More Money for More Time with Professional Development

Time is an ongoing challenge in 21st Century education. Despite all that has changed in schools, we remain tied to a 19th Century agrarian calendar. As as a result, time becomes an opponent in our quest to improve education.

Time may be at its most precious in relation to modern teacher professional development. Our school calendars, established generations ago, often provide scant time for teacher training, sometimes only four or five days.

Yet teacher professional development has never been more crucial as schools seek ways to alter and improve classroom instruction. In pursuit of more time for this activity, we shorten school days, having late starts, early dismissals, sometimes even entire days with no students. However, we do so with extreme reservations because we know one of the Correlates of the Effective Schools Research is to carefully guard student time on task (Lezotte, 1991).

As our local economies and our state tax bases slowly improve in the wake of the devastating recession of 2008 to 2015, we may be on the verge of an opportunity to improve education by creating more time for professional development. Most schools in the United States have been cash-strapped for nine years. As a result, teacher salaries have fallen behind, teachers have suffered, and the teacher shortage has approached critical levels in many instructional areas.

Now is the time to put more money toward teacher pay and include additional days as part of the package. This can be done at a local level by re-prioritizing our budgets, but it should also be a state initiative.

Some state legislators believe that fully funding their state's education formula does little to attract attention to themselves, advance their political clout, or garner votes in the next election. However, tying new dollars for teachers to additional time for professional development could be a stirring idea. We know teacher training has the potential to enhance student achievement. This would be using tax money directly for the purpose of  improving classroom instruction.

This will be an idea most teachers will support. Most teachers have never been afraid to put in additional time, and many are actively seeking ways to improve. Linking additional pay to time for school improvement could be a winning combination.

I urge us all to talk to our legislators about putting more money into education with the intent of purchasing additional days and ultimately improving education in the United States.

Image Credit: The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dalí, 1931, Museum of Modern Art, New York City

6 Simple Ways Teachers Can Help Promote Their Schools

An African Kikuyu proverb states, “When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.” Unfortunately, our schools have become battlegrounds over political issues. Politicians vow not to fund public schools until they provide a quality education, yet schools have to reduce the quality of their services as they receive inadequate funding each year.

In response, educators feel undervalued. Morale is damaged. School employees begin to feel down on their profession and their local school system. And ultimately it is the students who pay the price.

Positive promotion helps kids. Below are some simple suggestions for sending forth messages about all the good that is taking place in classrooms on a daily basis.

1. First, get the message out, and do it quickly. In this day and age when everyone carries a smart phone that has a still camera, a video camera, and multiple social media connections, news is instantaneous. A message that goes out first has the advantage in swaying public opinion.

There may have been a time when newsbytes needed to be routed up through the channels of communication to the building principal and then to the district office. Nowadays that is lost time and a lost advantage.

2. Second, start with the Parents. The best technique for a good public relations program is a successful classroom teaching experience. Connect with the parents. Returns calls and e-mails promptly. Above all, take time to make connections on positive issues. Make a point of calling each parent at least once each year to talk about something good his/her child has done.

3. Third, utilize your district’s messaging system. Maintain the relationships you are developing with your parents by keeping them informed and connected to what is happening in your classroom.

4. Fourth, connect through social media. The world is online. Facebook is now bigger than the largest country on earth. As of 2015, 1.39 billion people log into Facebook each month, and that is more than the entire population of China. Your kids, parents, and community are online. Post all the good work you are already doing.

5. Fifth, use the power of photography. Social media started with text messages of 140 to 160 characters. Yet, a picture is worth a thousand words. Now the new impetus in social media is to attach a visual image to any message to grab greater attention and make it more powerful.

6. Sixth, retweet and share. Think about the power afforded to a school system where 500 employees all share a Facebook post of something positive that is happening in school or retweet a positive message promoting your school. Imagine how exponentially the message could travel. And it is so simple. All a person has to do is recognize that something positive could help your school if more people knew about it. Then simply click on the Share link.

If something as trivial as a silly cat video can go viral, why can’t an important message about the good work of your school at least go out to your community?

Positive promotion helps a school system. And if it helps the school, ultimately it helps the kids. Let us all do our part to promote our individual schools and American education by extension.