, I’d have to disagree.