By Tom
The other night I was sitting in my living room, on my recliner, preparing lesson plans for the next day. (That’s how I roll, by the way; one day at a time.) As I was working on my math lesson, I looked in my Math Expressions Teachers’ Guide and noticed that the next day was all about finding the area of a triangle. A bell went off in my mind; I remembered something from some Common Core workshop sometime in the last couple of years. So I check the CCSS website and sure enough, area of a triangle is no longer a fourth grade thing. Sixth graders get to do it.
Now, a smarter man would have simply shrugged it off, turned the page to the next lesson and planned accordingly. But I’m not smart. I thought to myself, “I wonder if there’s something in the fourth grade standards that isn’t covered by our textbook. And if there is, maybe I should teach a lesson on that.”
There was. Fourth graders are supposed to “Recognize angle measure as additive; when an angle is decomposed into non-overlapping parts, the angle measure of the whole is the sum of the angle measures of the parts. They’re supposed to know how to solve addition and subtraction problems to find unknown angles on a diagram in real world and mathematical problems.”
In other words, my students are supposed to know that you can take a ninety degree angle and divide it into a sixty and a thirty degree angle. Or you can take a ninety degree angle and combine it with two 45-degree angles to make a 180-degree angle. Stuff like that.
So I went online to see if there were any resources available. There are. Actually there’s some great stuff from New York State’s “Engage NY” site. So I found myself some resources, came up with a plan for my students, and wrote it up.
Then I checked the time. I had spent close to two hours on one lesson plan.
Not that I mind so much; the lesson turned out well and my students can actually add and subtract angles, which is probably important. But my point is this: I’m doing this a lot. And so are you. Teachers all over the state (and all over the country) are spending a lot of time adjusting to the new standards. Most of us have teaching materials that won’t be replaced anytime soon, yet because we’ve switched standards, those materials are largely obsolete. And in order to compensate for that, we’re spending a lot of time – our time – hunting down resources.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m a huge supporter of the Common Core. I’m all for it. But it’s taking up a lot of my time!
The solution? Money. It’s as simple as that. Governor Inslee, in his education budget, calls for nearly $600 million for higher teacher salaries. (Most of it, by the way, goes toward funding Initiative 732, which was approved by the voters 14 years ago and promptly suspended by the Legislature.)
We’re talking about a nearly 5% raise over the next two years. Not a lot, but not nothing. And it would come at a time when our workload has increased dramatically. I don’t mind working harder; I really don’t. Especially when I see it increasing my students’ learning. But I do mind working harder for the same pay.
When you add two smaller angles, you get a bigger one. And when you add more time to a teacher’s work day, you get a longer work day.
Which should result in a larger salary.
I spent weeks last summer analyzing the writing and research parts of the ELA standards across the 4th-8th grade levels to develop student-friendly continuums with explanations and examples that I could use for teaching my class this year. I’m using them and refining them now. Great! I’m happy!
But what about the 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders who are working at 6th and 7th grade levels in math? Have I parsed out the math standards that carefully yet? Not a chance.
Sigh. One thing at a time.
Paying me for the weeks last summer (for example) would be outstanding. But finding the time so I could work with other teachers collaboratively to build materials, that would be amazing. But every time we as teachers get any extra common time built into our schedule–in my experience–we immediately get told how to use it. And it’s never for planning. Not this kind of planning.
That’s a good point, Mark; I know that many other countries structure teacher workdays with a lot more planning time built in – both individual and collaborative time. But as you say, time is money, and we have neither.
Great analogy. I think the solution is money….and time… I do think teachers should be paid more because we put in so much time beyond our contract day, but there is an alternative. What if our job were structured in a way that we didn’t have to put in so much extra time? That’s not something Inslee’s budget can solve… that’s a bigger shift in how we structure teacher workdays. But that shift will cost money.