Sunday, September 22, 2013

New school year, new horseshit initiatives

Hey entrepreneurs! Get rich advising teachers how to teach better!

Last year, at least three CPS high schools "partnered" with outside organizations in the hopes of completely transforming their schools. Hancock High School paid one partner $740,264.00. This year, the city is going down the same road, partnering more schools with these organizations and once again lining the pockets of enterprising do-gooders with corporate agendas.

Research shows partner organizations to have limited classroom experience, yet copious knowledge of New Age corporate mumbo-jumbo.

Twenty days into the school year, the following has been heard from a "partner":

  • "We need a way to codify, contextualize, and normalize the protocols which we wish to use."
  • "It's all of our responsibility to socialize this information to create a longer shelf-life. Socialize refers to getting people familiar with what's happening. All of the stakeholders need to be socialized to this shared informational experience."
  • "Don't be afraid to lean into discomfort. To be vulnerable in a public space. This is when true growth occurs."
(In an attempt to appear friendly):
  • "Do you like being healthy?" 
Codify? Contextualize? Normalize? Last time WCT checked, English was the primary language spoken in public schools. And the verb socialize? The definition of this word is,  "to place under government or group ownership or control." Partners must not realize that most teachers did indeed read 1984 in high school.

As for the final question, the obvious answer is: "No, I don't like being healthy."

3 comments:

  1. What do you expect from a board of ed with 1 1/2 of its members have teaching experience. Well, I guess its not too bad when the secretary of education of the united states of america has ZERO teaching or educational experience! If you shoot hoops with barry o, I guess your qualified enough...

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  2. As a central office employee, my favorite buzz term is "building capacity" of knowledge. My director has used this phrase at least six times in one sentence. However, when pressed she cannot tell you what "building capacity" means. Nor does she really know anything about the English Language Learners she is charged with leading. Nope, mostly just sucks up to her bosses and treats us all like robots

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    Replies
    1. That sounds awful. WCT imagines central office is a pretty joyless place to work especially when bosses only speak in buzzwords. We wish, much like new handbooks that are issued yearly, a buzzword guide would also be issued for the year to better translate Earth-to-Administrator talk.

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