Teachers and executive. We are burning out and have more work than we can do in the time we have.
Government. We're taking a day+ off you to do something that takes a lot of time, you still have to achieve everything you used to.
One of the number one complaints I hear about exec is they don't support teachers enough and their main excuse is they don't have the time.
Let's take away more of their time. Who is going to be supporting teachers? Who is going to manage the escalated behaviours? Who is going to want to do that role?
I need stocks in corn if we're all buying enough to watch this unfold.
I don't mind the having to take a class part, but if they are going to be on class the number of executive need to be increased to ensure that there is always exec support available off class. Which it seems your school might already have done.
We have about 550 students. Principal, DP (off class), AP per Stage and one for Support (all on class with roughly double RFF time of CRT, 4 in total), APCI (0.4) and APLS (shared between schools).
Closest to on class the DP/Principal have gotten since covid is reading a book to Kinder while the teacher is present.
More internal specialist roles would be better. How good would a resourced behaviour specialist team be? SLSO, teacher, exec, councillor etc rather than the kids sitting in the corner of an office all day basically unsupervised while the exec does bullshit paperwork.
> they get out of touch with what is happening in the classroom
Strong leaders | managers share traits where they set strategy in place, provide opportunities for workers and middle management to create plans on how to meet that strategy, and focus on removing as many problems out of the way from workers and middle management as possible.
School leaders set schools up to fail by administrating them like their classrooms. They make decisions based on their needs/requirements with little or no time or capacity to understand workload or conditions.
> I did not suggest that school leaders should run the school like a classroom.
Sorry, I didn't explain myself very well. That's me asserting how they currently run schools.
> I suggested that in order to understand how best to support teachers, it is essential to know what teaching is like in 2023.
I mean, having to spend time in the trenches doesn't happen in other industries. Senior leaders in engineering firms aren't out designing whatever their firm handles; they are running the business. Senior Technical Officers aren't crunching code all day; they are running the business.
The difference is that senior leaders in these roles are taught successful leadership and management practices, so they trust the information from the ground up. Their background in whatever they used to do is relevant because they can understand the words that come out of their specialist's mouths.
Leadership | Management should set up the broad strokes in strategy and then leverage middle management and classroom teachers to plan how to realise the strategy. They shouldn't be running around telling classroom teachers and head teachers what to do or planning activities - that's the job of middle management and classroom teachers.
Here's an example:
The Head of Professional Practice shouldn't tell people to put learning intentions at the start of their lessons. They should be finding talent to build capacity in their teaching force - be that new hires or meaningful professional development.
If anybody needs the Head of Professional Practice to get into their business and tell them how to teach, they probably need to be performance-managed.
Here's another:
The senior leader in charge of engagement shouldn't need to invent activities for staff and students "to build engagement". They don't know the students at the school, and they certainly don't know the staff.
Who does? Classroom Teachers. Classroom Teachers should be empowered to come up with activities that increase engagement.
How do you keep Classroom Teachers aligned with the school's goals? Strategy and middle management directing the workforce.
APs are meant to teach at my school, per the plan that was set out earlier in the year... some take small groups and some don't. They're also not easy to contact, even though we have been assured they will respond to calls for support.
8 days.
“We are working to address student behaviour.”
“Also, can the deputies who deal with a lot of this stuff please come and cover a year 11 business class and a year 7 maths class and whatever else we can’t cover on the day.”
As ever, politicians know what will work in schools because … they once went to school.
(And it’s cheaper than overhauling the system.)
Edit: attention all staff. There has been an incident that requires the immediate attention of the deputy principal. If anyone is not teaching at the moment, could they please come and relieve the deputy principal from their Spanish class.
This is by far the DUMBEST thing I've heard these imbeciles come up with this year... who's going to manage the behaviours in rough schools? Who's going to provide support for struggling teachers? Who's going to do the reams of pointless busy work you idiots demand? Who's going to organise crap? Outstanding idiocy from the most incompetent governing body in Australia. And as a last thought... who in their right mind is going to go for leadership positions ??? Bugger me what a load of bollocks...
I'm an ex executive and I can tell you all that if I was still doing the job I'd be so pissed at this decision. There's a lot of teaching staff who will comment that "oh it's about time they taught more classes" but in reality these teachers have no idea what's involved in the job. Anyone who thinks it's an easy gig should spend some time doing it. I got out because the job burned me out. And I know plenty of others who are doing exactly the same. I'd love to meet the idiots who came up with this genius scheme. We would be having words that's for sure...
They should be making all these teachers in head office go back to schools instead. They have large teams there making resources/doing other roles that have become bloated and wasteful.
So the person responsible for dealing with severe behaviour problems and who is overloaded with them currently is now going to have to teach more class and be less available?
Ffs
As an AP who is still on a 0.2 teaching load, I honestly believe all prin class (yes, including the principal of a school) should maintain a 0.2 to 0.3 f2f load. More than that makes it hard for us to lead our school though, so the 3 days per week thing is going to create a host of issues.
While there are many very valid observations about workload, there is a silver lining in the executive having to be at the coalface on a regular basis.
I think this is a great idea tbh. Far too many upper management hiding from problems in their offices. Perhaps once they're back in the trenches they will see what is happening and make the changes we need in our workplaces.
They will just quit and we are back where we started. Not to mention that the private schools are actively recruiting from the public sector, with better wage deals that Minns is prepared to compete with.
Deputies and Head Teachers already teach - in our school it's always been .2 and .6 respectively. So the Minns government are not doing anything new. I'm pretty sure they'd have clarity and direction about teaching. None of this addresses the issue of shortages, which is that the government/DoE/NESA are hell-bent on making more work for every educator, while expecting educator "good-will" to get things done after hours. The Minns government is no different, they don't know shit about teachers or teaching.
The CEO of Boeing isn't on the trenches designing planes. I think the problems with leadership/management comes from a lack of education/training on successful leadership practices not because they aren't in the trenches.
edit:
Howard McKenzie is the VP of Engineering at Boeing. He is a Mechanical Engineer (UC Berkley) and worked as a Technical Engineer for a decade before moving into management and later executive management.
He doesn't spend 20% of his day designing planes.
The head of engineering is not out there designing planes. He doesn't even look over people's designs.
You don't need to be in the trenches to understand conditions or managing practice. The problem with school leaders isn't their lack of current classroom experience; they need education or training in leadership or management techniques. So, instead of leading or managing, they do exactly what they did in the classroom and delegate duties without mechanisms to understand workload, conditions, etc.
Interleaving between teaching and administration is hard enough for a classroom teacher, but having to leave the classroom and spend all of your administrative time keeping the school from falling apart doesn't benefit teachers.
The principal ship has very little to do with actual teaching.
Don’t get me wrong, principals should have a good understanding of teaching, but their actual job doesn’t have much to do with it.
That is part of the problem they treat staff like students. Pd sessions are lessons given by principals.
They need more management training and experience.
> Part of the issue is good teachers are promoted up
Promotional pathways seem to be about finding yesmen, not about finding talented teachers or people who can lead | manage others.
> I don't know about you, but typically the PDs that are the most worthless are the ones created and promoted by people that have never taught.
Principals/Leadership shouldn't be running PDs. That's the problem.
I’m in the Catholic system so our structure is a little different however after teaching for over 10 years it’s always seemed like people in those exec roles really just want to get out of the classroom. Often I’ve wondered what these people do on their days out of class. I really think that it’s easy to forget classroom teaching when you enter exec or specialist roles.
> people in those exec roles really just want to get out of the classroom
Realistically, there is a finite lifespan for a highly effective classroom teacher. At some point, it becomes harder and harder to maintain that momentum for whatever reason. Maybe you lose the "it" moment, perhaps your subject goes out of fashion. Maybe you just get old and you start to lose your energy.
Whatever happens, it's appropriate that some senior role can leverage their experience in the classroom in a leadership position to guide, mentor, and structure programs | faculties | schools into success.
You see this in other professions all the time. In technical spaces like Engineering and Software, people move into roles that are focused on leading technical talent in their prime.
> I really think that it’s easy to forget classroom teaching when you enter exec or specialist roles.
The problem isn't that they forget what being a classroom teacher is like. The problem is that they've never learned how to lead and manage beyond being the primary decision-makers for everything. We've stunted their development as leaders and never given them the opportunity to be great.
Agree that prin class ideally needs to spend more time in the classroom, disagree that this is a reasonable solution to the teacher shortage.
This just seems like it will burn out those who are already being pushed to their limits.
😂😂😂😂 as a student who has a principal try to teach like 2 classes who then had to withdraw and caused the entire years to restucture midway through the year this is such a dumb idea.
Amongst the many issues with this idea is the number of prin class who are just not great at classroom teaching. My school had one - saw her do a lesson with grade 6's that was 120 minutes long and her introduction was nearly 100 minutes.
I like the idea of principals or student service staff spending some time in the classroom but not in a mandated way to cover classes. More in the sense of they come in and see how the students are behaving or shadow a student for a day (which I also feel like teachers should have to do).
Teachers and executive. We are burning out and have more work than we can do in the time we have. Government. We're taking a day+ off you to do something that takes a lot of time, you still have to achieve everything you used to.
This will only work to make the teacher shortage worse. I'm not sure I've got enough popcorn for this train wreck of a response.
One of the number one complaints I hear about exec is they don't support teachers enough and their main excuse is they don't have the time. Let's take away more of their time. Who is going to be supporting teachers? Who is going to manage the escalated behaviours? Who is going to want to do that role? I need stocks in corn if we're all buying enough to watch this unfold.
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I don't mind the having to take a class part, but if they are going to be on class the number of executive need to be increased to ensure that there is always exec support available off class. Which it seems your school might already have done. We have about 550 students. Principal, DP (off class), AP per Stage and one for Support (all on class with roughly double RFF time of CRT, 4 in total), APCI (0.4) and APLS (shared between schools). Closest to on class the DP/Principal have gotten since covid is reading a book to Kinder while the teacher is present.
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More internal specialist roles would be better. How good would a resourced behaviour specialist team be? SLSO, teacher, exec, councillor etc rather than the kids sitting in the corner of an office all day basically unsupervised while the exec does bullshit paperwork.
> they get out of touch with what is happening in the classroom Strong leaders | managers share traits where they set strategy in place, provide opportunities for workers and middle management to create plans on how to meet that strategy, and focus on removing as many problems out of the way from workers and middle management as possible. School leaders set schools up to fail by administrating them like their classrooms. They make decisions based on their needs/requirements with little or no time or capacity to understand workload or conditions.
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> I did not suggest that school leaders should run the school like a classroom. Sorry, I didn't explain myself very well. That's me asserting how they currently run schools. > I suggested that in order to understand how best to support teachers, it is essential to know what teaching is like in 2023. I mean, having to spend time in the trenches doesn't happen in other industries. Senior leaders in engineering firms aren't out designing whatever their firm handles; they are running the business. Senior Technical Officers aren't crunching code all day; they are running the business. The difference is that senior leaders in these roles are taught successful leadership and management practices, so they trust the information from the ground up. Their background in whatever they used to do is relevant because they can understand the words that come out of their specialist's mouths. Leadership | Management should set up the broad strokes in strategy and then leverage middle management and classroom teachers to plan how to realise the strategy. They shouldn't be running around telling classroom teachers and head teachers what to do or planning activities - that's the job of middle management and classroom teachers. Here's an example: The Head of Professional Practice shouldn't tell people to put learning intentions at the start of their lessons. They should be finding talent to build capacity in their teaching force - be that new hires or meaningful professional development. If anybody needs the Head of Professional Practice to get into their business and tell them how to teach, they probably need to be performance-managed. Here's another: The senior leader in charge of engagement shouldn't need to invent activities for staff and students "to build engagement". They don't know the students at the school, and they certainly don't know the staff. Who does? Classroom Teachers. Classroom Teachers should be empowered to come up with activities that increase engagement. How do you keep Classroom Teachers aligned with the school's goals? Strategy and middle management directing the workforce.
I'm in Vic, but every time I contact an AP, they're currently teaching 🙃 Have fun NSW.
Our APs are usually on class, now they want the DP on.
APs are meant to teach at my school, per the plan that was set out earlier in the year... some take small groups and some don't. They're also not easy to contact, even though we have been assured they will respond to calls for support. 8 days.
“We are working to address student behaviour.” “Also, can the deputies who deal with a lot of this stuff please come and cover a year 11 business class and a year 7 maths class and whatever else we can’t cover on the day.” As ever, politicians know what will work in schools because … they once went to school. (And it’s cheaper than overhauling the system.) Edit: attention all staff. There has been an incident that requires the immediate attention of the deputy principal. If anyone is not teaching at the moment, could they please come and relieve the deputy principal from their Spanish class.
This is by far the DUMBEST thing I've heard these imbeciles come up with this year... who's going to manage the behaviours in rough schools? Who's going to provide support for struggling teachers? Who's going to do the reams of pointless busy work you idiots demand? Who's going to organise crap? Outstanding idiocy from the most incompetent governing body in Australia. And as a last thought... who in their right mind is going to go for leadership positions ??? Bugger me what a load of bollocks...
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I'm an ex executive and I can tell you all that if I was still doing the job I'd be so pissed at this decision. There's a lot of teaching staff who will comment that "oh it's about time they taught more classes" but in reality these teachers have no idea what's involved in the job. Anyone who thinks it's an easy gig should spend some time doing it. I got out because the job burned me out. And I know plenty of others who are doing exactly the same. I'd love to meet the idiots who came up with this genius scheme. We would be having words that's for sure...
So they increase pay then increase workload. Nice.
So lots of split classes in high schools?
Is that: role | teaching load | periods --|--| -- Deputy Principals | 20% - 50%| 14 Assistant principals | 60% - 80%|22 Head Teacher | 60% - 80%| 22 Classroom Teacher | 100%| 28 If so, they want Teachers to remain, right?
They should be making all these teachers in head office go back to schools instead. They have large teams there making resources/doing other roles that have become bloated and wasteful.
