Let's get something out of the way first before I begin, I only have one wife and I am happy with my one wife. I do not have any experience with having more than one wife. Thus, if any of my dear readers here have such experiences, feel free to share your point of view. This post is meant to inform and perhaps even entertain. The gist of it all is to talk about teachers walking a tight rope to please multiple parties in his/her line of work.
For this post, these parties that a teacher has to please would be the teacher's partners. So let me introduce you to partner number 1. By the way, I'll be using gender neutral names just to be inclusive =)
Alex
Alex is the first partner. Alex is a big picture kind of person, everything is micromanaged from the smallest to the biggest detail. Alex loves to plan for family activities and the family's budget. While it is great having someone like Alex managing everything, Alex's word is law and going up against Alex would mean certain career/relational suicide.
Alex represents the administrator or the authority that manages education. This can go from policy makers, headmasters, head of education and more. Most countries have a central entity that manages the education system as a whole and Alex is a representation of it, everything has to be managed, proven and documented. This includes everything from lesson plans to budgets and students' progress reports. Most of these documentation are based on the big picture of the current state of affairs for education. This means that students are represented with numbers and statistics.
While this is the best that Alex can do, Cameron is not happy with it.
Cameron
Cameron cares for the children. Cameron's focus, first and foremost is the children, their well being, education and development as a whole. While Alex manages other areas aside from the children, Cameron focuses on it. Cameron even believes that no expense is too great, no program too difficult to execute as long as it benefits the children. If Cameron were to be in charge, the children will have personal tutors and would be learning from their own IPads, much to Alex's dismay.
Cameron in this case represents the parents. From my experience, parents do have a rather different point of view of how things should be done from the administrators. I am not saying who is right or wrong, but the difference of opinion stems from how parents and administrators see good results. As mentioned earlier, administrators would rely on statistics to represent regression or improvement, while parents would likely find out through observing their own child or talking to them.
The problem
Now imagine if you had children with both Alex and Cameron. With the different ways of how Alex and Cameron sees things, it does affect the child's learning. An example is on how each would define 'good education'. It is likely that Alex would see a yearly improvement in grades as an indication of the child's improvement. It's not wrong, mind you, it is just not entirely reliable. Cameron on the other hand would likely associate improvement to how the child displays or applies the knowledge taught. Cameron would also be interested if the knowledge taught would actually benefit the child in the future, while Alex would be more concern of the financial strain on it.
With the different points of view, it can be difficult to come up with policies that strikes a balance between being manageable and educational. However, if both Alex and Cameron do come to an agreement, it is likely that the teachers would have to pay a price. An example is in using internet and technology in the daily curriculum. Parents would likely ask for it due to its benefit, but the administrators would shun it due to the cost and training that has to be given to the teachers. A likely middle ground that would appease both parties would be to incorporate the these technology in the classroom but have the teachers pay for it instead. This solution makes the parents happy and the administrators happy too. The students too will likely enjoy it, however, the teachers would have to pay the price for everyone's happiness.
Thus, it is not surprising if you find news articles or blog posts of teachers buying equipment, art supplies and other items for the class with their own pay. I once had to buy my own LCD projector due to a similar situation.
Conclusion
It is not surprising to find teachers being caught in the middle of certain policies and programs. At times, you have the administrators pushing for certain unrealistic programs, parents demanding for change and the teachers having to put in the extra hours just to get it done.
Now, I am not blaming the parents nor the administrators for a teacher's plight, hopefully, I did not fail in presenting this objectively. What can be done in all this is to talk to the teachers, offer them some help if they need any and most importantly, thank them for the work they do.
I hope you have found this informative and entertaining. If you are a parent or an administrator, I would love to hear your side of things. If you are a teacher, thank you for what you are doing.
