What is hindering school reform? Filing cabinets? While I would have never thought that a four drawer file cabinet could be hurting students more than helping them, I find that the teacher's inability to change might be more of a factor. In the file cabinet, there often exists lessons and ideas that have worked through the years. While the author of the blog mentioned above feels that those ideas need to be tossed out with the trash, I would argue that those lessons and ideas simply need to be updated. When I started teaching, I inherited a file cabinet full of stuff that the teacher I was replacing left. Was she doing me a favor or was she simply trying not to take that stuff with her. Who knows? After my first three years of teaching, I finally took the time to throw most of it away. Was there good stuff in there? Probably, but I never had the time to sort through it all. I would bet that most teachers have a ton of stuff in their cabinets and drawers that they don't even use any more. Perhaps getting that four drawer cabinet down to a two drawer, a cd-rom, or a flash drive would be more appropriate than finding the nearest hand truck and getting rid of it completely.

The next topic mentioned in the blog, is MANDATORY professional learning. Now, I agree that teachers need to be constantly learning. We are trying to get the students to become life long learners and if we don't practice what we preach, then something is wrong. However, forcing teachers is not the way to go. When you tell someone they have to do something, they often head into that activity with a bad taste in their mouth. However, improving on the current inservice time that teachers have, perhaps given them choices on what to work on, could be a better alternative. Teachers' time is valuable and they certainly don't want it wasted. The author mentions that given a choice between learning and working in their rooms, they choose the second. I completely disagree. There simply isn't enough time in the day for the record keeping, parent communication, and other paperwork districts and NCLB are piling on. Teachers need the time and using that time effectively doesn't translate into a lack of wanting to learn. Most teachers are very willing to learn new techniques and strategies. As many of us know, districts are not very willing to pay for grad classes and workshops like businesses are. Businesses want their employees to learn more and are willing to provide the time and the money to train them. Schools are not willing or perhaps not able financially, to make that same commitment and it's unfortunate.

I'm serious. Contrary to what normally happens on inservice days, we actually had a great one recently. The funny thing is, our district really did nothing spectacular other than find an incredible person to speak with us in the morning and work with us in the afternoon. I'm not sure how much his speaking fee was, but it was worth every penny. I haven't heard our teachers talk about how good an inservice day was in a long time - and it was all due to Michael Dorn.

If any of you have ever heard Michael Dorn speak on school safety and bullying, you know what I'm talking about. Michael Dorn, not of Star Trek fame, is one of the world's leading experts on school safety. His son is also an expert and has a video that is all over the place showing how students can conceal weapons in their clothing. His son wasn't there, but Michael is really the head honcho. He has tons of experience that makes him an incredible and interesting speaker. We had about 650 teachers in the room when he was speaking and I think he had the attention of all of the for well over an hour. I'm not going to go into detail about his speech, but it was very motivating and really made us think about the students in our school and what we are doing to help them feel safe - not just from intruders, but mostly from other students. I wonder how many other teachers have heard him speak.

Overall, a fantastic day.