![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
so roughly five years ago, in the middle of my stint as department head, i had to attend a conference for the roll out of the new state standards. i came home and told my admin that we really needed to move world history to the eleventh grade as what was coming was just too intense and dense to expect freshmen to handle. they told me no. i spent the summer writing curriculum.
next year state standards are delayed. in the meantime i cobble together a course using a lot of ingenuity and my own resources. i write curriculum that summer. state standards are delayed a second year. i write curriculum for the same course again.
last year the standards finally arrived. i spend a year creating a new course with my fellow teachers, and tell admin what book we want. they say no. they say no to our second choice. they say yes to the only book we don't want. it is too hard to read. i took a world history course at the community college for my hours and that book was easier to read than the one admin picked for my students.
i tell them again to flip the sequence to put world history in eleventh grade since we're redoing curriculum. they say no. i write curriculum another summer and create 31 slideshow presentations taking the 31 chapters in the book that we cover and making them accessible for my students. i create a teacher page to put them up so my kids can access them at any time.
this year, the first year really teaching the course with the standards in place and facing questions on the state standardized test, we've made copious notes about what works and what doesn't and plan our next year. i'm thinking yay! i won't have to write curriculum for the same course another summer, i can spend it writing curriculum for my elective course 'human rights and genocide.'
today in our department meeting, which we got the agenda for an hour before it took place, my admin tells me they've decided to flip the sequencing to put world history into eleventh grade and that we won't be teaching it for the next two years so that the schedule adjusts.
did i mention i've also spent over a hundred unpaid hours writing an online version of world history? and that last year when we mentioned flipping the sequence that our ass sup told us that 'we' had not wanted that. we kindly explained the error of his way of thinking to him, for all the good that did.
anyway, now i'll be teaching either american history or civics or econ for the next two years before i return to a world history course i've now taught for exactly three trimesters. i'll probably end up with civics or econ instead of history which i prefer as far fewer people in my department are highly qualified enough to teach them. all the unqualified folks will get to teach that while i try to figure out how to write my elective this summer.
i'll finish writing the second trimester of world history for the online course. i refuse to write a damn word for any course i'm teaching next year. they can hand my a teacher's edition and i'll go from there, just like all the other asshats in my department.
this is on top of the budget cut bullshit flooding my district as teachers, custodians, counselors, nurses, secretaries get cut while not one precious administrator does. one bastard justified keeping his money and position by saying that now that his secretary was gone, he had more work to do.
and did i mention that i will be attending an all day workshop that i paid for on the next two saturdays on teaching china for a course i no longer teach?
next year state standards are delayed. in the meantime i cobble together a course using a lot of ingenuity and my own resources. i write curriculum that summer. state standards are delayed a second year. i write curriculum for the same course again.
last year the standards finally arrived. i spend a year creating a new course with my fellow teachers, and tell admin what book we want. they say no. they say no to our second choice. they say yes to the only book we don't want. it is too hard to read. i took a world history course at the community college for my hours and that book was easier to read than the one admin picked for my students.
i tell them again to flip the sequence to put world history in eleventh grade since we're redoing curriculum. they say no. i write curriculum another summer and create 31 slideshow presentations taking the 31 chapters in the book that we cover and making them accessible for my students. i create a teacher page to put them up so my kids can access them at any time.
this year, the first year really teaching the course with the standards in place and facing questions on the state standardized test, we've made copious notes about what works and what doesn't and plan our next year. i'm thinking yay! i won't have to write curriculum for the same course another summer, i can spend it writing curriculum for my elective course 'human rights and genocide.'
today in our department meeting, which we got the agenda for an hour before it took place, my admin tells me they've decided to flip the sequencing to put world history into eleventh grade and that we won't be teaching it for the next two years so that the schedule adjusts.
did i mention i've also spent over a hundred unpaid hours writing an online version of world history? and that last year when we mentioned flipping the sequence that our ass sup told us that 'we' had not wanted that. we kindly explained the error of his way of thinking to him, for all the good that did.
anyway, now i'll be teaching either american history or civics or econ for the next two years before i return to a world history course i've now taught for exactly three trimesters. i'll probably end up with civics or econ instead of history which i prefer as far fewer people in my department are highly qualified enough to teach them. all the unqualified folks will get to teach that while i try to figure out how to write my elective this summer.
i'll finish writing the second trimester of world history for the online course. i refuse to write a damn word for any course i'm teaching next year. they can hand my a teacher's edition and i'll go from there, just like all the other asshats in my department.
this is on top of the budget cut bullshit flooding my district as teachers, custodians, counselors, nurses, secretaries get cut while not one precious administrator does. one bastard justified keeping his money and position by saying that now that his secretary was gone, he had more work to do.
and did i mention that i will be attending an all day workshop that i paid for on the next two saturdays on teaching china for a course i no longer teach?
no subject
Date: 2009-05-14 12:21 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2009-05-15 03:15 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2009-05-14 02:18 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2009-05-15 03:17 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2009-05-14 02:13 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2009-05-15 03:18 am (UTC)From: