Sly and the Family Stone – Everyday People

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

This week was the first week of staff development at Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. Middle School, a week in which time is filled up with meetings, meetings, and more meetings.

The Good: Despite losing some great teachers this past year due to budget cuts and a desire to teach in high school, it seems like the new math crew will turn out to be a really cohesive group. After hours on end in the same room together, planning b***s*** common assessments, everyone is really coming together to sift through the junk, and focus on working what will actually help our kids together. In addition, our math intervention (Kids Mastering Math) training with the 13 teachers went really well today, and as much as these teachers are enthused to be teaching our program, we are even more enthused to have teachers like them teaching it!

The Bad: In the midst of all this, I’ve still spent a total of 0 hours getting ready for my own five classes that are getting ready to start on September 9th. At some point, I’ve still got to figure out how to balance all of this with teaching of my own kids!

The Ugly: One thing I’ve learned is the importance of quality people! The reason KMM is going to work this year is because their are amazing, quality people who will be teaching it (seriously, by getting none but volunteers, we ensured ourselves the best teachers to teach it….they’re really amazing folks)! Unfortunately, the converse of this statement is true as well. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, suffice it to say that one of our administrators is perhaps well intentioned, but somehow continues to make arbitrary, uninformed, and unilateral decisions that not only do not help kids, but create divisiveness and frustration among our staff. The “ugly” part of this is that it is already taking an inordinate amount of effort and energy from our staff to quell the negative momentum with which she takes things, energy and effort that would be far better spent serving our kids!