Through a teacher’s eyes darkly

GUEST BLOG BY DON CROPP, RETIRED HIGH SCHOOL SCIENCE TEACHER

Here are 12 very practical recommendations that would greatly improve the student experience and cost not one penny.

• With regard to those who are "licensed but unqualified",  the most egregious examples in the education system are the many principals who are supposed to evaluate the methods and skills of the teachers in their schools.  A mixture of politics and nepotism has promoted them out of the classroom into a post which requires little contact with students, let alone teaching them. All principals should teach at least one difficult (poorly-behaved), class per day. They might even be required to write a principal's examination.
• All vice principals should also teach at least one difficult, class each day.
• If the personnel who serve in Student Services (formerly Guidance) are on the staff as "teachers", they should teach a half-load of classes. If they are employed as "counsellors" only, they should be on a lower pay scale without the prospect of promotion.
• All librarians should teach a half-load, especially if they are supported by a library technician. 
• All teachers who are not required to set and mark examinations should be on duty every day as invigilators in the examination rooms.
• All team ball games should be played after school and on weekends and should never be allowed to interfere with the school curriculum. There should be no "Rah! Rah!" assemblies or early school closures to "Watch the game". Funding for team games should never be a significant part of the school's budget, and appropriate games should be chosen on the basis of minimal demands for equipment and low body impact.
• If a course is nominally assigned a length of 110 hours class time, then this must be guaranteed by the school administration. No distractions like field trips or school plays should be allowed to take out time from any course's allocation.
• Each head of department should be required to teach at least one of the difficult classes and not hog the academic cream. Where the head of department is given a period for "administration", some of this time must be used to assist beginning teachers or those with learning-resistant classes.
• If it is determined that certain subjects such as mathematics and English require increased emphasis in a student's education, then the time allocations for those subjects must be increased. In addition to this differential, a different salary scale may be appropriate. The physical sciences of physics and chemistry are much more difficult than biology.
• All academic subjects must be tested in a provincial examination with any statistical manipulations applied to large populations. There is no basis for claiming an improvement in the education system based on marks awarded by the politically-driven pressures on the classroom teachers. As one VP instructed me "Pass 'em! And get them out of here!"
• Report cards should contain a mark number and the class median, a total of classes missed (for whatever reason), a total of assignments and tests missed, and a comment on discipline (preferably entered by the VP). High marks would need no further comment, but the bulk of comments should be directed at improvements in a student's standing. All such entries should be made with considerable thought and in the teacher's handwriting. The system should not lie to the student and his/her parents in its search for only the positive comments available in a computer programme.
• I am clearly out of date, but if my experience matches the current practices of the faculties of education, both the staff and students need a careful sorting before admission - the staff for their wide experience in schools and the types of students taught, the students for their knowledge of subjects to be taught when they start their careers. Many so-called physics teachers in my schools were civil engineers whose physics stopped when they left high school. The advanced parts of the senior grades were learned on the job. At Queen's, my class of intended chemistry teachers contained a number who failed a Grade 12 multiple choice test.

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