Education Reform: Why Do Teachers Hate Change?

Why Do Teachers Hate Change? Answer: Top-down decision making based on bureaucratic nonsense! The endless top-down reform kills enthusiasm. 

Before I started my career as a teacher, I worked as a sales manager in a marketing organization (water purification). The mantra was results, results, results! Top producers in the organization set the pace, ran the sales meetings and mentored sales staff to help drive results no matter how tenured a salesman was. No one was ever above learning and improving skills. Everyone was reading Stephen Covey, Zig Ziglar, and Napoleon Hill to keep a positive mindset. Management actively searched for top producers to bring those skills, strategies, and beliefs to the entire sales organization. This results-oriented model (genuine students outcomes) is absent at many schools, the model in many schools is based on test outcomes, not students growth outcomes, and teachers operate in a curriculum vacuum with little knowledge of individual teacher skills in the classrooms around them. New curriculum initiatives and required teaching methods are usually top down due to a policy decision, mostly based on test results, budget, or administration whim. Teachers need to spend time in other teachers classroom and see what others are doing to be inspired and improve our teaching craft.

Sean Taylor M. Ed.

My Results!
Reading and Language Percentile Results: READING (from 31.7% to 67.9%), 
LANGUAGE (from 38.8% to 72.3%), and stanine growth READING (3.8 stanines), 
and stanine growth LANGUAGE (3.5 stanines). This is for a population where 
86% of the students were SLL, SEI, LD, and at-risk.


Free E-books From Readingsage.com
Mr. Taylor's Modern Eclectic Reader 3rd grade Sample
Mr. Taylor's Modern Eclectic Reader 4th grade Sample
Diary of a Reading Teacher: Reading Boot Camp 


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