This year, I have been honored to represent Cecil Floyd teachers in Superintendent Ridder's teacher forum. After school, yesterday, we met for the final time for the 2015/6 school year.
One of the interesting items for which we offered out feedback was a letter that he is preparing to send to Joplin teachers in the next few days. I have been impressed with the direction Ridder has taken in his first year as Joplin's interim superintendent. He recognized very quickly the need for teachers to be given more professional respect, and he will acknowledge in his letter a researched need to return the art and joy to our classrooms. Without the art of teaching, our students are reduced to numbers and lines on a bar graph, and teachers become robotic, little more than characters in someone else's script.
Ridder's letter to teachers will say this:
One of the interesting items for which we offered out feedback was a letter that he is preparing to send to Joplin teachers in the next few days. I have been impressed with the direction Ridder has taken in his first year as Joplin's interim superintendent. He recognized very quickly the need for teachers to be given more professional respect, and he will acknowledge in his letter a researched need to return the art and joy to our classrooms. Without the art of teaching, our students are reduced to numbers and lines on a bar graph, and teachers become robotic, little more than characters in someone else's script.
Ridder's letter to teachers will say this:
One striking find from the research is what we are calling the "inspiration gap." The art and joy of teaching and learning is missing in many of our classrooms and buildings and in our district and community for that matter. And, our research is clear - It's negatively impacting our kids.
His acknowledgment of this deficiency is certainly refreshing. It has been a long time in coming to a district which has attempted to address its problems by adopting a strictly scientific process. Granted, that trend is nationwide, but it has been met in Joplin by much political and professional resistance. Those times, which played themselves out daily last summer, are behind us. The momentum is forward, and the joy is returning to the staff. That should be good news to anyone in the community with an interest in our public school system.
They say that change in education is inevitable. For a while there, it seemed to be inevitable on a weekly basis, with new expectations and programs pummeling teachers from every direction. Now, we are moving in a more logical direction - one which empowers the local district, which in our case is empowering classrooms, which empowers the students themselves. It will be interesting to see where we go from here.
They say that change in education is inevitable. For a while there, it seemed to be inevitable on a weekly basis, with new expectations and programs pummeling teachers from every direction. Now, we are moving in a more logical direction - one which empowers the local district, which in our case is empowering classrooms, which empowers the students themselves. It will be interesting to see where we go from here.
