We talk about cost in monetary terms all the time. No one talks about opportunity cost. Education should start now. This is definitely a very little thing with BIG implications for turning around schools.
Opportunity cost is the opportunity you give up when you or your employees work on something else. Teachers have a certain number of hours to work in a day. There is a finite limit to the number of hours they have. Do we ever consider the cost of what we're asking teachers to do?
Here are some examples:
- When a teacher spends one hour completing paperwork that no one will read.
- Attending a meeting that no one wanted to have and no measurable outcome was attained for a person who justifies his existence by having meetings.
- Putting lesson plans in an extensive format that have no measurable improvement in how the lesson will be delivered in the classroom.
- Paperwork that no one will read.
- Having teachers file paperwork.
- Forcing a teacher to use a system (like a word wall) that they don't feel applies to their curriculum and takes them away from their focus.
- Did I say PAPERWORK THAT NO ONE WILL READ, USE OR EVEN LOOK AT EVER AGAIN?
- Constantly shifting priorities into opposite directions causing a complete overhaul of classroom systems and pedagogies.
- Causing a teacher to wait incessantly for approval to move their furniture or gain approval for improving their own classroom in even small ways.
- Paper work? (Let's just call it Paper waste, shall we?)
Big Little Thing #2: Marry the percentages till death do you part
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