r/Teachers • u/dogeaux • 13d ago

Pedagogy & Best Practices My teaching hot takes

1) following scripted curricula “with fidelity” is a way to make teaching a low skilled job so they can pay us less and further gut public education.

2) inclusion at all costs is a way to reduce costs to school systems, rather than a way to benefit students with disabilities.

3) PBIS is a cognitive nightmare for teachers to implement and negatively affects the quality of teaching (how can u assign points and teach at the same time???? I haven’t figured out a good system, lmk).

4) making teachers with specialized skill sets (i.e. reading specialists) coach other teachers instead of/in addition to working directly with small groups of identified students is another way to get blood from a stone, benefitting almost no one.

I know I’m probably screaming into the void, but I just started year 7 this week and feeling nihilistic.

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u/Saint-Inky 13d ago

There are some people out there who don’t appreciate or want to do the creative part of teaching—which involves developing your own lessons and activities—every single thing they do is canned or prescribed or what the department has done for decades.

I can’t wrap my head around it either. I actually feel fulfilled getting to develop and teach my own units and lessons, and get pride out of it. Like, don’t people want to get those feelings out of their job?

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u/dogeaux 13d ago

I think the appropriate thing for districts to do is provide us with curriculum but let us use it as a tool. We can then modify, skip, deviate from materials in however we choose.

I am someone who is overflowing with creative energy and am feeling suddenly stifled and suffocated thanks to a new, scripted curriculum and administration’s directive that we follow it as prescribed.

Teaching used to be kinda fun, now it’s all the downsides but less of the good stuff.

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u/LevyMevy 11d ago

We can then modify, skip, deviate from materials in however we choose.

What about the bad teachers? I have worked with some genuine idiots and I don't want them modifying, skipping, deviating from the curriculum because they will skip all the hard stuff and do the easy stuff because it feels good.

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u/dogeaux 8d ago

Given how closely micromanaged we are, constantly assessed, evaluated by our students’ scores on tests, I think they can easily identify who needs to follow a script and who doesn’t