It does bother me that there so many good police blogs compared with other careers. Where can I find a new teacher to even up the score?
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Bill Newman
I get loads of people asking me to link to their blogs, but since most of them are as dull as Set 5, I rarely bother. I think this one might be an exception though. Bill is a new copper just starting out and neatly contrasts what they were taught in training with what the reality of the job is. He's only done a couple of posts so far, but I like his style. He writes with humour and knows how to tell a story, which puts him in the top 1% of blogs straight away.
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9 comments:
Chemistry teachers never die.
They just fail to react.
I do not know if I can even the score, but I am a teacher who teeters between destiny and delirium (and that's on a good day).
I run a high-tech literacy program for at-risk middle school youth in a public school. At at all other times, I indulge in delusional thinking that maybe I can become a published writer someday.
I enjoyed your candor and witty posts. I've got the "how to read, write" thing down, but I'm still working on teaching my "bottom kids" how to "get up in the morning" as you so aptly quipped.
I really don't have a stutter...meant to write just one "at" :)
I teach English. Which means I can't 'do' writing.
Me too! Me too! I have taught police officers before...does that count?
My OH would almost certainly have a lot to say about teaching, would definitely write in an engaging style, and would enjoy scraping the whitewash off the walls.
However, she's always up to her eyeballs in work. When she's not keeping order, she's teaching English. When she's not teaching, she's leading her department. When she's not leading, she's mentoring trainee teachers. When she's not mentoring, she's ramrodding the SMT. When she's not ramrodding, she's pushing genuine professional development across her authority. When she's not pushing, she's assessing academic papers. When she's not assessing, she's demolishing ill-thought out "initiatives" or subverting them into something useful.
And when she's not doing all that she sometimes says hello as she whirls through the house. (Well, more accurately, swears fluently and in great detail as she lambasts senior managers, bureaucrats, politicians, journalists, lazy teachers, irresponsible parents and feral children.)
Unfortunately, it all leaves her with little time for the likes of blogging.
But if she did, she'd have plenty to rant about.
Take her authority's latest cost-cutting initiative—banning overtime for janitorial and cleaning staff. They're going to save about £20 per school per day by having the janitorial staff finish on the dot of 5pm.
It sounds good in the media as it will save more than half a million pounds a year.
The problem is the janitorial staff are responsible for closing the schools, which means the teaching and support staff now have to leave on the dot of 5pm, too.
At the OH's school alone, it means that on any given day 10-15 teachers and half a dozen support staff are pushed out the doors at 5pm. They are no longer able to stay on to complete the day's work, to do management functions, to prepare for the next day, to write reports, and so on.
None of these staff receive overtime payments so the authority isn't saving money as it is with the janitors, but it is losing a huge amount of valuable work. My OH worked out that at her school alone, the teaching and support staff were putting in at least 25 extra hours after 5pm on any given day.
No one in the authority seems able to grasp that the half million pounds spent on janitorial overtime actually gave them at least £1.5 million worth of additional "free" work from the teaching and support staffs.
How come an English teacher can see that but none of the horde of accountants, analysts, consultants, advisers and senior executives can?
I'm a blogging teacher- I just finished your book, and I think you are a bit of a hero.
Will you give my blog a look? It's password protected but I'll give access to username frankchalk.
You can choose your own password, I don't need to know it.
www.passanothercup.wordpress.com
Duh, sorry, turns out it doesn't work like that!
I appreciate that the extra layer of hassle will probably be a fatal deterrant, but if you would do me the honour of reading the blog, the thing to do is to go to wordpress, set up a username (http://en.wordpress.com/signup/)and then email me what username you chose and then I do the allowing and then you can read the thing...
passanothercup@gmail.com
If you can face it.
If not, I still think you are a god, Chalk, and will buy copies of your book for all my staffroom pals.
Here:
www.desperatelyseekingsir.blogspot.com
And it´s bloody brilliant.
Start at number 1 or it won´t make full sense.
:)
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