Thursday, April 07, 2005

What gets in the way of being a teacher?


Tom Peters great book! Posted by Hello

Tom Peters, in his great book ‘Re-Imagine,’ reckons that leaders should ask everybody what are the stupidest things we do in our organization? Acting on such suggestions will improve any organisation.

What about writing a short comment about some of the stupid things we do in education?
Things that just waste our time! What should we do instead?

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

One thing that is a waste of time are tracking sheets to show you have covered learning objectives. We have to do them in different colours for each term! As if kids can remember what they covered!

Anonymous said...

Spend far too much time proving we have taught something and not enough time on actually teaching!

Anonymous said...

Paper war

Anonymous said...

Too much time and energy spent on big public relation shows like fancy dress folk dance evenings and cliché whole school studies like Book Weeks. How many times do children need these in their school career? Replace with more emphasis on developing quality classroom learning environments.

Peter said...

I agree with the sensless tracking sheets and cards, also assessment for assessment sake when we all know that absolutely nothing ever gets done with the results. When was the last time you used the results from your PAT's?

Anonymous said...

Endless staff meetings that seem to achieve so little.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

Endless staff meetings that seem to achieve so little.

Bruce Hammonds said...

The one I removed was a repeat. Should have left it because it was a repetition of an important point - 'death by meetings'!

Anonymous said...

Forget all the pre -planned curriculum plans Let's base learning on student's questions.

Anonymous said...

Principals not having the courage, or firm educationl beliefs, to say no to silly ideas imposed by the Ministry! But I guess there never were many such leaders!

Anonymous said...

Many schools seem very self centred. There may be interesting and important things happening in another school nearby but they are invariably overlooked.

Bruce Hammonds said...

It is not so much that schools are self centred - they are, but it why they have become so self centred that is the issue. This is a result from the competitive ethic created by the self managing school model. One writer calls them 'look at me schools' -schools dedicated to telling people about the good things and hiding the rest.