Stopping by summer school a few times has lead me to the irrefutable conclusion that a resource teacher for summer school English 1 was a colossal waste of district money (roughly three-thousand dollars of a waste). I have yet to contact other resource teachers (a huge failing on my part), but I would imagine their experience to be similar to mine: no one wants the help. I’m basically just going from room to room in order to hear, “Yup, everything’s fine!”
I’m generally a friendly guy and I’m putting on even more of a helpful face for this position. I’ve been a teacher for a several years, department co-chair for a few, and campus technology coordinator for many. I’ve got nothing to do except help you create even better materials for your students. Please, let me know what I can do for you. Anything you need? Can I help you with anything? Can I observe your class for just ten minutes and then give you a write up? Why not have me in when you’re doing something new and you’d like a second set of eyes to check it out? Can I offer you any other materials than you are using? What types of things do you wish you had access to?
Every time I swing by classes, things are going well, no trouble, keeping up with pacing guide just fine, plenty of access to stories in the textbook, it’s all good. Let me be clear: this may indeed be the case. Worse yet, I may simply not be the guy for this task and teachers aren’t willing to ask me for the help they need and/or they don’t think I’d be able to provide it even if they did ask.
But if teachers don’t take each other up on offers for help, how can we get better? What are you doing to make next year an improvement over last year? Are you putting things into place to make next year simply the same as last year? If it’s not a resource teacher and it’s not professional development and it’s not Saturday classes, then what it is that will make us better? I ask this not because I think such things are not in existence, but because I don’t know what they are and I should. What should I tell my district to spend this money on next summer in order to ensure a standard level of teaching quality over the summer? Then how can we put that into play during the regular school year?