From Private to Public

Alright, I need to take a second and get on my soapbox....

We had a staff meeting this afternoon and a big discussion that came up was what aspects of our school still hold true to the 'private school mentality'. Let me give you a little background... Our school originally was a private school, but due to a lack of enrollment and funds administration decided the best route for our school was to become a charter school. So three years ago we 'closed our doors' as a private school and opened up as a public charter school. Since then our school has grown leaps and bounds, but we try to give students a 'private school education on a public school dime'.

So back to our staff meeting, we were discussing how there are some families leaving our school because they said that our school has changed too much. As a staff, we talked about what types of things that have changed and what we still do that is the same from our private school days. It seemed through the discussion that the biggest difference we feel as teachers is the pressure.

The pressure to make sure we cover all the standards.

The pressure of documenting everything that we do.

The pressure to monitor progress and to constantly collect data on our students.

The pressure to prepare students for standardized tests.

Just looking at this list it is frustrating to see that teachers have no control over any of this pressure or relieving it. It is the people above us that put this extra stress on us. As a private school, the teachers could just teach! Yes we had the standards in mind, but we did not have to document everything we did or take weeks and weeks to prepare students for tests. 

I wish we could go back to the days where teachers could do their job and just teach...

Ok, I'm off my soapbox now, but I would love to hear your thoughts on this!