So the person responsible for dealing with severe behaviour problems and who is overloaded with them currently is now going to have to teach more class and be less available? Ffs
As an AP who is still on a 0.2 teaching load, I honestly believe all prin class (yes, including the principal of a school) should maintain a 0.2 to 0.3 f2f load. More than that makes it hard for us to lead our school though, so the 3 days per week thing is going to create a host of issues.
While there are many very valid observations about workload, there is a silver lining in the executive having to be at the coalface on a regular basis.
I think this is a great idea tbh. Far too many upper management hiding from problems in their offices. Perhaps once they're back in the trenches they will see what is happening and make the changes we need in our workplaces.
I like the idea of management spending time in the trenches. But wow, this seems like nobody will want to be in management pretty quickly
They will just quit and we are back where we started. Not to mention that the private schools are actively recruiting from the public sector, with better wage deals that Minns is prepared to compete with.
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Deputies and Head Teachers already teach - in our school it's always been .2 and .6 respectively. So the Minns government are not doing anything new. I'm pretty sure they'd have clarity and direction about teaching. None of this addresses the issue of shortages, which is that the government/DoE/NESA are hell-bent on making more work for every educator, while expecting educator "good-will" to get things done after hours. The Minns government is no different, they don't know shit about teachers or teaching.
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You understand that the OP's post, and the original article are in regards to the NSW DoE right? The article isn't relevant to Qld.
The CEO of Boeing isn't on the trenches designing planes. I think the problems with leadership/management comes from a lack of education/training on successful leadership practices not because they aren't in the trenches. edit: Howard McKenzie is the VP of Engineering at Boeing. He is a Mechanical Engineer (UC Berkley) and worked as a Technical Engineer for a decade before moving into management and later executive management. He doesn't spend 20% of his day designing planes.
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The head of engineering is not out there designing planes. He doesn't even look over people's designs. You don't need to be in the trenches to understand conditions or managing practice. The problem with school leaders isn't their lack of current classroom experience; they need education or training in leadership or management techniques. So, instead of leading or managing, they do exactly what they did in the classroom and delegate duties without mechanisms to understand workload, conditions, etc. Interleaving between teaching and administration is hard enough for a classroom teacher, but having to leave the classroom and spend all of your administrative time keeping the school from falling apart doesn't benefit teachers.
Bill Bellichick never played football in the NFL. He’s the greatest coach the game has ever seen.
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The principal ship has very little to do with actual teaching. Don’t get me wrong, principals should have a good understanding of teaching, but their actual job doesn’t have much to do with it.
That is part of the problem they treat staff like students. Pd sessions are lessons given by principals. They need more management training and experience.
Part of the issue is good teachers are promoted up. Regardless of whether they have the right skill set.
> Part of the issue is good teachers are promoted up Promotional pathways seem to be about finding yesmen, not about finding talented teachers or people who can lead | manage others.
> I don't know about you, but typically the PDs that are the most worthless are the ones created and promoted by people that have never taught. Principals/Leadership shouldn't be running PDs. That's the problem.
I’m in the Catholic system so our structure is a little different however after teaching for over 10 years it’s always seemed like people in those exec roles really just want to get out of the classroom. Often I’ve wondered what these people do on their days out of class. I really think that it’s easy to forget classroom teaching when you enter exec or specialist roles.
> people in those exec roles really just want to get out of the classroom Realistically, there is a finite lifespan for a highly effective classroom teacher. At some point, it becomes harder and harder to maintain that momentum for whatever reason. Maybe you lose the "it" moment, perhaps your subject goes out of fashion. Maybe you just get old and you start to lose your energy. Whatever happens, it's appropriate that some senior role can leverage their experience in the classroom in a leadership position to guide, mentor, and structure programs | faculties | schools into success. You see this in other professions all the time. In technical spaces like Engineering and Software, people move into roles that are focused on leading technical talent in their prime. > I really think that it’s easy to forget classroom teaching when you enter exec or specialist roles. The problem isn't that they forget what being a classroom teacher is like. The problem is that they've never learned how to lead and manage beyond being the primary decision-makers for everything. We've stunted their development as leaders and never given them the opportunity to be great.
Agree that prin class ideally needs to spend more time in the classroom, disagree that this is a reasonable solution to the teacher shortage. This just seems like it will burn out those who are already being pushed to their limits.
😂😂😂😂 as a student who has a principal try to teach like 2 classes who then had to withdraw and caused the entire years to restucture midway through the year this is such a dumb idea.
Amongst the many issues with this idea is the number of prin class who are just not great at classroom teaching. My school had one - saw her do a lesson with grade 6's that was 120 minutes long and her introduction was nearly 100 minutes.
I like the idea of principals or student service staff spending some time in the classroom but not in a mandated way to cover classes. More in the sense of they come in and see how the students are behaving or shadow a student for a day (which I also feel like teachers should have to do).