CLASSROOM FIEFDOMS

How many people actually know what goes on in a teacher’s classroom every day, besides the students and the teacher? The real answer is no one.

For the most part teachers can do pretty much as we please with the day-to-day running of our classroom. We are trusted that we have the best interests of our student in mind and the actual amount of direct supervision we receive in our classrooms is typically very little. As long as we have lesson plans, show that our students are making some progress, turn in our paperwork on time, put reasonable grades in the grading system, don’t have too many parents sqawking about how we teach and when we have our administrative observations we teach to the lesson plan and the kids are not too unruly. Our administrators leave us alone to do our thing, they are just too busy doing their thing.

This independence that many of us enjoy is why we have great teachers doing wonderfully creative things that motivate and create students who are as good as any students in the world.

Unfortunately, this same independence and lack of supervision are why we also have some terrible teachers. Those who may be either unknowingly or purposely holding our students back due to their own inadequacies, poor attitudes or lack of teaching abilities.

So for good or ill, with few exceptions our classrooms have become our little fiefdoms. Much the same as when Kings and Queens entrusted the care of areas of their domain and the people living there to their titled nobility. As teachers we have the power to impose our will on our students, discipline, evaluate and determine to some extent our student’s future. We are the Lords and Ladies of our classrooms and woe be to anyone who comes in and either tries to tell us how to or gives us feedback on what we are doing. That last sentence may be a wee bit of an exaggeration, but I have witnessed how some teachers react when an “outsider” or even another teacher comes to their classroom and makes some suggestions. Sometimes it is not pretty.

How easy is it for teachers to write a reasonable lesson plan, do not much more than photocopy a worksheet from a lesson plan someone else wrote, follow the “book”, give reasonable grades, yet teach their students (ahem subjects) nothing of the excitement and love of learning that should be being taught in the classroom.

An even worse scenario than above is the teacher who fake teaches, they write-up the lesson plan but make no attempt to follow it (it is just a piece of paper); make the students do assignments, but not grade them; give grades based on popularity, not merit, etc. Unfortunately, all of these things and more have been and are being done in some classrooms – it is cheating the students and our profession, but is done all the same.

This minority of teachers are able to suck the love of learning out of their students and are the reasons that so many students hate, hate, hate school and the reason why so many outside of the education profession want to “clean up” and “improve” how we “teach”. We all have had experiences with these kinds of teachers either as students or seen it in fellow teachers. They may even be a nice person, but suck at being a teacher..

So have our classrooms become too much like little fiefdoms and lack transparency (the new buzzword)? I believe that they are and can see several parallels to the middle ages fiefdoms. Some fiefdoms were run in an outstanding manner, were progressive and improved their subjects lives. While others were poorly lead, didn’t provide proper supports, damaged their subject’s ability to be productive and needed to be replaced.

So how do you run your fiefdom?

I am pretty sure of where I stand in how I attempt to lead my little fiefdom and probably most of the readers of this blog believe the same as I do, but how many of us know of teachers who treat their classroom fiefdoms poorly and harm their students/”subjects”? What can we do about it? There are no easy answers for that question are there?

Photo of Sir Galahad from https://facultystaff.richmond.edu/~rreilly/Arthur/hughes_galahad.jpg