Seymour Flops
Diamond Member
So the civilians on here are no doubt familiar with principles and assistant principals. From their own time in school. And they are probably aware of District administration which consists of superintendents and assistance superintendents and their staffs. Not sure if those administrators and their staff out number actual student facing teachers, or not. But in the military the tail to tooth ratio is shockingly high, so I wouldn't be surprised.
You may not be aware, because I was not until I became a teacher, that along with the principal and a couple of assistant principles there are also teacher leaders for each subject area, they are sometimes called lead teachers, in my district they are called Department chairs.
Their role is basically as a conduit of information between the district Math Department for example and the school's Math teachers, and they advise the principal before the principal announces policies that might affect their department. They also Mentor new teachers and try to settle any conflicts between teachers within their departments before it escalates to the principals.
It is theoretically an administrative position but Department Chairs are straw bosses, meaning they must teach a full load along with the extra duty of chairing the Department. They typically get teacher pay plus a stipend for being Department chair.
Now in many districts, there is a new position called instructional coach. Their job is to make sure that English is taught at West Junior High East Junior High North Junior High and South Junior High exactly as The English Department has determined English must be taught. In other words they are here to make sure we don't deviate from the standardized methods of teaching our subjects. They help with lesson plans, and observe teachers as they teach to make sure there is no deviation.
This also is a stipend position. However, instructional coaches only teach two periods a day and have four planning periods as instructional coaches. This means they lose three out of five opportunities to teach a class. So essentially at each campus four teachers lose 60% of instructional time.
To make up far that districts have two options, as far as I know: they can hire an additional teacher, or they can make the classes larger. The problem with hiring an additional teacher is that many districts budgets are strained already. Another problem is that there is a teacher shortage so you wind up scraping the bottom of the barrel to get that extra teacher.
My district opted to hire more teachers and keep teacher salaries low instead of giving us raises and the hazard pay stipends we had been getting during and immediately after covid. The extra English teacher turned out to be a dud almost immediately, and my principal opted to absorb her classes, meaning classes got larger.
All this is probably boring any non-teacher to tears, but I wonder what the other teachers on here think. Have y'all experienced this, SweetSue92, Unkotare and any other teacher?
You may not be aware, because I was not until I became a teacher, that along with the principal and a couple of assistant principles there are also teacher leaders for each subject area, they are sometimes called lead teachers, in my district they are called Department chairs.
Their role is basically as a conduit of information between the district Math Department for example and the school's Math teachers, and they advise the principal before the principal announces policies that might affect their department. They also Mentor new teachers and try to settle any conflicts between teachers within their departments before it escalates to the principals.
It is theoretically an administrative position but Department Chairs are straw bosses, meaning they must teach a full load along with the extra duty of chairing the Department. They typically get teacher pay plus a stipend for being Department chair.
Now in many districts, there is a new position called instructional coach. Their job is to make sure that English is taught at West Junior High East Junior High North Junior High and South Junior High exactly as The English Department has determined English must be taught. In other words they are here to make sure we don't deviate from the standardized methods of teaching our subjects. They help with lesson plans, and observe teachers as they teach to make sure there is no deviation.
This also is a stipend position. However, instructional coaches only teach two periods a day and have four planning periods as instructional coaches. This means they lose three out of five opportunities to teach a class. So essentially at each campus four teachers lose 60% of instructional time.
To make up far that districts have two options, as far as I know: they can hire an additional teacher, or they can make the classes larger. The problem with hiring an additional teacher is that many districts budgets are strained already. Another problem is that there is a teacher shortage so you wind up scraping the bottom of the barrel to get that extra teacher.
My district opted to hire more teachers and keep teacher salaries low instead of giving us raises and the hazard pay stipends we had been getting during and immediately after covid. The extra English teacher turned out to be a dud almost immediately, and my principal opted to absorb her classes, meaning classes got larger.
All this is probably boring any non-teacher to tears, but I wonder what the other teachers on here think. Have y'all experienced this, SweetSue92, Unkotare and any other teacher?
