I've never professed to be a quick wit...always having a witty reply a day or so later. But tonight at dinner, out at a crowded restaurant with my family, I finally got something my "Mentoring AP" has been saying for some time.
See, when the going gets tense, stressful, or may seem overwhelming, our admin tend to offer rewards for staff to jump in and do a little extra.
Let me give you an example. It's mid spring semester. If you are a 3rd-5th grade teacher, you are feeling the urgency (or should) to press on towards STAAR (or your own standardized test). You've still got to input grades, run reports for your admin team on your student data, meet with families of students you are concerned about, plan with your team, plan for yourself, meet as a faculty for staff meetings, maybe even collect forms for various types of things like pictures, field trips, middle school registration, progress reports, and on and on like this. So, then your admin team asks (strongly encourages) some on your team to step up and offer to tutor for an academic camp after school or on a Saturday, not just one time, but multiple times, and you are D-O-N-E. I mean, ready to scream, walk out the door, throw your papers in the air, just DONE. So, your admin team offers extra jeans day passes, special rewards like a duty (lunch or recess) coverage, or some other reward for you to do this.
This is where my "Mentoring AP" steps in. "Why should we offer a reward for something that is part of your job?" To which I would say, "But they are tired, feeling overwhelmed, overworked, etc and need something to help." To which she would reply, "But it's their job. You get a paycheck, that's your something." And to be fair, at my campus, staff are paid for their extra time to tutor or come on Saturdays, so it's a "something" beyond their salary.
So tonight at dinner with my youngest and husband, we were seated next to a table that obviously had a firstborn toddler in a high chair. The Mom, Dad, and Grandmother were hyper-focused on this child, getting them an uncooked tortilla (dough) to play with, wiping every mess up immediately, etc. Then I hear the Mom ask the waitress for an ice cream and leans over to the toddler telling her how proud she was that she could sit still through dinner and earned a reward, the ice cream. And that's when the light bulb went off for me. I sat there mouth hanging for a couple of minutes and then leaned over to my husband, also a teacher, and said "Can you believe that? That kid is getting rewarded for something that is expected...to sit still during dinner, and behave. This isn't the FFPS league. We shouldn't reward them for something that is their job?!"
See, I know it can be stressful and seem like the work is never ending and want to give up, because I've been there, and I'm sure I'll be there again. But seriously, working a little harder, giving a little more, bumping up that urgency for our students sake should just be our job. We shouldn't have to be rewarded or "strongly encouraged" to do this. We should just do it for our student's sake. They deserve our very best. They deserve for us to give a little more to help them be successful.
So, though the job be daunting, we should WANT to do more, be more, help more, encourage more for our students, not just because it's our job, but because we want to, without reward or incentive. Those incentives can be nice, but we should just want to for our student's sake and for no other reason.
Anyways, that's my two cents...and I can say, "I get it finally."
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